The Street – What a year! Going into 2013, no one expected the broader market averages to hit all-time highs. With stagnant wage growth, higher taxes and a still-fragile real estate market, how could have anyone have called the 30% returns we received last year? And yet here we are. With such astonishingly high returns, some investors may be looking to diversify their portfolios for the new year. Occasionally investor portfolios can become unevenly weighted when one position moves drastically to the upside. In this article I want to highlight three exchange traded funds to consider in the first quarter….

Fox News – Turning 103 is a rare milestone that one would think you’d want to celebrate in the company of  family and friends, not gambling and getting a tattoo. But that’s exactly what Seattle grandmother Hilda Evelyn Kottman did for her recent birthday. The adorable granny and her grandson marked her birthday by going to a casino, having an all-you-can-eat crab dinner and getting some ink. The Daily Dot reports this in not the only out-of-character acts for the grandmother. According to the website, Kottman, who lived through both World Wars, the moon landing and Sept. 11, reportedly stole…

Press of Atlantic City – The new year is a crucial one for Atlantic City’s future, and 2014 won’t start auspiciously. This is the fourth year of a five-year grace period New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has given the seaside gambling resort to turn around its struggling fortunes before considering expanding casinos to other parts of the state – something casino executives fear will decimate the already wobbly market. And it will begin with the closing of one of the city’s 12 casinos, the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel, which is shutting its doors on Jan. 13, the victim of a…

Global Mail – 1. James Packer sweet-talked his way into building Sydney’s second casino at Barangaroo on Sydney Harbour. Packer says the casino is his “gift” to the people of Sydney. Thanks bro. 2. Facing a deep budget deficit, Queensland turned to gambling to make ends meet. Premier Campbell Newman said that up to three new casino licenses were up for grabs, in a bid to lure middle-class Chinese tourists to the Sunshine state. Because what else does Queensland have to entice people to visit, apart from the stunning weather, beaches, rainforests and a barrier reef so nice that “Great” is…

iGaming Business – China has recorded a significant increase in gaming revenue for 2013, with the national gaming market having generated more than $13 billion (€9.5 billion) in the past year. According to the Venturebeat.com website, the 2013 figure is significantly higher than the $9.8 billion posted in 2012 and quadruple the $3 billion generated in 2008. Despite the growth of mobile gaming in Asia, client-based PC games proved to be the main source of revenue in the country and were responsible for $8.7 billion of all Chinese gaming revenue. Mobile gaming was only able to produce around $1.8 billion…

Philly.com – PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker website, says it wants to offer online gambling in other states even as it continues pursuing a license to do it in New Jersey. In a year-end blog post published Tuesday that was obtained earlier by the Associated Press, the site’s parent company, the Rational Group, also blames the owners of the Atlantic Club for the casino-hotel’s impending shutdown. The Rational Group signed a deal to buy the casino for $15 million, but the casino owners canceled that in April when Rational did not get state approval quickly enough. The post is…