Charles Lewis Sizemore CFA

Living In Peru recently republished my article on "Unconventional Medical Tourism."  Flying to South America is not an option for many people looking to save money on their medical bills.  But given spiraling medical costs, it will no doubt increasingly become one.  Medical tourism

It all started with Harry Markowitz. As an ambitious young student in the 1950s, Markowitz looked to define risk in a new way. Pre-Markowitz, investors knew that stocks were risky, as many in the business had lived through the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression. But no one had a way to quantify risk or to use their knowledge of risk to build a better, more efficient portfolio.

At the risk of sounding like I'm obsessed with the price of gold, I saw more anecdotal evidence today that gold's epic run is over, or at least that it will be soon. This Financial Times headline speaks for itself: "IMF Left Holding its Gold as Buyers Fail to Materialise"

Gold is one of those assets that tends to get an emotional response from both its fans and its naysayers.  Goldbugs passionately believe that gold is the only "real" store of value and view the phenomenal economic growth of the past 30 years as nothing more than a chimera, as if the massive increase in Western standards of living were all a fantasy.