Just about everywhere you look these days in the financial media, when the topic of discussion turns to the plunging U.S. dollar, you'll hear someone saying something like, "Unless the Fed raises interest rates, the dollar's got nowhere to go but down".And then someone invariably says, "But the central bank can't raise interest rates. Not with the unemployment rate at over ten percent!"What's a central banker to do?A look at history with the help of the chart below sheds some light on the current jobless rate-interest rate conundrum and, as... Continue Reading
Critical moment for "Audit the Fed" effort It looks like today will be an important day for those, on one side, who seek to shine a little more light on the operations of the Federal Reserve and those, on the other side, hoping to keep prying...
Tushar Mathur Personal Finance
Should I invest in ETFs or Conventional Mutual Funds Investors seeking an index investment nowadays can choose to put their money into either conventional fund shares or exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but deciding which to pick may seem perplexing. Many...
Lloyd Sakazaki Investor Education
Perpetual Income Generation A student who earned a few thousand dollars over the summer working remarked to me yesterday, "I don't know how I'm going to spend the money if I don't use it to travel over the holidays."At first,...
Corey Rosenbloom Currency
Color Daily EURUSD Forex Chart Shows Lengthy Divergences Instead of looking at the Euro Index, let’s take a look at the Euro - US Dollar FOREX Pair - EURUSD - and see the current ‘color chart’ along with two sets of momentum divergences and an...
Trent Hamm Stocks
The Meaning of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Mickey writes in:
In the last week, the Dow Jones Industrial average closed at a thirteen month high and, at the same time, unemployment hit double digits for the first time since the early...
Corey Rosenbloom Trading
Two Quick Intraday Fibonacci Retracement Examples Today’s intraday price action gave me a chance to show you two specific Fibonacci Retracement grid examples of how to use the “Fibonacci Retracement” tool to find potential trade entries or...
Tim Iacono Energy
Guess the year-end price of oil and gold! There are only a few days left for readers to enter their year-end guesses for the seventh installment of the semi-annual "Guess the price of oil and gold contest" where the lucky winner will receive...
Joe Marchelewski Alternative Investments
Warren Buffet to Investors – Buy Private Jets Warren Buffet, one of the world’s foremost investors, had a special message to investors in London – forget stocks, but private jets.
Buffet, who rarely visits London, was not too positive...
United States
The new face of U.S. mortgage lending Today's must read housing market news comes via this story in the Washington Post where the near total control of the U.S. mortgage market by the U.S. government is detailed.Mortgage Market Bound by Major U.S. RoleClasses of Borrowers Cannot Find Loans as Publicly Backed Debt MountsBy Zachary A. Goldfarb and Dina ElBoghdadyIn the go-go years of the U.S. housing boom, virtually anybody could get a few hundred thousand dollars to buy a home, and private lenders flooded the market, aggressively pursuing borrowers no matter their means or... Continue Reading
International
Random Shots As I am preparing for a tournament this weekend in Sweden I only have time for some random shots, but then again; taking random shots seem to be exactly what the markets are all about at the moment. The first such random shot came from today's release of the GDP figures from Europe which showed, with much fanfare, how the Eurzone (and Europe) is now effectively out of recession.
(quote Bloomberg)
The euro-area economy emerged from its worst recession since World War II in the third quarter as exports from Germany and France helped compensate for households’ reluctance to increase spending Gross domestic product in the economy of the 16 nations using the euro rose 0.4 percent from the second quarter, when it fell... Continue Reading
Aside from E-House Holdings (EJ) which completely fell flat on its face, one of the best earnings reports of the past few weeks was Ctrip.com (CTRP). ...
Hat tip to Paul Kedrosky for this eye opening chart. The source data can be found here but as they say a picture is worth a thousand words; clearly there...
Since everybody has already been talking about the future elections of 2008, some people consulted a different kind of poll: the 2008 election futures markets at Intrade, the Dublin-based online futures exchange.
HOT COUNTRIES TO INVEST
Turkey Turkey is an island of stability in the Muslim world. The country currently enjoys rapid economic growth as well as political stability.
The essence of Russia's economic reform is laid with privatization. This was a very necessary step as it has a direct influence on the amount of foreign direct investment into the country.
In 2004, China's GDP surpassed that of Italy for the first time in history, making China the sixth-largest economy in the world. China's GDP in 2005 reached US$2.26 trillion, US$94 million more than that of the United Kingdom.