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@theMarket: Santa Comes to Town
By Bill Schmick,
02:02PM / Friday, December 25, 2015

He certainly took his own sweet time getting here. Investors had just about giving up hope that the traditional Santa Claus Rally would occur this year. But despite gyrating energy prices, worries over the economy and the looming next earnings season, stocks are on the upswing.

Of course, I am writing this on the Wednesday before Christmas because even the most devoted columnists take off on the holidays. We could still fall back tomorrow, but the markets are only open for a half the day so I'm guessing we maintain this week's gains.

It would be nice if the market continued higher into next week. If so, my forecast of a single-digit gain this year might actually unfold.

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The Independent Investor: Christmas in the New Age
By Bill Schmick,
03:55PM / Thursday, December 24, 2015

Back in the day, going home for Christmas was what you did. Family members and friends would make their yearly pilgrimage to the old homestead. Car, plane or train, it made little difference how long it took, because everyone wanted to be home for the holidays. But times are changing.

Ever since the invention of Skype, Facetime and an array of other Internet services, face-to-face get-togethers are not as important they once were. In these lean economic times, the cost of air and train fare (and until recently fuel) made these trips both time consuming and expensive. In addition, taking off the required work time is not so easy today. Most managers are fairly stingy giving vacation

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The Independent Investor: How Rising Interest Rates Will Change Your Life
By Bill Schmick,
07:11PM / Thursday, December 17, 2015

It's official: Wednesday afternoon the Federal Reserve bank hiked the short-term interest rate, called the Fed Funds rate, for the first time in 9 1/2 years. It is the beginning of a new financial era for all of us and it behooves you to understand its implications.

Let me first assuage any concerns you may have that this single 0.25 percentage point increase will impact your life anytime soon. Instead, simply view this event as the beginning of a progression to gradually higher interest rates that will ultimately impact everything from car loans to retirement savings accounts.

The mechanism by which the Fed raises rates is complicated. Just know that overtime there is a

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@theMarket: Where Oil Goes, So Goes the Market
By Bill Schmick,
09:34AM / Saturday, December 12, 2015

Stocks had a tough week. All averages are now negative for the year once again and will continue to go lower until oil finds a bottom or the market disconnects from energy prices. The problem with that scenario is that no one knows if and when that will occur.

The price of crude is down 14 percent since December 1 and 35 percent since May. Controversy rages over whether the precipitous decline in oil over the last year from $114 a barrel to $36 a barrel is a supply or demand imbalance. New technology in the form of hydraulic fracking has unearthed a huge new supply of natural gas and oil worldwide. So much so that consuming these new sources of energy will require decades. At the

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The Independent Investor: Did the Digital Grinch Steal Christmas?
By Bill Schmick,
05:27PM / Friday, December 11, 2015

Ever notice that however hard you try, the Christmas season is simply not what it once was? The routines and traditions you remember so fondly from your youth have somehow faded away. The digital age has transformed the holidays, and for some of us, the experience has been a mixed blessing.

When I was a kid, we left cookies and milk for Santa (no never mind that we lacked a fireplace for him to come down). Building on that tradition, I engineered faint footprints of ash the night before Christmas for my own child (Santa's, I swore solemnly the next morning) leading from the fireplace to the Christmas tree. Fast forward to today, kids can now call the North American Aerospace

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