Before we embark upon our forecasts for 2017 (especially regarding precious metals prices), it is without a doubt worth it to analyze the year 2016 once more with the help of a few charts. These charts represent the protagonists of past year, the returns on the most important financial assets and the most important changes in some select financial data. In some cases, these will remain as important as they were last year in the coming twelve months. We will glance through the Dow Jones, German

In many situations, we human beings make estimates by beginning at a start value. Psychologists call this phenomenon anchoring, or the reference-point-effect. I personally prefer the “new normal” syndrome, especially when we are talking about financial markets. The history of financial markets is filled with examples. For instance, the often-praised economist Irving Fisher declared on the onset of the Great Depression that stock prices “reached what looks like a permanently high

What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That according to this definition the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, is insane, has been demonstrated yet again. The Italian central banker embarked in March 2015 upon a large-scale asset purchase program, which is better known as “quantitative easing.” Today, almost twenty months have passed and we are in a position to safely evaluate the results of Mario Draghi´s decision. And that is exactly what we will do in this article. The decision to extend the purchase program to the end of December next year is unjustified. The ECB president committed himself to an insane decision and is gradually turning the market into a permanent manic-depressive state.