Juggling With Knives ─ Smart Investing in the Coming Age of Volatility

In his new book, investment expert Jim Jubak explores the new normal” of market volatility. With remarkable insights into the zeitgeist of financial markets and the economy, Jubak combines the big macro trends with the more mundane aspects of life to depict why volatility is here to stay, why things are not going to get any calmer soon, and how you can make investing decisions to profit off this new reality.

He presents a unified picture that extends far beyond a narrow view of financial markets, exploring the consequences of using global central banksthe Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, the People’s Bank of China, and the European Central Bankas cash machines; the debt model of growth now used worldwide; and the demographics of aging and the coming war between the young and the old.

He also looks at social trends including the anxiety of affluence, particularly the mismatch between the guaranteed cost of education and the uncertainty of future earnings; the real estate barbell” and the consequences viewing a home as a financial asset and not simply a place to live; and energy, climate, water and food insecurity.

Jubak’s mission is to teach investors how to stay sane when people think the sky is falling. In showing what is causing all of this volatility, he provides practical solutions for how you can smartly respond, build a portfolio, and profit.

Jim Jubak has spent 25 years writing about the capital markets, beginning in the early 1980s as the editor of Venture magazine and later as senior financial editor at Worth. In 1997 he joined MSN Money as senior markets editor and started Jubak’s Journal and the Jubak’s Picks portfolio. The MSN software developers were justifiably skeptical that a mere journalist (even one with a Knight Bagehot fellowship in business journalism from Columbia) could beat the market and they issued a challenge: "If you’re so good, track your buys and sells as a real portfolio." That’s exactly what he's done ever since, first on MSN Money (with 4 million unique users per month), where Nielsen ranked him the #1 investor columnist on the web, and now on his own blog, JubakPicks.com, launched in 2009, which averages 50,000 unique users per month. His stock-picking track record speaks for itself: the Jubak’s Picks portfolio has returned 445% since its inception in May 1997. Jim currently runs two other stock portfolios on JubakPicks.com. Jim now writes for Yahoo Finance.