What Is Bitcoin Really Worth? Don’t Even Ask.

Dabbling in Bitcoin lies somewhere between gambling and investing.

After all, true investing requires a rational appraisal of an asset’s value and that is simply not possible at present with Bitcoin. Real understanding of the economic issues underlying the cryptocurrency is almost nonexistent.

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A Stock Market Panic Like 1987 Could Happen Again

Oct. 19, 1987, was one of the worst days in stock market history. Thirty years later, it would be comforting to believe it couldn’t happen again.

Yet that’s true only in the narrowest sense: Regulatory and technological change has made an exact repeat of that terrible day impossible. We are still at risk, however, because fundamentally, that market crash was a mass stampede set off through viral contagion.

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Another Nobel Surprise for Economics

The winner of this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, is a controversial choice. Thaler is known for his lifelong pursuit of behavioral economics (and its subfield, behavioral finance), which is the study of economics (and finance) from a psychological perspective. For some in the profession, the idea that psychological research should even be part of economics has generated hostility for years.

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The Coming Bear Market?

The US stock market today is characterized by a seemingly unusual combination of very high valuations, following a period of strong earnings growth, and very low volatility. What do these ostensibly conflicting messages imply about the likelihood that the United States is headed toward a bear market?

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Mass Psychology Supports the Pricey Stock Market

Canny stock investors are like judges in a quirky beauty contest. They aren’t looking for real beauty but for qualities that other people believe still other people will find beautiful.

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The Transformation of the ‘American Dream'

“The American Dream is back.” President Trump made that claim in a speech in January. They are ringing words, but what do they mean? Language is important, but it can be slippery. Consider that the phrase, the American Dream, has changed radically through the years.

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Why Do Cities Become Unaffordable?

NEW HAVEN – Inequality is usually measured by comparing incomes across households within a country. But there is also a different kind of inequality: in the affordability of homes across cities. The impact of this form of inequality is no less worrying.

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