Clusterstock

OVER the last few weeks, as the stock market has reached new highs, my thoughts have turned to my 85-year-old mother. “O.K. Mr. Smarty-Pants,” she often asks me, “what stock should I buy now?” She first asked me this question when I was an undergraduate at Princeton, majoring in economics. She asked...

In the latest Bedtime with BTIG note, strategist Dan Greenhaus passes along this chart of various markets and how they've performed year-to-date. One thing that really stands out is how bad the performance has been from the BRICs. The two worst on here are Brazil and Russia. China and India are...

The historian Michael Beschloss just tweeted this excellent picture of the New York City skyline. He says it's from 1947. Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story » ...

Once again, Friday ended with the stock market climbing to new all-time highs. Even with last week's massive dump of lackluster economic data, volatility remained almost startlingly low. It's worth noting that it's been a while since anyone has said anything about a debt crisis.  Europe is cooling off and the U.S....

The can't-lose market continues. Japan up another 1% to start the week. The real big news though to start the week is the hard selloff in silver, as the pain continues for the precious metal bugs. Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story » ...

It's shaping up to be another rough day for fans of precious metals, especially silver. More broadly, silver and gold have been getting poleaxed in recent weeks and months. How come? Sam Ro earlier posted a chart from Credit Suisse, which explains that there are two driving factors. One is that the fear of...

 As you read, shareholders of JP Morgan are deciding if CEO Jamie Dimon will keep his job as he knows it. Dimon, widely considered the most powerful banker in the country, holds the positions of both CEO and chairman of JP Morgan's board. It's the largest bank in the U.S., and...

Fans of precious metals have been getting creamed lately. Thanks to declining volatility and a growing sense that real interest rates are on the rise, gold and silver have been getting taken to the woodshed. And in early Asian trading there's no letup. Silver is getting demolished. From Kitco, here's the sharp downward...

On Friday, Bank Of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank independently published their respective findings on corporate profit margins, which are currently sitting at historic highs. "The debate on S&P 500 net margins never seems to go away," wrote Deutsche Bank's David Bianco. "One of the most common bearish arguments that we...

Earlier today we wrote about the intriguing new claim, from computer industry pioneer Ted Nelson, that the inventor of Bitcoin was probably Japanese math professor Shinichi Mochizuki. Mochizuki made a name for himself last fall when he cracked the infamous ABC Conjecture, which dealt with the nature of prime numbers. Nelson's argument,...

WHEN Shinzo Abe resigned after just a year as prime minister, in September 2007, he was derided by voters, broken by chronic illness, and dogged by the ineptitude that has been the bane of so many recent Japanese leaders. Today, not yet five months into his second term, Mr Abe seems...

Ric Deverell is convinced the sell-off in gold is far from over. On Thursday, Deverell -- Credit Suisse's Global Head of Commodities -- told reporters in London that the yellow metal was heading to $1,100 this year and to $1.000 within five years. He made those comments during Credit Suisse's 5th annual...

Surveying the latest stock transactions of billionaire George Soros, observers would have to surmise tech stocks are in and financial stocks — not to mention some industrials — are out. Soros went even bigger on Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and bought into Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) and LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD), according to filings detailing...

ROME (Reuters) - Rafa Nadal made short work of his great rival Roger Federer to win the Italian Open, his sixth trophy of the year, 6-1 6-3 on Sunday. The crowd sitting in the sunshine at Rome's Foro Italico watched Nadal race to victory in 69 minutes on the red clay. The Spaniard, back in his best form...

As America salivates over the $590 million Powerball prize  won by a Floridian, we're reminded that winning the lottery will not solve all problems. In fact many people's lives became notably worse after they got super rich, and they managed to lose it all in no time.The Griffiths bought their dream...

Gold went down the toilet again on Friday, and is now close to revisiting its April lows. This gold weakness is causing a lot of consternation to fans of it who don't understand how the precious metal can keep falling, when central banks around the world continue to press down on...

Dave Lutz of Stifel, Nicolaus passes along the top stories that traders are talking about this weekend. Here are the big ones: Hedge fund managers have gone short Treasuries for the first time in 2 months (Bloomberg) Chinese home prices rise at a slower pace in April (China Daily) Investors poured money like crazy...

Nobody knows who invented the digital currency Bitcoin. The developer used a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto, and since then there's been a lot of inconclusive internet sleuthing. Ted Nelson, a computer scientist, has posted a video to the web claiming that he's figured it out, and that it's Kyoto University math professor  Shinichi...

To spice things up a bit, a lot of poker rooms at casinos have something called a "Bad Beat" jackpot. A "Bad Beat" is when, say, you have four of a kind (which is an amazing hand) but you lose to someone with an even higher four of a kind. What happens...

A big economic story this year has been "Abenomics", Japan's effort to get out of its multi-decade deflationary slump using a combo of monetary policy, fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms. We already know it's produced extraordinary movements in the yen (down big) and the stock market (the Nikkei has surged) but...