Archive for December, 2006
December 28, 2006 – With the New Year on the horizon, in many global markets around the world, there will be choppy trading on low daily volume as many people take a break for the new year. Also, you may see abnormal peaks and dips in some stocks as institutions seize the low daily volume as an opportunity to enter or exit the market and control the prices of certain stocks. Read more …
December 28th, 2006
December 27, 2006 -Yes, I know I said you wouldn’t hear from me until the New Year, but here are three graphs that merit close attention so figured I might as well post an interim blog. With the Nasdaq Composite Bullish Percent Index, note that the 13 day SMA has just crossed the 20 day SMA. With the HUI, the unhedged gold bugs index, note that the 50 day SMA is now just kissing the 200 day SMA, and with the S&P 500 index, Read more …
December 27th, 2006
December 21, 2006- In our casual Friday blog entry, the last for this year, let’s explore what investors can learn from the AI trade to the Denver Nuggets. AI, or the Answer, has always been one of my favorite NBA players. It’s funny, because there seems to be two camps of thought surrounding the Answer. There’s one that views him as a thug and seems to detest him. And there are those that love his heart. Read more …
December 21st, 2006
December 21, 2006 – I had been hearing rumors for a long time, since last March, that Iran was getting ready to trade oil in Euros. And since then, I’ve been following this situation very closely. Recently from the Tehran press there has been a flurry of rumors regarding the sale of Iranian oil in Euros, but still, it has been difficult to confirm. Well, I finally received the confirmation I wanted. Read more …
December 21st, 2006
December 19, 2006 – Vision is more important than minutiae in discovering stocks that will soar. Let’s consider one of the biggest changes on the technology horizon of the next decade (and already in play in Asia) that many people outside of the technology industry are not even aware of. What is it? Internet Protocol Version 6, or IPv6, as it is better known. Read more …
December 19th, 2006
December 18, 2006 – It’s that time of the year when holidays are upon us, which translates into toy shortages and unpredictable market behavior in individual stocks. Because so many people take time off from work during the holidays, every holiday season, daily trading volume versus the average three-month daily trading volume for Read more …
December 18th, 2006
December 18, 2006 – Almost every single person that has ever been managed by a large global investment firm has seen the below chart. It’s called Determinants of Portfolio Performance, but I’ve renamed it Determinants of a Financial Consultant’s Asset Gathering Success, because such a title is far more accurate. Financial consultants tell you that studies too numerous to count have been performed that prove the above “facts”. Read more …
December 18th, 2006
December 17, 2006 - This past week, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson was in China, urging the government to let market forces determine the direction of the Yuan. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has also gone on record as urging the Chinese to let the Yuan rise from its current levels. The obvious reason is because a stronger Yuan and an even weaker dollar would help close the trade deficit between China and the United States. Read more …
December 17th, 2006
December 15, 2006 – Today, as an added bonus, our casual Friday blog should have a lot of utility to you. Most people are aware that banks employ high-tech security measure to prevent thieves from being able to raid their bank vaults or even commit simpler acts of robbery. What most people don’t know is that your bank may actually be robbing you. The great majority of people are unaware that some countries have regulations that specify the amounts that are deemed to be “fair” for various banking penalties such as those imposed upon customers for overdrafts, bounced checks, credit card late payments, and so on. Read more …
December 15th, 2006
December 13, 2006- I remember a King of the Hill Episode (an American TV show) where the main character asks his Laotian neighbor, “Are you Japanese or Chinese?” The neighbor answers, “Laotian”, to which the Caucasian character immediately replies, “So. Are you Japanese or Chinese?” As I’m recalling this from memory, that might not be the exact transcript, but it’s very close. Although this episode was poking overt fun at the often-joked about inability of some Caucasians to distinguish among the many different Asian ethnicities, and the consequent marginalization of all Asians to either the category of Chinese or Japanese, too often in economic discussions, all of Asia is lumped together as well. Read more …
December 13th, 2006
December 12, 2006 – Back on October 23rd, I blogged about not liking the excessive risk inherent in many Chinese banks. Instead, I looked to India for much better managed banks with high potential growth in seeking investment opportunities in the financial sector. Specifically I mentioned ICICI bank and HDFC bank. Read more …
December 12th, 2006
December 12, 2006 – This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammed Yunus, is worth writing about because he gave the world a model through his concept of microcredit and his founding of Grameen Bank to transform a group of people, the world’s poor, from an “un-bankable” sector to not only a “bankable” sector but a profitable sector. Today, in developing and developed countries alike, banks in 100 different countries, including even those in the United States, are using Muhammed’s concept of microcredit to reach out and help the world’s rural and urban poor while still managing to run a viable business model. Muhammed proved that the concept of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) was not only feasible but also sustainable. Read more …
December 12th, 2006
December 11, 2006 – I read a statistic the other day that the ten largest investment firms in the world, on any given day, control anywhere from 50% to 70% of the market volume on the New York Stock Exchange, with the top five largest firms each controlling about 7%-8% of the total share volume. That is an astounding testimony to how much control large companies have seized over market behavior, considering that last week, 70% of listed volume on the NYSE equated to almost 2 billion shares with a market worth of about $54 billion. Read more …
December 11th, 2006
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