Suze Orman has a killer question for your retirement

Suze Orman is one of those singular personalities in the financial business who seems to be right on the pulse of everyone she meets. She’s written books, starred in her own television show and made innumerable appearances in person. Like Oprah

Bitcoin – In the Red, but Looking Ready for a Move

Bitcoin fell by 3.08% on Saturday, reversing most of Friday’s 4.06% gain, to end the day at $6,383.3, the day’s losses leaving Bitcoin with just a 1.1% gain for the current week, Monday through Saturday. A start of a day intraday high $6,619.5 came up short of the first major resistance level at $6,679.4, with Bitcoin and the broader market hitting reverse through the morning, Bitcoin sliding through the day’s first major resistance level at $6,376.5 to a late afternoon intraday low $6,300, before recovering. Support at $6,300 saw Bitcoin break back through to $6,400 levels and an afternoon high $6,435.9, though with the bears in control the Friday rally was cut short, with investors continuing to lock in profits on any momentum driven rallies, Friday’s moves having come in spite of no positive news hitting the wires to shift sentiment across the cryptomarket.

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  Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis: BTCUSD Capped by Strong Resistance

  CCN
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  Bitcoin – Bulls Holding on After Delivering a pre-Weekend Rally

  FX Empire

San Francisco's housing market is so out of control, 60% of tech workers say they can't afford homes

The San Francisco Bay Area's housing market is so bleak, even tech workers are struggling to buy a home there. A survey by Blind found that 59% of employees at Bay Area tech companies said they cannot afford homes. Cisco, eBay, and Intuit had the highest percentage of employees who said home ownership is elusive.

Alibaba earnings: Spending for a future beyond e-commerce

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. dominates online shopping in China, but the company has bigger plans in mind. “We think Alibaba is years ahead of any competitor in driving digital commerce forward,” MKM Partners analyst Rob Sanderson, who rates the stock a buy with a $280 target price, wrote earlier this summer. Alibaba’s investments have weighed on recent results, and the question is whether investors will show patience going forward as the company plays the long game.

• Alibaba earnings Spending for a future beyond ecommerce

  MarketWatch
• Malaysian leader tours Alibaba, meets Jack Ma on China visit

  The Kansas City Star

How the new tax law creates a ‘perfect storm’ for Roth IRA conversions

While the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes one negative change for Roth IRAs, they are still pretty wonderful. Here’s what you need to know about Roth IRAs and especially Roth IRA conversions in the post-TCJA world. Unlike traditional IRA withdrawals, qualified Roth IRA withdrawals are federal-income-tax-free and usually state-income-tax-free too.

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  MY RMDs are sky-high — should I convert to a Roth?

  MarketWatch
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  The 1 Stock You've Been Overlooking for Your Roth IRA

  Motley Fool

Portfolio Manager: watch these 3 stocks

Eaton Vance Portfolio Manager Yana Barton makes the bull case for 3 stocks.

How China steals U.S. secrets

China wants to steal U.S. secrets and is very good at doing so. “China, from a counterintelligence perspective, represents the broadest, most pervasive, most threatening challenge we face as a country,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Aspen Security Forum in July. A recent U.S. government report titled “Foreign Economic Espionage in Cyberspace” indicates how multifaceted China is when it comes to stealing American intellectual property and U.S. government secrets.

Cannabis company Canopy Growth’s stock soars 30% as Corona brewer increases stake

U.S.-listed shares of Canada-based Canopy Growth Corp. soared almost 30% Wednesday, after liquor seller Constellation Brands Inc. said it will invest another CAD $5 billion, or about $4 billion, in the diversified cannabis company. Constellation Brands (STZ) the brewer of Corona beer and distributor of Robert Mondavi wine, said it will increase its stake in Canopy (CGC)(CA:WEED) to 38% from about 10% by buying 104.5 million shares at C$48.60 a share, a 51.2% premium to Tuesday’s closing price of C$32.15, and assuming exercise of existing warrants. The company will also receive additional warrants that if exercised would provide Canopy with an additional C$4.5 billion and give Constellation a stake of more than 50%.

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  Beer Makers Are Drunk on Marijuana's Potential

  Motley Fool
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  A Cannabis Company Just Got a $4 Billion Investment—the Biggest Ever—from a Beer Company

  Esquire

7 Stocks Warren Buffett Can’t Stop Buying

Sometimes identifying the best stocks to buy can be difficult, but you could do a lot worse than checking out the stocks selected by one of the world’s savviest hedge fund managers — Warren Buffett. Buffett’s stock picks are a popular source for investors, and for good reason. The billionaire Buffett is many things: He’s among the world’s most successful fund managers, a legendary philanthropist, and owns more than 60 companies.

Why gold has performed so poorly even though stock markets are volatile

What’s it going to take for gold market timers to become so pessimistic that a contrarian buy signal is finally triggered? Consider the average recommended gold market exposure level among a subset of short-term gold market timers (as measured by the Hulbert Gold Newsletter Sentiment Index, or HGNSI). As I have indicated in past columns, previous lows have been accompanied by HGNSI readings at least as low as minus 30%.

Tesla’s Elon Musk describes ‘excruciating’ year, says ‘worst is yet to come’

Elon Musk said Thursday his tweet about having “funding secured” to take Tesla Inc. private was only intended to show transparency, and that despite the furor — and SEC investigation — it caused, he has no regrets about posting it. In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times published Thursday night, Musk chronicled the events leading to that tweet, as well as this year, which he acknowledged has been exceedingly difficult. The Tesla chief executive described a constant state of exhaustion as the company has worked to ramp up production on Model 3 sedans, and said it was taking a toll on him.

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  Elon Musk calls this year 'the most difficult and painful' of his career

  The Tennessean
• Best stock investing strategy now is just to ‘stay home’

  MarketWatch

Companies reporting earnings twice a year is a good idea: Ben Stein

Economist Ben Stein discusses how President Trump asked the SEC to study whether companies should report earnings twice a year. Stein also discussed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) newly proposed law, which she says will make companies accountable to employees and local communities, not just shareholders.

• Sorry Cramer, But 4 Times a Year Is Just Right

  Real Money
• Trump Asks SEC to Study Quarterly Earnings Requirements for Public Firms :: WRAL.com

  WRAL.com

5 Top Stock Trades for Monday — Where to Buy Nvidia, Nordstrom

After a big rally on Thursday, stocks again added to their gains on Friday on optimism over global trade resolutions between the U.S. and China by year’s end. Even before that news came out though, there were plenty of big movers. Here are our top stock

• Stocks Slip As Nvidia, Applied Materials Drag On Chips; Deere Dives

  Investor's Business Daily
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  Analysts are more bullish on Nvidia stock despite investor disappointment

  MarketWatch

Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 19/08/18

Bitcoin Cash slid by 8.5% on Saturday, partially reversing Friday’s 16.77% gain, to end the day at $553.9. A start of a day intraday high $610, which fell short of the first major resistance level at $633.2, was the only bullish move of the day, with Bitcoin Cash sliding through the first major support level at $543.3 to a late afternoon intraday low $533.9, before recovering to $550 levels. At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash was down 1.63% to $544.8, with momentum from Saturday’s sell-off continuing into the early hours, Bitcoin Cash falling from a start of a day $544.2 high to a morning low $539.7 before recovering to $540 levels.

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  Bitcoin – In the Red, but Looking Ready for a Move

  FX Empire
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  Bitcoin – Bulls Holding on After Delivering a pre-Weekend Rally

  FX Empire

Louisiana Bans Bank of America, Citi from Bond Sale Over Gun Policies

Louisiana is using the bond market to stick up for the Second Amendment. The state’s bond commission voted 7 to 6 Thursday to ban Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. from working on its upcoming debt sale because of the banks’ "restrictive gun policies," the state treasury said in a statement. Bank of America and Citigroup are the two top-ranked underwriters of long-term municipal debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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  Sen. Kennedy praises Louisiana Bond Commission's move to block banks over gun policies

  The Advocate
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  Lanny Keller: John A. Alario says don't block banks from $600 million road plan due to gun sales policies

  The Advocate

Smart investors do these 5 things before retiring

Are you confident in your own retirement planning? Just 18% of Americans — less than one in five — say they are “very confident” in their ability to finance a comfortable retirement. The whole trick to being confident about retirement is matching up those numbers.

BofA's Subramanian Says Markets Are Getting the Yield Curve Wrong

Savita Subramanian, head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, explains why the flattening yield curve is not a signal to get out of the market. She speaks on "Bloomberg Daybreak: Americas." More from Bloomberg

• TREASURIES-U.S. yields dip as risk aversion rises on Turkey worries

  Reuters
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  Yield Curve Crunch Shows Fed Hiking Even Amid Global Agitation

  Bloomberg

Alibaba: Betting on the Yuan

This is especially true when dealing with a Chinese company like Alibaba Group Holding (NASDAQ:BABA), which is due to report earnings on August 23 before the U.S. market opens. The on-again, off-again trade war with China has been driving Alibaba stock, as China has slowly lowered the value of the yuan against the dollar. Source: Shutterstock The Chinese currency was at 6.27 to the dollar in April. It’s currently at 6.88, having reversed its move toward seven after agreeing this week to hold trade talks with the U.S. Those talks will focus, not on the intellectual property issues that most concern the U.S., but on the yuan, which the U.S. now wants very much to go up.