Bank Stocks

It's exciting.... The word "inversion" has popped up over and over again during the past year, and bank shares are still soaring as if nothing has happened.

For banks today, traditional banking activities have become an inconvenience, viewed in much the same way that casinos look upon the problem of handling huge piles of change they rake in.

There was a time when banks and casinos were at opposite ends of the financial spectrum. I'm a traditionalist, and I find it sad to realize that there's nowhere I can go to get out of the fast lane.

Paradigm Shift??

While we're all busy watching the price of gold move sideways, nobody is paying much attention to the gold index as it quietly loses ground.

Maybe we should be paying heed to rapidly escalating operating costs (inflation) , instead of focusing on the price of the metal.

Are we headed into an enormous profit squeeze? Before the general commodity price correction has run its course, the street could be abuzz with a new paradigm ... hyper-inflation.

Canadian Dollar ($0.8433)

No sign of any let up in the free-fall now underway. The Canadian dollar broke the back of its long uptrend several weeks ago, so this setback should be taken seriously.