Blog Posts by Lauren Lyster

Despite reports of delays, Tuesday, October 1^st is the kickoff for new exchanges (or online markets) where individuals can buy healthcare insurance under Obamacare.

Related: Gullible Americans Fuel Obamacare's Bad Rap

But what will this mean for the prices individuals pay for their premiums?

To find out, Avik Roy, a conservative and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The Apothecary blog on Forbes, has analyzed (with his colleagues) the public price information that’s available now for 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Related: Obamacare: More Coverage at Lower Cost For Many Young People

They found the steepest rate hikes will be seen in New Mexico, Vermont, South Dakota, and Connecticut. The rates are 130, 97, 83, and 59 percent higher, respectively.

Check out the video above to see why Roy thinks rates are going up in these states and others due to Obamacare -- he explains his methodology for his analysis and also how subsidies play into the equation.

The housing market is 67% back to “normal” according to Trulia’s Housing Barometer and the post-crisis recovery is on-track, according to the latest home price figures from Case-Shiller. But these gauges may be missing a “tiny” but growing slice of today’s housing market.

Related: Housing Future Looks Bright But is Dependent on the Job Market

For example, Ella Jenkins of Frazier Park, California, is a 23-year-old “homeowner.” She built her own house, and it has everything she needs. There’s just one catch: it’s only 130 square feet and it’s built on wheels (i.e. a trailer). The home cost her $16,000 to build, and she constructed it with her father in the driveway of her family’s home. It was a yearlong D-I-Y project, but a tiny home with no mortgage or rent means she has the economic freedom to pursue music and art. She won’t get forced into a career path she doesn’t want. (See the video above for a tour of Jenkins’ house.)

Jenkins is not alone. She represents a growing number of

As the government prepares for worker furloughs starting Tuesday if Congress doesn’t avert a shutdown and as Washington gets ready for a debt ceiling fight that could follow -- markets are a snooze.

Related: 5 Ways a Government Shutdown Would Affect You

The Dow (^DJI) has gained more than 3% this month, 10-year Treasury yields have fallen since the Fed’s “no taper” news after briefly hitting (gasp) 3% and gold hasn’t been doing much of late.

But Jim Grant, founder and editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, reminds The Daily Ticker that unlike 2010, when the memory of 2008 was fresh in investors’ minds and we had a “bull market in fear,” we are now in a “bear market in fear.”

He says experts can read this in the depths of the options markets, where people are no longer buying derivatives to protect themselves agains 'tail risks, but are "getting in the swim of things going up."

So this moment may be a fairly good one in which to begin fretting (though he advises against being a

Academics, pundits, and pollsters have pondered for years whether China – the globe’s second largest economy – will replace the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower.

That growing belief led Timothy Beardson to counter the argument with his new book Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China’s Future. Beardson has been based in Hong Kong for 35 years and founded the first foreign investment bank in China. He says China will not become the big superpower some have forecast, at least not in this century.

Related: China Will Invest $1 Trillion Globally; How Much Will U.S. Get

So in the short term, what does this mean for investors? Beardson addresses investor frustration over the lack of progress in the Chinese stock market despite exceptional economic growth.

Related: If U.S. Kills Keystone Pipeline, The Chinese Win: Niall Ferguson

He argues that while two-thirds of China’s economy is now based in the private sector, 60% of bank loans have gone to state companies while 80% of stock market

Commodities guru Jim Rogers lives in Singapore and is a well-known China bull, but the contrarian investor travels all over the world (and has circumnavigated the globe twice). So we asked where he sees exciting economic opportunities for average investors now.

Related: Jim Rogers: Gold Could Fall to $900 in Next 1-2 Years

Rogers tells The Daily Ticker there are great opportunities in Africa – he names Angola and Ethiopia specifically. He also is focusing on the South American country of Uruguay.

“I said to my wife, ‘let’s move to Angola – we could live like kings,'” Rogers, the author of Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets, tells us in the video above. “She said, ‘you move to Angola; I don’t want to live like a queen in Angola’…but you could!”

Related: Tony Blair: Africa Poised to Be a Great Economic Story of the 21^st Century

Watch the interview to see more of the off-the-beaten path, frontier destinations that Rogers finds exciting. He also tells us which

It’s a crucial time for the Fed.

Today the Federal Open Market Committee could decide to begin tapering bond purchases as it starts to dial back an unprecedented stimulus. And we’re set to get a nominee for Fed chair anytime now to take over for Ben Bernanke when his term ends January 31, 2014.

The Daily Ticker sat down with director Jim Bruce, who interviewed many Fed officials - past and present - for his new documentary “Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve" to pick his brain about his biggest Fed takeaways.

Related: Fed Chair Hopefuls Are “Lapdogs for the Establishment”: Jim Rogers

Bruce says Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen, now the frontrunner for the top job, has the right characteristics for Fed chair: “integrity, and she’s tougher than some people think she might be. She’s known as a dove but I think she’d be willing to stand up to a lot of pressure, which you want in a Fed leader.”

However Bruce is worried about whether Yellen has the right ideas about Fed policy and

A recent study reveals that the top 10% of earners in the U.S. took home more than half the country’s total income in 2012. That's the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the data a century ago, according to a New York Times analysis.

Related: Why Incomes Could Fall For the Next 30 Years

The study by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty also found that the top 1% of earners enjoyed 95% of the income gains since the recession ended. Meanwhile, incomes for the rest of us stagnated from 2009 to 2011 and grew only about 1% in 2012.

Related: Income Stats Suggest American Dream Is Dead

Why have incomes for most Americans hardly moved while those of the top earners took off?

It could come down to that old adage: it takes money to make money.

“Excess capital that wealthy individuals and institutions had to invest...[during the crisis] has allowed them to accumulate even more wealth than others who didn’t have excess investment capital and are struggling in this

After the presentation of a new app called “Titstare” became the Miley Cyrus moment of the TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 conference in San Francisco, articles and blog posts have been crowding the web. Almost all of them take this point of view: That's It - I'm Finished Defending Sexism In Tech.

The app in question is described by its creators as an “app where you take photos of yourself staring at tits,” and TechCrunch responded quickly with a policy change noting that future presentations will get a thorough screening and that sexism will not be allowed (It should be noted that another app in poor taste also made it to the stage at the conference).

So is this just an issue of an app that offends people, or is there a problem with sexism in technology? And is it impacting opportunities for women?

Related: Billionaire Investor Says Babies Are Like Divorce, They Both ‘Kill’ Focus

The short answer is yes, to both, says Rachel Sklar -- cofounder of Change The Ratio and TheLi.st, two endeavors