By Jason Zweig | July 27, 2012 12:00 am ET Image credit: Fallen angels, detail, “Le Mirouer historial,” Vincent of Beauvais (French, 15th century), Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris Overheard in midtown Manhattan at the lunch hour: “Another day, another financial scandal. New regulations, prosecution, getting hauled up in front of...
Read MoreBreaking Up Is Hard to Do
Image Credit: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), Library of Congress By Jason Zweig | July 27, 2012 4:37 p.m. ET Bank stocks have been stinking up the market for years. Would breaking up the companies help unlock some value for investors? This week, Sanford Weill, the mogul who built Citigroup into a giant...
Read MoreStupid Investing Tricks
By Jason Zweig | July 24, 2012 7:00 am ET Image credit: “Fool,” (detail), Francesco da Castello (1481), MS G.7, fol. 18r, The Morgan Library My column this past weekend explored the odd paradox that the frontopolar cortex – an advanced part of the brain, critical to long-term planning, that appears to help make Homo sapiens the most...
Read MoreWhy We’re Driven to Trade
Image Credit: Christophe Vorlet By Jason Zweig | July 21, 2012 12:01 a.m. ET With computerized traders that “hold” stocks for only a few seconds at a time and markets that can swing wildly in a matter of moments, long-term investing seems to be on the verge of extinction. Perhaps this is inevitable. It turns out that short-term thinking is...
Read MoreHigh Rates? Are You Delirious?
Image Credit: Christophe Vorlet By Jason Zweig | July 14, 2012 12:01 a.m. ET Have today’s insanely low interest rates driven investors insane? Three closed-end funds offered by Cornerstone Advisors of Asheville, N.C., show that some investors have come to believe the impossible: that high yields can persist in a world where central banks have...
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