By Jason Zweig | Nov. 11, 2011 12:23 pm ET Image credit: Hans Bollongier, “Still Life with Flowers” (1639), Rijksmuseum In my recent column on Charles Mackay’s classic book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, I pointed out that “the most famous critic of bubbles who ever lived fell like a chump for a craze that...
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By Jason Zweig | November 5, 2011Image Credit: Christophe Vorlet Can you spot a bubble? Ever since 1841, when a Scottish journalist named Charles Mackay published the book known today as “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” the answer has seemed clear. If you watch carefully for signs of euphoria, you can sidestep...
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By Jason Zweig | Oct. 31, 2011 8:30 am ET Image credit: Earliest known photograph of Wall Street (ca. 1860-1870), Museum of American Finance Quantitative easing—in which the Federal Reserve buys securities to bolster the financial markets—worries many investors, because they fear the Fed won’t be able to prevent a flood of liquidity from setting off...
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By Jason Zweig | Oct. 20, 2011 10:04 am ET Image credit: Pixabay The constant chatter lately among professional investors has been that the rising correlation among stocks – their increased tendency to move in lockstep up and down – is making stock picking tougher than ever. After all, if all stocks go down together, then even your top picks are...
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Image Credit: Christophe Vorlet By Jason Zweig | October 15, 2011 Taking a loss is hard to take. But avoiding a loss can be much worse. U.S. stocks have lost some $4 trillion since their peak in October 2007, but investors aren’t fleeing the market en masse. So far this year, according to investment-research firm Morningstar, investors have taken...
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