Money Talk

I heard this very interesting but near prophecy-like podcast by Peter Day of BBC in the program "By our own correspondent" yesterday. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00pjgll What struck me the most was the almost unstoppable boom in China is showing signs of just slowing but possibly bust. Can you believe there is already a ghost town with many flats in several apartment buildings which doubled in prices recently are unoccupied in Mongolia in a town called Ordos. Several shops are empty and local money lenders are out of business and financiers have either ran away or disappeared. See the picture below: This audio-documentary is quite a earful. Not sure if its an indication of the near future of China, atleast you can't say no one told you.  

I have to admit the market upswing was more than anyone expected, leave alone my prediction in January 2012 end. Not all analysts agree that this will be the trajectory stock indices will take for the rest of the year. Some fear the following probable negatives could derail the upswing: 1) a possible Iran conflict, 2) continued current Chinese slow down and 3) Greek crisis & European contagion. At least we can say with relative confidence that the double-dip recession is not a threat. Stocks are a leading indicator and from the way it looks we are going to be in the thick of business activity within this year end. Usually presidential election years are a positive year for stocks. Already several pockets of the US are beginning to have full bookings of hotels, resorts, etc. and skilled labor force is busy till the end of the year. If the summer does not scorch the stocks for any reason, we should well be seeing the economy rebound in strength. After all, these boom and bust cycl...

A few important observations this month: Stocks pushing up. Unemployment falling. Manufacturing increased. Growth is more. Fear of US re-recession bleaker. Interest rate at 0 will be unchanged for another 18+ months. New homes increases modestly. Greek debt settlement seems realistic. All these observations surmise and point to an optimistic scenario for the economy and investments on the one side. But this optimism is not shared by many in the financial sector as they don't see all this as a big plus in the short term. The reason: the curve is slow. So slow, that we may still see many failures before things really start picking up steam. But if stock markets are a leading indicator, Dow and Nasdaq and even the S&P are near their post-2008 high. That to me is an indication to take some calculated risk and long selected stocks.

I found this just today. Its a cool virtual play in stocks for 4 weeks. You can play long or short. Two weeks have gone by. Two to go. You can still get in by registering. Cool thing is you can even win prizes if you are the weekly winner, ie, if you are ranked on the top of the investment leader board. Kind of hard, hey, but who cares. You have a virtual cash horde of $120,000 to mess around with. Hope you learn something while having fun....! Go to the link below to enter. http://www.marketwatch.com/game/fet-2011-q4

Eurozone is crumbling, Italy and Greece in sovereign debt crisis, France no better, high unemployment, low consumer confidence, flat incomes, increasing costs, etc. all of these no doubt is the perfect recipe for a pessimistic outlook of the world. IMF chief Christine Lagarde warned today about a lost decade for not just the developed world but for the whole world if wealthier nations don't intervene referring to the Germanys and USs of the world. These are sobering days of the times we live in. Here is atleast one simple solution, that is certain to increase housing demand and thereby can most certainly increase the confidence in the economy. We are at 9% unemployment in the US, which means more than 90% are still with jobs. These people need to be encouraged to spend more. Since the biggest investment for any family is their home, why not start from there. Almost all houses have lost their values by atleast 15% to 50% for no fault of the ordinary people. We ...

A movement that has kept everyone in power guessing where it will go or lead to. A leaderless, rudderless, moneyless movement, but letting their strong feelings out to show they have to do something just like how a baby starts crying if he needs to be cared for. A majority of people in the country and now the world seem to join in this silent revolution, of sorts. The big question is not what these protester are crying for, its what it will eventually achieve. I for one, feel, it is powerful and is gaining traction in terms of at least one important agenda. Sensitizing people on the ills of a overly exploited capitalistic world. Capitalism is unquestionably the best out there, but unchecked capitalism will lead to the exact situations such as these. Disparity of the rich and the middle.Class war. Resentment builds, and an unconnected and unnecessary  chain of reactions result that can be worse than the intent of the revolution. Incidentally, Nobel Prize winning Economist Paul Kr...

Today the world lost a brilliant technology genius. Steve Jobs (56). Sad loss. In March this year he was the 109th richest billionaire in the world. He was rich but not perfect. Read what he said to Stanford graduates in 2005 about a few things that may have made who he became. He always spoke with immense pride about what he and his engineers accomplished at Apple. "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do," he told the Stanford grads in 2005. "If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on."