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Trading Ideas

Mailbag: How to Tell if Your Startup Is Flourishing

Q: What’s the first thing you notice about a startup that excites you?
A: Traction. And by this I mostly mean revenue. There is no other single metric that comes close in terms of importance. Most of my better startup investments had significant and fast-growing revenue when I invested.
That said, some of the best startup investments of all time had no revenue in their early years. Google, Facebook and Twitter, to name a few. However, these companies still had massive traction in terms of their large user bases.
So there are multiple forms of traction to consider when looking at a potential …read more […]

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Trading Ideas

Avoid Being Mauled by the Coming Bear

Today’s lesson in surviving a sell-off comes from William Shakespeare.
In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare tells a story of paranoia, death and rebirth. One legendary scene features the character Antigonus as he’s stalked offstage to his doom by a bear.
The bear caught Antigonus by surprise – and that’s the last thing we want to happen, especially as investors.
However, those who balance their portfolios with reliable income generators may be able to prevent the bear from taking a bite out of their savings.
To Bond or Not to Bond?
This week, we asked Wealthy Retirement readers why they invest in bonds. Forty-three percent of …read more […]

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News Fix: Old Banks Learning New Tricks

Bitcoin is often described as “digital gold.” That’s for good reason – the assets have a lot in common. As Adam Sharp wrote last year…
Both have the rare qualities that make a good speculative “store of value” asset.
Both are used as hedges against reckless monetary policy. They are assets that will likely rise in value if the old system becomes overloaded with debt (U.S. debt is at $21 trillion and counting) and is forced to “monetize” (print away) the debt…
Importantly, both assets can also be held by individuals. Stocks and bonds typically require a broker or bank to hold custody. …read more […]