Articles by Nick Massey

I would imagine that you have been losing sleep and wondering what the heck ever happened to LIBOR.  No? One of the most important numbers in finance died at age 52. Actually I’m kidding a little bit, but not entirely. LIBOR stands for the London Interbank Offered Rate as determined by The Bank of England. It became an international benchmark for short term interest rates and a reference point for many types of loans.

A famous quote from one of the great philosophers of our time, Yogi Berra, was, “Predictions are tough, especially when it involves the future.” I find myself thinking about that a lot lately as people ask me what is going to happen with the economy, interest rates, investments, etc. With all the uncertainty in the world now, I almost feel like walking around with a name tag that says, “I don’t know.” As I write this in mid-March, the uncertainty is off the chart.

Let’s talk about marshmallows and investing. In case you think I might have finally lost it, there is a point here. We can learn a lot about investing from marshmallows. In the 1960s, Stanford University’s nursery school ran an experiment. A group of four- and five-year-old kids were taken into a room and seated at a table. Right in front of them was a marshmallow on a plate. The researchers gave the children a choice. They could eat the marshmallow that was right in front of them now or wait. And if they could wait, the researcher would give them a second marshmallow.

Caution!!!!! It is beginning and it’s already here. Inflation that is. It brings up mental images of a Godzilla-like creature stomping down our streets and striking terror in all of us. While maybe not that bad, but it is certainly here and coming for you. We might actually call this the Second Phase of Inflation.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sick of all the virus and vaccine talk. People get a little nuts when the subject comes up. Everyone has a strong opinion about it, it’s pretty equally divided, and nobody is changing their mind. It seems that people are really touchy about this subject. This has been true for a while, but it is still true. Everybody needs to chill out a little.

If you have ever studied the history of the US Federal Reserve, you would have learned that the Fed is supposed to be independent. Sometimes it is, to a degree, and sometimes it isn’t. The current Fed is constrained by politics.  What is the worst thing in the world for the Fed? People losing their jobs.

There has been a lot of talk lately about commission-free trades by some firms. Now, I like free stuff as much as anybody, but is “free” really free? You need to know about this. There are a number of firms jumping on this bandwagon, and one that has been in the news a lot for about three years is the online brokerage firm Robinhood. Many others are doing the same thing, but Robinhood seems to be getting the most publicity.

In 1883, Yale Professor of Political Economy and Sociology William Graham Sumner wrote an essay that could easily have been written for today. He wrote against the so-called “progressives” of his day and defended what was then called “classical liberalism.”

When I was a young stockbroker and commodities trader in the late 1970s, I became aware of a mathematical formula called Fibonacci ratios. What a great Italian name! It just rolls off the tongue like it should be a great Italian dish or a fine wine instead of mathematics.

Well, we all knew this was coming—I mean, the people running around like crazies screaming about hyperinflation and what you need to do to protect yourself. Usually, it means that you need to buy gold, silver, Bitcoin, or some other thing that will “protect you” from the inflation boogeyman. Please stop, take a deep breath,…