Investing

Obtaining a second passport and an offshore bank account are crucial parts of an overall diversification strategy, but they are not the only ones. Capturing international opportunities for your investment portfolio also has an important role and one of the easiest ways to do this is to own foreign currencies. Below are my 10 favorite reasons for doing so.

Are we near the end of one of history's great stock market rallies? I don't think so. Yes, prices are in the upper half of their long-term trends, but it's not what you might call "scary-overvalued." There is still plenty of room on the upside before historical precedents are violated. Let me explain further.

We all live extremely busy lives and often don't have the time to find articles that are sufficiently informative and well written to warrant our attention. Below are introductory paragraphs to 7 such articles and infographics. Check them out and decide which, if any, are of interest to you and click on the title to read in full.

3D printing is making a splash in many industries - such as medicine, automotive and electronics - with the largest end user customer base (38%) located in the US. The infographic below describes how 3D printing works (like me, haven't you always wondered?), details on the ins and outs of 3D printing and its present and future effects on the business world.

This infographic covers the history of uranium, its properties, the supply and demand forecasts, the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power, uranium as an energy source, and military applications.

I’d argue that the record low volume shows investors aren’t looking ahead as much as looking behind and reminiscing at how good things have been over the past five years or so. They’re expecting more of the same even though it’s mathematically impossible people.

Some market commentators are touting gold as a great portfolio diversifier, convincing investors that the precious metal could benefit their portfolio but there may be better alternatives than gold if the motivation is to find a hedge for economic uncertainty or political unrest.

The Platinum Group Metals (PGM's) and Nickel both outperformed the equity markets, 30 year bond and other metals in 2014 and such performance should continue going forward for many years to come. Here's why.

A big short term move in both stocks and gold is probably fairly imminent as periods of extremely low volatility like we are currently experiencing are invariably followed by periods of very high volatility that are brought about by a trigger event of some sort. There will probably be an advance warning somewhere, in a corner of the markets that perhaps isn't widely watched...[so] keep a close eye on these 12 inter-market signals.

Should markets around the world really care about what the Nikkei 225 Index does? The Power of the Pattern suggests "yes"! Here's why.