Author: mysterytrader@traderplanet.com

Remember four or five years ago when the housing market was strong and new housing developments and McMansions were popping up everywhere? And people in them were buying SUVs and big-screen TVs and all kinds of expensive...

One place where it seems wise not to invest money is Venezuela. President-for-life Hugo Chavez continues to expropriate anything and everything he chooses, and his comments about doing so make him sound like the ultimate thug....

Is President Obama’s economic stimulus plan working or do investors think it will work? Based on the reaction of the iShares Financial exchange-traded fund (IYF), a good gauge of sentiment about the viability of the...

With the inauguration of Barack Obama as president at hand and all of the discussion about solutions to the U.S. economic mess, one of the best suggestions I have seen came from Vince Malanga of LaSalle Economics Inc. in a...

Whenever a bitter cold snap reached the Midwest and Northeast U.S., you could count on a spike higher in markets like natural gas and orange juice in the past, no matter what the fundamentals looked like. But this winter, with...

What would you say if your broker called you and said something like, “Have I got a deal for you!” The broker explains that you can put your money in a three-month Treasury bill but you get no interest or any kind of...

With all of the money the government has been dumping into banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies and other financial institutions, financial stocks were bound to bottom out some day. That day may have come Monday after the...

It’s a mystery, even to the Mystery Trader, looking at today’s global financial crisis and proposed bailout targets . . .   Why are some firms deemed to be worthy of saving and others are not? Why AIG and not...

  A while back analysts were talking about $2.40 a pound as the “line in the sand” for copper futures. That was the vicinity of copper’s 2007 low and a long way down from the peak of $4.27 a pound in May....

When things began to get a little out of hand in some markets a few months ago, it seemed difficult to get into sync with what was occurring. Well, we may not be any more in sync than we were before but, for better or worse,...