D.R. Barton

  In the spring of 2003, I was invited to visit John Martin, a close friend of mine and a good friend of the Van Tharp Institute. John and his family lived in Singapore, and at that point, the world was on the tail end of the SARS (Severe and Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak. My round trip plane ticket cost about $700 and the wide-body jet from into Hong Kong was less than a quarter full. The SARS news had hit the airline and travel industries hard. Fast forward to …

Coronavirus: Important but Not a Reason to Get Bearish By, D. R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

  Despite all the possible distractions from Hong Kong protests, votes impacting Brexit, and Aramco’s world-leading IPO, the mainstream business news is laser-focused on the trade dispute with China. President Trump’s fight with China’s President Xi Jinping continues to dominate headlines. Even the string of all-time market highs in recent two weeks had a tough time getting any press. The pundits quickly got back to talking about tariffs and trade negotiations, as if nothing else mattered. But there’s a directly related and very important story developing right under our noses, …

The Little-Known Part of the Trade War That Has Cost Taxpayers 2.7x More than The Auto Bailout By D. R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

Going by the numbers, markets and the economy are doing great. The Dow, the Nasdaq, and the S&P 500 all broke several records last week. All three indices closed at all-time highs on Friday afternoon. But if you turn to the news, the picture looks much less rosy with no shortage of bad news for the US and the global economy. The big trade deal with China keeps getting postponed. Just last month, the Fed had to step into the overnight “repo” lending market as banks faced a liquidity crunch. …

Markets Keep Climbing the “Wall of Worry,” by D. R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

When Robinhood launched its mobile app with zero-commission stock trading in December 2013, the demand was so high, there was a waiting list to join. Today, the company is practically a household name. Some other so-called “fintech” startups have joined them, chief among them SoFi, the student-loan refinancer out of San Francisco. But when it was just startups offering zero commission, it was easy to ignore. At first, these were small companies, without an established customer base, and with apps that appealed mostly to younger people. But last Tuesday, on …

Zero-Commission Brokerage Accounts: Are They Right for You?, by D.R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

Last week was rough for investors, to say the least: Yield-curve inversion 800-point drop in the Dow Trade war uncertainty Unrest in Hong Kong bringing down Asian markets Argentina’s stock market dropping 48% in a single day on fears of another debt default That’s enough to make anyone want to take a break. But the market doesn’t wait for anyone, and this week promises to be no less eventful, with tweets already flying from the White House and Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaking at the Fed’s own Jackson Hole Symposium …

Inverted Yield Curves and Recessions and Volatility — Oh My! by D.R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

The Netflix show Stranger Things has been all the talk in the entertainment world. Despite Netflix’s stock drop after earnings last week, the show has been a cornerstone in content offering from the company and received a record 40.7 million unique user views in Season 3’s opening weekend over the Fourth of July holiday. The story features a group of middle schoolers/ high schoolers who in their own various ways, experience a parallel dimension called “The Upside Down.” The Upside Down world mirrors in many ways what happens in the …

The Fed Narrative and “The Upside Down” Market, by D. R. Barton, Jr. Read More »