Blogs

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found, in a new study published Thursday, that traffic accidents are up 6% in four states where recreational use of marijuana has been legalized. 

Earlier in the week, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a press release about a 2017 traffic accident linked to the "use of marijuana in combination with the misuse of a prescription medication" that killed 12 in Texas. 

"The last thing in the world that we want is to introduce another legal substance where we may be adding to that toll and to the carnage on our highways," David Harkey, president of the IIHS's Highway Loss Data Institute told Bloomberg. "With marijuana impairment, we're just now starting to understand what we don't know."  

In a separate interview with NBC, Harkey said the new reports do not confirm there is a direct risk by the use of marijuana among motorist, but certainly raises caution flags, especially since law enforcement has limited ways to test drivers if they are…

Authored Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.com,

Totalitarian – Of or being a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute control over all aspects of life and opposition is outlawed; a practitioner or supporter of such a government.

– American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd Ed.

We have almost reached the point where the country can be referred to as “totalitarian” in accordance with the definition provided. Incrementally, it creeps forward: the “soft” tyranny. Curing, refining itself, and hardening, there will be a point of no return that is reached... a point where it has metastasized until it is both all encompassing and ubiquitous.

The problem is twofold: the incremental spread as mentioned, and the complacency and inability of people to recognize it for what it is. Someone posted a comment recently with a paragraph from Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” where the author regretfully lamented the com…

China has successfully tested the world's largest commercial drone developed and manufactured by the China Academy of Aerospace Electronics Technology (CAAET) made its first successful test flight at Baotou Airport in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Tuesday, reported Ecns.cn, the official English-language website of China News Service. 

SF Express Co., Ltd, a Chinese transport company based in Shenzen, conducted the first public test flight on Oct. 16 with the new delivery drone, named Feihong-98, in cooperation with CAAET. 

Feihong-98 is a Chinese copy of the Soviet Antonov An-2, which is China's first domestically-built transport aircraft, the Shiefei Y-5B has a 60-year history since its first flight in 1957.  

According to Liu Meixuan, president of CAAET, the FH-98 is now the most affordable and advanced transport drone in the world.

The plane has a maximum weight of 5.25 tons, with a payload of 1.5 tons, and a volume space of 15 cubic meters. It can reach a max flight altitude o…

Though the student loan crisis is by no means limited to younger adults, millennials in particular are saddled with educational debt, and it's hurting their savings efforts. And while it stands to reason that younger adults with outstanding loans might have less money to their names than those without debt, the actual gap is pretty shocking.

Millennials who carry student debt have 46% less money in the bank than millennials without loans. Meanwhile, those with loans have almost $19,000 less in retirement savings, on average, than younger folks who graduate debt-free. That's the latest from Magnify Money, which found that millennials with debt had a median balance of just $5,500 in savings and checking accounts combined -- not enough to constitute a solid emergency fund for most people.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

The news on the retirement savings front is somewhat more encouraging. The average millennial with student debt has $21,160 socked away for the future, and that's actually a pretty respectable su…

Authored by Tom Luongo,

Every crisis is also an opportunity.  Don’t worry I’m not about to go all Rahm Emmanuel, Mr. Realpolitik, on you today.  The death/dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi is both a crisis and an opportunity for the worst people in the world.

And all of them are seizing the day, as it were. ..

Frankly, most of it makes me sick to my stomach. Because where were these virtue-signaling champions of human rights like Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan or Lindsay Graham (R – AIPAC) for the past three years as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) prosecuted a starvation campaign in Yemen with U.S. complicity?

Does Lindsay not know that MbS is funding the U.S. occupation in eastern Syria he’s so in love with?

Now all of a sudden, every war-monger in Washington and Wall St. wants to cut ties with him because killing a political opponent is “beyond the pale?”  Even Christine LaGarde of the IMF will be a no-show at MbS’s big “Davos in the Desert” conference. 

This is a political hit job. 

If…

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is haunting the dreams of Roku (NASDAQ: ROKU) as it prepares to introduce the new Alexa-enabled Fire TV Stick 4K on Halloween.

The device allows 4K ultra HD streaming and supports HDR10+ and both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, audio and visual enhancements that improve the overall quality and appearance of what you see and hear. At $50, the new streaming device is also cheaper than Roku's Streaming Stick+, which supports Dolby Atmos and HDR10+, but until Amazon's announcement, had cost $70.

Roku is still the biggest streaming-device manufacturer, with 70% of cord-cutters owning one compared with the 40% who own an Amazon device (many people own more than one streaming device). But Amazon's latest iteration could narrow the gap considerably.

The new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K. Image source: Amazon.com.

A better way to stream

The new Fire TV Stick follows on the heels of a whole suite of connected-home product introductions from Amazon, like new speakers and amplifiers for better sou…

The bankruptcy filing everyone saw coming finally arrived. Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD) announced early Monday morning it was seeking Chapter 11 protection and had arranged financing that would allow it to keep operating, at least through Christmas. The goal is to reorganize around a few hundred profitable stores that the company hopes will allow it to achieve the turnaround that has eluded the bigger business for nearly a decade.

While other businesses have reorganized and emerged successfully while under the protection of the bankruptcy courts, including retailers like Payless ShoeSource, True Religion, and Gymboree, don't expect the same of Sears. The key difference between it and these others that survived their brush with death is they still retained some brand value. Customers still want to shop their stores, and their brands have an enduring appeal to consumers.

Not so with Sears. Under the tutelage of CEO Eddie Lampert, whatever value was once there has been all but eliminated, stripped bare from Se…

The Department of Justice admitted in a Friday court filing that the FBI used more than one "Confidential Human Source," (also known as informants, or spies) to infiltrate the Trump campaign through former adviser Carter Page, reports the Daily Caller. 

“The FBI has protected information that would identify the identities of other confidential sources who provided information or intelligence to the FBI” as well as “information provided by those sources,” wrote David M. Hardy, the head of the FBI’s Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), in court papers submitted Friday.

Hardy and Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys submitted the filings in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the FBI’s four applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Page. The DOJ released heavily redacted copies of the four FISA warrant applications on June 20, but USA Today reporter Brad Heath has sued for full copies of the documents. -Daily Caller

Included in Hardy…

As Russia continues to outmaneuver the US by developing new ballistic missiles like the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile, as well as hypersonic weapons capable of carrying a nuclear payload, President Trump said Saturday that he plans to abandon a 1987 arms-control treaty that has (on paper, at least) prohibited the US and Russia from deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles as Russia has continued to "repeatedly violate" its terms according to the president, the Associated Press reports.

"We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement,” Trump said Saturday after a campaign rally in Elko, Nevada. “We’re going to terminate the agreement."

In a report that undoubtedly further complicated John Bolton's weekend trip to Moscow, the Guardian revealed on Friday that the national security advisor - in what some described as an overreach of the position's typical role - had been pushing Trump to abandon the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The announcement comes after the U.S. had been w…

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Recent returns, drawdowns, trade activity, and current holdings are all transparently displayed so you know exactly what type of portfolio, trading style, and risk/reward characteristics you’re following or investing in.

This if the fifth and final part of this series, in which I covered different asset allocation approaches.

Part I had to do with building a portfolio to meet minimum returns expectations.

Part II was about the expected returns versus risks of various asset classes and leveraging them to return the same, what the resultant risk amounted to, and how to combine these by weighting them in such a way to reduce risk rela…

After a painful stretch of five consecutive down months, September couldn't come fast enough for Horseman Global, which we previously dubbed "the world's most bearish hedge fund", due to its exposure which, while fluctuating, has been bearish for the past 6 years even as it generated significant alpha, and most recently had a net short position of -47.33%, even more bearish than its -43.5% net last month. 

In September, the fund finally rebounded, rising 1.8% - its first up month since March -  bringing its YTD return to -8.79%, with "gains coming from the long book and the short book. The currency book lost money" according to CIO Russell Clark's latest monthly letter.

So after what is setting up to be Horseman's most painful year since 2016 in which the fund lost 24%, is Clark ready to throw in the bearish towel, stop "fighting the Fed", and join the countless ranks of momentum chasers?

Not at all. One month after Clark wrote in his September letter to clients that he is confident the time for the…

For years, college costs have been rising at a rate that well outpaces inflation, and a growing number of students are getting priced out as a result. It's therefore encouraging to learn that this trend might be slowing down, at least as far as four-year public colleges are concerned.

The College Board reports that sticker prices at public colleges this year did increase, but at a lower rate than in years past. And while it's too soon to tell whether that limited growth will translate into lower net costs in the near future, there is a chance that prices might finally start to come down.

Still, when it comes to affording college, the overall picture is bleak, with tuition bills increasingly monopolizing families' income. The average cost for a year of public college now equals 20% of the median U.S. household income, compared to just 14% back in 1993.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

Even if college costs do start to decline, unless we see a drastic drop, a large number of families will continue to struggle to…

Authored by Ritesh Jain via WorldOutOfWhack.com,

Ned Davis research writes...

...note the red arrow at the top right.

Readings above 70 have found us in recession 92.11% of the time (1970 to present).

Several months ago, the model score stood at 61.3. It has just moved to 80.04.

Expect a global recession. It either has begun or will begin shortly. Though no guarantee, as 7.89% of the time since 1970 when the global economic indicators that make up this model were above 70, a recession did not occur.

Conclusion

China, Europe and Emerging Markets economic growth is already rolling over, and if US continues to raise rates into the year end, we might even see US growth taking a hit by first quarter of next year.

That is when the chances are that the global economy enters into recession.

Social Security has announced a slate of changes for 2019 that everyone should be aware of. One of the most important changes to the program next year allows you to earn more money without triggering a reduction in your Social Security income. Read on to learn how much more money you can earn in 2019 without risking your Social Security.

Social Security's earnings test: How it works

You can begin drawing Social Security benefits as early as age 62, but if you do claim your benefits early, you'll receive less than if you claimed at your full retirement age, and you'll be exposed to the risk of a reduction in your benefits if your earnings exceed an annual limit.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

Full retirement age varies, but for people born after 1954, it ranges between age 66 and 67. If you're turning 62 in 2019, your full retirement age is 66 years and six months. Begin receiving benefits earlier than that, and your benefit will be reduced by five-ninths of 1% per month (6 2/3% per year) for the first 36 mon…

Want to know when you'll die? 

UCLA biostatistician Steve Horvath stumbled across a reliable method of predicting a person's lifespan based on 300-500 DNA markers which reveal whether someone is aging unusually fast or slowly compared to their chronological age, according to a recent research paper. And while it can't predict the exact date and time of your demise (yet), it comes pretty close. 

Horvath became particularly intrigued by how certain chemical changes to cytosine—one of the four DNA bases, or “letters” of the genetic code—make genes more or less active. Given someone’s actual age, looking for these changes in that person’s DNA can tell him whether the person’s body is aging unusually fast or slowly. His team tested this epigenetic clock on 13,000 blood samples collected decades ago, from people whose subsequent date of death was known. The results revealed that the clock can be used to predict mortality. -MIT Technology Review

Horvath, a straight man who grew up in Frankfurt, Germany with a …