Economics, Investments & Money Management

We have often written about the issues surrounding listening to the market and the noise that comes from many regarding buys and sells. So I was somewhat unsurprised to read a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that provided some insights into the minds of the analysts that make the recommendations on buys and sells.

Its an interesting question and one that got me thinking after I read this article in the Washington Post around U.S. Government attempts to allocate money to programs that are more successful.

Hedge funds were all the rage as the world emerged from the Tech wreck in the early 2000′s and as the market strated to move upwards people invested in them in droves (including yours truly).

Today’s post has been some time coming. I started writing this around April last year, or more appropriately  I saw the cartoon 12 months ago, and for one reason or another it slipped down the list. However on stumbling across it again, I realized that whilst simple it gives a very powerful message.

In news out a month or so ago, Kodak exited chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. after selling off almost 1,000 of the patents it have accumulated over the past 100 plus years as a company. Whilst Kodak hasn’t disappeared completely there is a long list of well known global companies that have fallen by the Wayside.

I read with some amusement this past week that ANZ had revised its forecast of interest rates cuts here in Australia for 2013. Originally their economists had ‘predicted’ that there would be 100 basis points slashed off rates during the year.

I saw the chart below from JP Morgan which is a variation on a similar chart we use with our clients when discussing investment markets and returns.

I had a dream my life would be…….So different from this hell I’m living………So different now from what it seemed………Now life has killed the dream I dreamed. With this song storming up the charts on the back of the Les Miserables movie its getting a bit of airtime and as I was listening to it the other day the final verse of the song got me thinking about what dreams we have.

Another month, another 25 points and Term Deposit rates continue to go down.

With their hair a little whiter, their step not quite so sure Still they march on proudly as they did the year before. Theirs were the hands that saved us, their courage showed the way Their lives they laid down for us, that we...

In his inaugural address as U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The relevance of this quote became apparent to me today as I read an article from USA today titled Is fear factor hurting returns of risk-averse investors?.

With Easter almost upon us and the focus in my household turning towards the Easter Bunny and chocolate. I found the facts below on the Lindt website…….a very interesting read!

Great article last weekend in The Washington Post about why Voters should pay attention to politics. Investors should ignore it. Barry Ritholtz writes regularly for The Post and has a great blog called The Big Picture which I can highly recommend you check out.

I saw an interesting article in the paper over the weekend about the level of preparedness by people for retirement. Whilst I generally understood that many people were unprepared, after all we see it almost every day, the figures were still quite alarming to look at.

On the back of CBA yesterday releasing another whopping profit and increasing their dividend, coupled with the news that online trading at the Commsec website is up 50% in the past 3 months, there are many out there talking up the Bulls in the market.

It seems that no matter where you look today there is someone talking about gold, be it people looking to get better returns than the very modest rates on offer from banks to those looking for a defensive asset that will weather the storm of the next financial crisis.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2013, I’m not sure we were going to make there for a while, I know that in the lead up to New Year’s I was terrified that I was going to fall off a cliff. Miraculously though, right at the last minute the cliff turned out to be nothing more than a small ditch although, after momentarily dipping into it and then emerging on the other side, I was quickly told that a much bigger cliff awaits me a few months down the road.

Everyone hates taxes right?, if you don’t then you are probably in the minority. Lord knows that we have heard that tax word over and over again when it comes to things like the Carbon Tax, The Mining Tax and the countless myriad of taxes we all pay each day, probably many of them unknowingly.