The stock market is not the economy The global economy is not doing well so far this year. Pacific Investment Management Co (PIMCO) believes the “forced closure of businesses across the United States and surge in unemployment will cause U.S. growth to contract by 30% in the second quarter of 2020.” The U.S. unemployment rate rose to a… Read More »
Energy sector bounces back The human brain can often exaggerate negative emotions in the midst of uncertainty. It’s why otherwise calm drivers are susceptible to road rage behavior. Similarly, a stock market crash can cause investors to fixate on the bad news, lose perspective, and extrapolate recent trends into a dreadful future. Here’s a business headline from mid… Read More »
What is driving Canadian FIRE? Everyone is affected by the FIRE economy in one way or another. FIRE is an acronym that stands for Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. Together, these 4 industries are growing over five times faster than the general economy and represent about 1/5th of Canada’s total economic output. FIRE is especially important in BC.… Read More »
How to make a classic cheeseburger If you ask a restaurant for a rare beef burger, you will sometime end up with a raw deal. 😎 That’s why it’s better to just cook your own. Welcome to another edition of cooking with Liquid. 🙂 Today I’ll be making a juicy cheeseburger using 1/4 lb of minced beef, aged… Read More »
Why inflation matters U.S. government bonds in 1990 were paying investors 8% a year. That sounds amazing! Especially for a low risk investment. 🙂 But not everyone was buying them. Why? Because investment returns don’t tell the whole story. The inflation rate that year was 5.4%. That means the real rate of return on those bonds was only… Read More »
Road to Recovery The S&P 500 climbed 13% in April, gaining back most of the losses from March. I picked up some new stocks during the low points in the first quarter so the V-shaped recovery is nice to see. 🙂 Leading the bounce back are technology stocks. Amazon just announced it made $75 billion in Q1 revenue,… Read More »