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Love it or hate it, cash is playing an increasingly less important role in society. In some ways this is great news for consumers. The rise of mobile and electronic payments means faster, convenient, and more efficient purchases in most instances...However, there is also a darker side in the shift to a cashless society. Governments and central banks have a different rationale behind the elimination of cash transactions, and as a result, the so-called “war on cash” is on.

If we could only show you one map to explain the economy of the Middle East, it would be the map below. In one fell swoop it tells us a lot about the wealth, geopolitical influence, and natural resources of the region as well as parts of Central Asia...

We have a crisis of trust in America and, as the charts below show, it has only accelerated with government policies of financial repression.

There is a misconception about the uncanny ability of very profitable U.S. companies, like Microsoft and Apple, to park their profits overseas in order to dodge U.S. taxes: the money from these profits that are parked “overseas” isn’t actually overseas. Words: 338

8 years after the credit crisis, most big American banks and almost all big European banks are relapsing in spite of extraordinary central bank efforts to liquefy and engineer profits for them. However, as long as they pose colossal risks to the global economy and draw tens of trillions of dollars of central bank spending (which they mostly hoard on their balance sheets to survive and thrive) away from productive economic use, global growth will continue to stagnate, until it contracts dramatically and implodes the big banks all over again.

I believe each of these 10 companies represent a high level of safety and the opportunity to produce above-average current dividend income and long-term dividend growth.

The rise of alternative payment methods like Bitcoin and Apple Pay has reduced our everyday reliance on cold, hard cash. With that in mind, we took a look at some of the weird and wonderful things that have been used as alternatives to money around the world, some of which are still in use today.

The better an investor can identify the phases of a market cycle, the more profits can be made on the ride upwards of a buying opportunity.

Since the beginning of the year, Canadian equities have been on a (relative) tear, outpacing most developed and emerging market equities in Canadian dollar terms but this recent brush with greatness begs the question: Is this year’s success the beginning of a long-term trend or a brief flash in the pan?

We see a wider gap between the prospective returns for safe-haven and risk assets, reflected in higher expected returns for equities versus bonds and for non-U.S. equities versus U.S. equities.