Two companies reported 90% increases in profits and both have caused a stir. They are Goldman Sachs and the other is Apple Inc. As different as these companies would seem to be there is a lesson here in how simplicity leads to success. Goldman, for all its troubles which we will not comment on, runs a business which revolves around a very small number of products. You might say one product and... 

How well have the markets done in the last 12 months? No matter how you look at it the performance of investment securities has been extraordinary . There are some of the more exotic fund types which were up well over 100% in the 12 months but at the same time there were plenty of widely followed groups that did close to 75%. The S&P 500 funds were up 49% for the year and 5.4% for the quarter... 

The recently released employment situation report contained a wealth of detail concerning worker productivity, worker education level, and income tables. Let’s first take a look at productivity. Worker productivity rose 6.9% in the 4th quarter of 2009 while unit labor costs (the actual measure of efficiency of the workforce) fell 5.9%. This means that companies are doing more with fewer employees.... 

Market Technicals Where is the market headed? 2010 is going to be a volatile year for investors. The federal government is running trillion dollar deficits and issuing massive amounts of debt. With interest rates near zero in the short end of the market, it would appear that they have nowhere to go except up. The only economic strength that was seen in the...