Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of  money.

Twitter Crash

There was a lot of drama this week thanks to a fake Associated Press tweet claimed $200 billion in market cap in a matter of minutes. A well-respected news organization getting hacked is big news. A bigger concern is the how the market reacted to a fake story in large part due to computerized trading.

High Frequency Trading (HFT) involves computers that use algorithms to place thousands of orders in milliseconds based on specific parameters. The argument HFT firms use is that it provides liquidity to the markets. Which is arguable, based on what we saw this week after the AP hacked tweet.

To be clear, a coding error didn’t cause this weeks flash crash. But it’s the biggest concern going forward, having already been a cause of most minor crashes so far. Continue Reading…

Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of  money.

Bad Behavior

Not everyone is cut out to invest like the pros. Some people aren’t cut out to invest at all. Our behavior only allows us so much room to work. Which is why Carl Richard’s recent blog post is so appropriate. It’s a response to a prominent business news channel that now offers its own ETFs. Something I’ll never endorse.

While ETFs may be a great fit for your portfolio, that doesn’t mean it has to be. ETFs are just one possibility of many for your investment strategy. A strategy that needs to take your behavior, intelligence, time, and goals into consideration. Your portfolio is built to protect your money. And sometimes it’s being protected from you. Continue Reading…

Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of  money.

Fed Email List

The cats out of the bag! The Federal Reserve has a super secret email list that gets the FOMC minutes early. It’s about 100 people to be exact, including Congressional staff and trade groups. While the leak was brushed off as a simple mistake, it doesn’t explain the secret email list.

Why a select group of people are getting FOMC minutes before everyone else is beyond me. It certainly doesn’t erase the “market is rigged” sentiment. Of course, no one would take advantage of said information either. Right?

The idiocy out of Washington continues… Continue Reading…