Despite another harrowing decline in the banking sector last week, the overall stock market has been holding up rather well, considering the circumstances.
Many analysts thought the worst of the banking crisis was behind us, but Citigroup and Bank of America reminded us last week that all is not well in the land of lending. [...]

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With 2008 in the history books, we’ll use this week’s commentary to review some of the key stories over the past year. As you well know, it was not one of the market’s finest performances.
STOCKS SUFFERED MIGHTILY
Global stock markets shed about $30 trillion dollars in market value over the past 12 months. Of that, about [...]

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Thank goodness, October is over.
Market historians were busy last month rewriting the record books on what seemed like a daily basis. Unfortunately, many of the new records were the type that we’d prefer to have remained unbroken. Here are a few of the new entries:
• [...]

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There’s only one word to describe what took place in the financial markets last week - ugly.
You probably don’t need to glance at the box score below to know that stocks dropped significantly last week. Monday’s dizzying drop of 777 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, attributed to the House of Representative’s failure to [...]

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Earlier this year, some investors thought the key to a rising stock market was to see a big drop in the price of oil. Well, we’ve now seen a 27% drop in the price of oil since its July 3 closing high, but, as of last Friday, stock prices were still languishing near their July [...]

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The tug of war in the stock market ended in just about a draw last week as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose a fraction.
Since the beginning of the year, the S&P 500 index has traded in a range roughly between 1,215 and 1,450, according to data from Yahoo! Finance. However, when you consider [...]

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If you simply look at the trend of our gross domestic product (GDP) over the past three quarters, you might get the impression that the economy is poised for takeoff. But, just like you shouldn’t judge the quality of a bottle of wine based on the beauty of its label, you shouldn’t trust statistics without [...]

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Knowing Your Credit Score Saves You Money
Knowing and understanding what your credit score means is key to opening up your financial options, a fact I thought was well known but apparently not so says a joint study by the Consumer Federation of America and Washington Mutual Bank (where I once worked).
Credit scores are one [...]

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Bernanke to the Rescue for Homebuyers of the Future?
Dubious lending practices and borrowers less-than-educated in the realities facing them under certain borrowing terms could be a thing of the past. At least if Ben Bernanke has his way. Next week the Fed will be issuing new rules that seek to protect homebuyers from the disastrous [...]

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Are We in a Recession, or Not?
A poll released by CNN shows that a majority of Americans know we’re in dire straits right now when it comes to the economy, but that they’re optimistic about next year.
Over three quarters of CNN’s respondent’s believe the economy is poor or very poor, and the obvious culprits are [...]

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