Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of December 3, 2013?

Article Excerpt

Basing investment decisions on short-term economic statistics is always a bad idea, but especially today. These short-term stats are subject to all sorts of random influences, including variations in weather, news developments that burn up consumers’ shopping time, timing of TV series finales, not to mention future revisions of the statistics. This alone makes short-term economic statistics a poor investment guide. But today there are two much bigger concerns that are influencing consumer decisions in the U.S. in a random fashion. One is Obamacare. It has rattled the entire U.S. health industry, which makes up around a seventh of the U.S. economy. Many Americans don’t know if they’ll have health insurance next year, or what it will cost. News items come along almost every day that either foretell a collapse of the Obamacare system altogether, or promise a miraculous fix. This hinders long-term consumer spending and planning. The other is the inevitable rise in interest rates that will take place when the…