Dr Dubil's Financial Advice

Dow Jones is adding Nike, Goldman and Visa to the Industrial Average, and dropping Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America and Alcoa. They are addi...

Verizon is selling $49 billion 10-year bonds priced at 225bp over the 10-year Treasury. The issue is twice oversubscribed. Investment-grade...

The Economist describes the three main models of government pensions, the two extremes "pay-as-you-go" (today's workers pay f...

If you are a government in need of money and you don't want to tax your own citizens, what do you do? You tax other countries' citiz...

The management of a bank boils down to a tradeoff between the higher interest rates earned on the assets (assets are longer term) and lower ...

John Bogle, the founder of the first index fund and theVanguard Group, on what not to do with ETFs: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout...

The January 26th issue of the Economist goes through the 20 years of ETFs. The Spider, SPY, the first ETF was introduced 20 years ago. Toda...

According to the WSJ , investors are turning away from muni bonds that pay no coupons. In an upward yield curve, these typically carry much ...

The WSJ reports that the largest U.S. pension funds have lost their love for commodity indexes. Just a few years ago, commodity indexes wer...

The WSJ describes how the low interest rates impact the level of unfunded pension liabilities . The main channel is not the current low retu...

Eleven years after abandoning 1/8s and 1/16s, the SEC is considering bringing fractional prices back to the market, at least for less liqui...

According to a new study , the average student who graduated in 2011 had $26,600 in student loans and 37.8% of graduates worked in jobs not ...

The WSJ reported today  that the Financial Services Authority will raise the free float bar on listing shares in London. In May 2011, Glenco...

The US Treasury sold $50 billion of notes in bonds in July. China added $2.6 billion; its total hoard stands at $1.150 trillion. Japan added...

Microsoft had $56 billion in cash as of June 30 . The company decided to raise its dividend payout by 3 cents to 23 per share or up by $1 bi...

Everyone talks about Greece leaving the euro. Greece and the Greeks don't want to. Who in their right mind would buy a Greek government ...

Here is a challenge to all finance students in my U of U classes. The first one to provide the correct solution will get to write the next ...

The $2.65 quarterly dividend plus $10 billion in share repurchases means about $25 bn in cash outlays. A drop in the bucket if you are gener...

Pandora Media boasts over 1.5 bn listening hours in Q1 2012, predicted to grow to 3 bn in Q1 2013. Business model: Revenues - ads only since...

The deadline for the holders of the Greek bonds to submit to the "voluntary" restructuring is the end of the day today. The choice...

WSJ reported that the share of the $3.2 trillion of China's official reserves allocated to the U.S. dollar dropped from 75% in 2002, to...

Term: You pay a fixed schedule of premiums for a one-time death benefit. The future value, with interest compounded at the insurance company...

According to today's WSJ, Facebook executives and employees cashing out after the IPO will bring $0.5 billion in 2012 and $2.5 billion i...

Gasoline prices have gone up for 20 consecutive days (although not here in Utah). Two explanations. "Pessimist": Three refineries ...

Sorry. I missed the self-aggrandizing, utterly boring Oscars. Instead I watched the penalty shootout-capped Carling Cup final between Liverp...

The Economist highlights the problems with South Korean companies' corporate governance. The Korean chaebols (conglomerates) are run li...

The Economist explains that the "lump of labor" argument that the old are taking the jobs of the young is flawed. Early retiremen...

Obermatt.com provides a service of evaluating the degree to which CEOs are over- or underpaid. The Economist recently had a good graph of b...

In finance classes, we teach that the risk-free rate is that on a short-term government security, the T-Bill in the U.S. A WSJ article  expl...

AFP reported that one of Apple's biggest Chinese subcontractors Hon Hai Precision Industry Co raised monthly factory wages in Shenzhen ...

The WSJ reported that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will switch from marking-to-market to historical-cost accounting of their $100 billi...

Prodded by the U.S., the European Union may ban Iran from SWIFT , the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. SWIFT is ...

First read about the Black Swan theory of human development on Wikipedia . Then you may want to read the short summary here .  And then, if ...

Greece and Italy are often lumped together when discussing the European debt crisis, but they are not the same. Greece is facing a € 14.5 b...

In today's WSJ , in the context of the recent contraceptives mandate, John Cochrane touches upon why health isurance is not insurance at...

On Tuesday, AAA-rated Canada sold USD3 billion five-year Yankee bonds yielding 0.888%. Canada is the country to the north of us.

A smart student asked me last week what I thought of the Volcker Rule which disallows regulated banks from engaging in proprietary trading. ...

The WSJ yesterday ran an article exlaining that switching to high dividend stocks is not the same as using bonds in a portfolio. A stock is...

Last month, European leaders agreed to a new limit of structural deficit at 0.5% of GDP and reaffirmed the total debt burden limit at 60% of...

Here are some sites for people new to financial markets. These are as easy to read as it gets when it comes to learning about the what, who ...

Read in WSJ It's Too Easy Being Green ; In case WSJ removed the link here it is A brilliant article in the WSJ. Driving a Prius, flyin...