A recession is the scariest creature in the average investor's closet of anxieties...because they can mean lower home prices, lower stock prices and, of course, higher unemployment [but] if you're prepared for the next one, there will be plenty of opportunities when that downturn ends. [That being said,] the more you know about recessions, the better, so here are 8 must-know facts about them.

Financial bubbles, crises, and flash-crashes aren’t an everyday occurrence but have been happening at a frequent enough rate in recent years that market participants should have familiarity with them. This article does just that.

Investors must often navigate through a barrage of fake news, myths, misinformation, and fraudulent pitches surrounding precious metals before arriving at the simple truth - you don’t buy bullion to get rich quick; you buy it to preserve wealth over time against the threats of currency depreciation and financial crisis. That’s precious metals investing in a nutshell but, if you listen to financial and monetary establishment mouthpieces, you’ll likely be misled. This article exposes the five big lies about precious metals investing and sets the record straight.

There is no easy solution. There is no possible painless normalization path. Powell will have to choose between the risk of a global financial meltdown or prolonged inflation.

Gold should be soaring with red-hot inflation raging but, instead, it is breaking down but gold’s bizarre decoupling, driven by a parabolic USD surge fueling unsustainable heavy gold-futures selling, is an extreme anomaly that will prove short-lived.

After two years of declines, many investors sold their gold holdings and vowed never to invest in gold again. However, in the fall of 1976, gold began an ascent that saw it rise 750%, peaking at $850 a troy ounce three years and four months later. After a 3-year correction, the same opportunity to buy low exists today, just as it did in 1976.

There are few things scarier than a bear market, but steep and sustained drawdowns in stocks are an absolute fact of investing life...so a familiarity with the basics of bear markets should help you better cope with the next one and, to that end, we've compiled the following eight facts you must know about bear markets.

The cumulative growth of M2 is mind-boggling and very likely to fuel uncomfortably high inflation for the foreseeable future.

For many of us, it makes tremendous sense to open a gold IRA account for retirement. This account has the ability to accrue massive value over decades as you work toward your retirement future. There’s never a perfect investment in this world and, in some cases, opening a gold IRA might not make sense for your personal wants and needs, but investing in gold is definitely close to ideal for everyone and this article presents the pros and cons of retiring with a gold IRA. 

The modern state of Ukraine was formed nearly 30 years ago after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, the country has often made headlines due to political instability and the looming threat of a Russian invasion. In the map graphic above, we examine Ukraine from a structural point of view. What’s the country’s population composition? What drives the country’s economy? And most importantly, why is the country important within a global context?