By Professor Ricardo “Rick” Ulivi, Ph.D. The major asset markets, except commodities, have been on an incredible upswing since early 2009. Just last week most of them set new record highs. Will anything cause then to begin falling, rather than moving higher? Here are some possible factors. An increase in interest rates Although much has

By Professor Ricardo Ulivi, Ph.D. You often hear the phrase, “To make money, you need to take risks”. Indeed, modern finance has proven that there is a positive relationship between risk and expected returns. That is, the higher the perceived risk of an investment, the greater the expected profit. But notice the word “expected.” This

By Professor Ricardo Ulivi, Ph.D. The stock market in the US has been hitting record highs (if you omit the last few days), the economy is expanding due to the Fed’s easy money policy, and employment is growing. Under these circumstances, you would expect inflation to be increasing, yet the opposite has occurred. What’s going

By Professor Ricardo Ulivi, Ph.D. For the past few years, the US economy has been expanding at a rate slower than the historical norm. Lately, however, growth has accelerated. Are we out of the woods? I don’t think so. The main reason our economy has grown, while Europe and other parts of the world are

By Professor Ricardo Ulivi, Ph.D. Just like a thermometer can be used to measure fever, can we use the trend in the prices of commodities to measure the healthiness of the current economic activity? Or, can we use current commodities prices as a predictor of future economic activity? One could argue that, if commodities prices