Small-time investors are flooding the market as bigwigs pull out

By Ed Zwirn

New York Post, July 9, 2017

Small investors are piling into stocks at a frantic pace — the event that allows veteran Wall Streeters to call a top of the market.

These individual, or retail, customers invested a net of more than $1.8 billion in US equity funds during the week ending June 28, the first positive reading this indicator has seen since Nov. 4, 2015, when it weighed in at more than $2 billion, according to a report issued by EPFR Global. Continue reading

New York yacht sales finally set to rebound after Hurricane Sandy

New York yacht sales finally set to rebound after Hurricane Sandy

By Ed Zwirn

(Originally published on June 14, 2015 in the NY Post.)

New York’s local waterways may be clogged this boating season as local yacht sales cruise higher.

Stock portfolios and real estate values have been rising over the past few years, and sales of recreational boats of all sizes increased 7.3 percent in New York state in 2014, bucking a national trend of sinking sales, according to a National Marine Manufacturers Association report.

After years of floundering US sales as a result of the economic maelstrom that was 2007 to 2010, in which the industry saw a peak to trough decline of  60 percent decline nationwide for recreational boat sales, says Gerrick Johnson of BMO Capital Markets. Johnson adds that last year saw a rise of 8 percent in sales nationally.

A large part of the NY metro-area rebound, aside from the general economic recovery, is that local boat sellers are getting a boost as storm-ravaged property owners get around to replacing some of the 65,000 or so boats destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Continue reading