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@theMarket: Santa Comes to Town
By Bill Schmick,
11:56AM / Friday, December 26, 2014

Pessimists are on vacation this week. It doesn't matter that the indexes are overbought. That markets are hitting new highs without a pause. It's Christmas and Hanukkah week. The Big Guy has come to town.

Of course, investors have had a little help from the Fed and the latest revision of U.S. third quarter GDP. It appears that the economy grew faster than economists expected. Would you believe 5 percent? That's one barn burner of a number even for me, an uber bull on the economy. It is the fastest the economy has grown in 11 years. It follows on the tail of a 4.6 percent rate in the second quarter.

Consumer spending on health care and business investment in

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The Independent Investor: IRA Distribution Time
By Bill Schmick,
11:52AM / Friday, December 26, 2014

Information abounds on why and when you should contribute to a tax-deferred savings plan such as an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). Less is known about what happens in retirement when you have to take money out of these plans. For those who turned 70 1/2 years or older in 2014, pay attention, because it's distribution time.

The original idea behind tax-deferred savings was to provide Americans a tax break in order to encourage us to save towards retirement. Individuals could stash away money tax-free while they were working and then take it out again once they retired, when they were presumably earning less and at a lower tax rate. The government determined that once you

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@theMarket: It's All In The Way You Say It
By Bill Schmick,
01:17PM / Saturday, December 20, 2014

  — Emily Dickinson

The Fed ended the stock market decline this week by simply changing a sentence or two. In the space of a few hours, global markets soared, creating billions of dollars in gains for investors worldwide. Don't ever doubt the power of words.

Rumor had it that on Wednesday, the Fed was going to remove "considerable time" from its guidance on when interest rates would rise. Investors worried that thanks to the gathering strength of the economy that FOMC members were becoming hawkish and might raise rates sooner than expected. Sure enough, the Fed removed "considerable" from their statement on the time period itself, but added

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The Independent Investor: Election Investors Ignored
By Bill Schmick,
07:09PM / Thursday, December 18, 2014

Last weekend Japan held "snap" elections, which gave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe the mandate to continue his pro-growth economic policies.  No one outside Japan seemed to care. The Nikkei stock market index fell 1.6 percent and traders moved on. That may prove to be a big mistake.

Granted, given the precipitous decline in the price of oil and the calamity it is causing in Russia (well-covered in last week's columns), investors may be forgiven for focusing on other more immediate concerns. Still, I believe that now that Abe has a clear mandate to continue his pro-reform, economic policies, Japan's prospects for next year have been elevated considerably. And

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@theMarket: It's All About Oil
By Bill Schmick,
04:10PM / Friday, December 12, 2014

Just three weeks to go before the end of the year, and stock markets should be celebrating. Instead, equity markets have been down as traders become increasingly spooked by the decline in oil prices. Granted, financial markets sometimes get it wrong, but the present atmosphere of fear is one for the books.

Investors are afraid that oil prices could go even lower. The question to ask is how low is too low? Someone somewhere came up with the price of $60 a barrel as a "fair" price for oil. This week it broke that price level and markets in Europe and the U.S. sold off. What are investors thinking?

For starters, some believe the decline in oil prices is indicative of

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