Charles C. Scott

Last week’s overall market declines, bad as they were, masked a much worse development in the tech space. While the overall NASDAQ dove -3.25% on Friday, tech names such as LinkedIn and Tableau Software each plunged by over -40% – in a single day.

The famous saying that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme may be at play here. Time will tell. One long-standing indicator of stock market health is the amount of money borrowed by investors and speculators for stock purchases – called “margin debt”.

It was bound to happen. This past week saw a most unusual event occur in the oil market. Crude oil producers actually had to pay refiners to take some forms of crude oil off their hands.

We certainly don’t know yet whether the recent market weakness is the opening slide into a new Cyclical Bear period, or is just a less-damaging “correction” in a longer-running Cyclical Bull.

First, here’s a brief description of how this works. Let’s invest $100 each week into a mutual fund. You are buying shares each week and the price will be different each week.

On Friday the Labor Department reported that December’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 5%. But that’s not the only measure of unemployment that economists typically look at.

Fun Facts: “Love and Marriage” There’s always something of interest in a bunch of numbers, facts, or statistics. They really do tell a story of some kind.

Perhaps none would be your first choice? Paul Schlegel wrote in the October, 2015 issue of Financial Advisor Magazine that some interesting metrics compiled by WalletHub showed that these three states offered student loan borrowers chance…