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    The Best Investments to Hold in 2016

    Facebook stock price today

    By , Global Credit Strategist, Money Morning • @MichaelELewitt -

    As usual, none of Wall Street's so-called "top strategists" in a recent Barron's survey are calling for stocks to decline in 2016. All of them are calling for the bull market to continue next year.

    Their 2016 S&P 500 forecasts varied from a groupthink low of 2,100 (Goldman Sachs' David Kostin) to a groupthink high of 2,500 (Federated Investors' Stephen Auth). Most of the rest were crowded around 2,200.

    My own forecast practically puts me off this chart altogether.

    Here it is...

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The Best Investments to Hold in 2016

By , Global Credit Strategist, Money Morning • @MichaelELewitt -

Facebook stock price today

As usual, none of Wall Street's so-called "top strategists" in a recent Barron's survey are calling for stocks to decline in 2016. All of them are calling for the bull market to continue next year.

Their 2016 S&P 500 forecasts varied from a groupthink low of 2,100 (Goldman Sachs' David Kostin) to a groupthink high of 2,500 (Federated Investors' Stephen Auth). Most of the rest were crowded around 2,200.

My own forecast practically puts me off this chart altogether.

Here it is...

Stock Market Today: Is This the End for RIMM?

By , Money Morning -

The stock market today is rallying after positive news from Europe and the surprising 5-4 affirmation of Obamacare, or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as it is formally known as.

Yesterday the markets opened almost 1% in the red and were sent down even further after the Supreme Court's ruling. The ruling was a surprise, but the fact that the markets acted so volatile was certainly not.

The markets did rally at the end of the day on positive news from Europe and that momentum has carried over to today.

The surprising news out of the European Union summit was the announcement yesterday from European Union President Herman Van Rompuy that European leaders have agreed to spend 120 billion euros ($149 billion) to stimulate growth and create jobs.

The plan includes a 10 billion-euro capital increase for the European Investment Bank (EIB) as a centerpiece of the long-term growth plan, which includes infrastructure financing, tax-policy pledges and more focused use of EU funding.

"The growth agenda is a sign of our unrelenting commitment," EU President Herman Van Rompuy said in a press conference in Brussels on the first day of a two-day summit. "It brings together all concrete measures that we will swiftly take."

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The Markets Are a Stacked Deck in a Rigged Game...But I Can Teach You How to Win

By , Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning • @ShahGilani_TW -

The markets are broken.

And what has to be done to fix them likely won't get done. That's because the folks capable of fixing them are actually captives of the folks who like them the way they are.

That's the bad news.

The good news is, if you understand what's wrong and who's responsible, you can actually make a lot of money playing the game the way it's been set up.

Let me explain.

First of all, what's happened isn't by some grand design. There is no great conspiracy to screw the public. (Not this time.) Rather, incremental changes in various corners of the capital markets manifested innumerable unintended consequences.

The net result is this: Our capital markets aren't functioning for the greater good of the economy and the nation. And the public is getting screwed. But you knew that.

The markets have become a kind of stacked deck in a rigged card game.

A game being played by a bunch of whispering pros against mostly deaf, dumb, and blind amateurs (yeah, I'm taking about too many people you know) in a shady casino overseen by pit bosses who work for the house - which is owned by the pros who set up the game in the first place.

I'm not going to break down what the incremental changes were that got us here. I've done that over innumerable articles I've written for, Forbes, Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch and right here.

This isn't about how we got here. This is about proving where we are now by means of a kind of grand supposition that hopefully is going to open your eyes. It's probably going to scare the you-know-what out of you.

Earlier I said the public is getting screwed, but you knew that.

How do I know that you know the public is getting screwed? Most people are out of the market. They are either on the sidelines or out of the game for good. They know the markets are a casino, and most people have come to realize that they have no idea what the game is, let alone how to play it.

And that, children, is the unhappy ending.

Precisely because the public is so leery of losing their shirts and knickers in the strip poker club, investing is a thing of the past.

Long-term investing is dead. Long live short-term trading.

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