Business Highlights + MORE Jan 31st

NEW YORK, N.Y. – The financial strains and shifting shopping habits of Americans have led to uneven fortunes for retailers.
Traditional consumer companies like Wal-Mart and Mattel have continued to struggle as Americans spend more cautiously in the uncertain economy. Meanwhile, Amazon.com has flourished as shoppers increasingly buy online rather than head to stores.
The trend was evident during the pivotal holiday shopping season, a time roughly from November through December when many retailers can make up to 40 per cent of their annual revenue. Overall, government figures show that spending during October through December rose at the fastest clip in three years.
But exactly where — and how — Americans spent their money during the final months of the year shifted. Fewer people were in and out of stores during the holiday season, but more were shopping online.
Online shopping rose 10 per cent to $46.5 billion in November and December, according to research firm Comscore. Meanwhile, sales at stores rose just 2…

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Small investors fight urge to sell as stocks drop
NEW YORK (AP) — January’s global sell-off in stocks has left many small investors more puzzled than panicked — and unsure how to act.
They’re holding on for now as prices continue to tumble, but their anxiety is mounting. The number of small investors who say they feel “bearish” soared this past week, according to a U.S. survey. Some stock funds have been hit with their biggest withdrawals since 2012.
If more people start selling, it would reverse a new and surprising trend in some of the world’s biggest economies: individuals moving back into stocks after years of shunning them.
Small investors around the world were on edge even before growing signs of a slowdown in China and plunging emerging-market currencies dragged many stock indexes down to their worst start of a new year since 2010. They worried stocks were overdue for a drop, after soaring by double-digit percentages in countries like the United States, Japan and France in 2013…

Amazon.com Inc shares plunged 11 per cent on Wall Street Friday, after it missed expectations for sales and profits during the crucial holiday period.

Liberal MP John McKay will stand up in the House of Commons Friday afternoon to debate his private member’s bill calling for financial transparency in the mining, oil and gas industry — all the while knowing his bill is doomed to fail.

After the financial crisis of 2008–09, financial commentators loved to take shots at “old school” investment strategies. First came the declarations that diversification no longer works, because during a crisis everything goes down together—though this wasn’t true in 2008 unless you ignored bonds, which make up a significant part of most portfolios. Then the investment industry sounded the death knell for the traditional balanced portfolio. Apparently we were in a new era where active investing, tactical asset allocation and alternative asset classes would rule the day.
One of the most effective ways to expose this nonsense is to build a “periodic table” of investment returns. (Norm Rothery has maintained one on his Stingy Investor site for several years.) The resemblance to the poster that hung in your high-school chemistry class is only superficial: this table simply presents the returns of various asset classes ordered from highest to lowest over a period of several years…