Archive for August, 2010
Bank of Japan Plans Fail to Help Yen
The Bank of Japan hoped that news it would begin emergency easing would bring down the value of the yen. The central bank was disappointed as its plan brought nearly no reaction. The yen traded just below 85. The problem with Japan’s plan is that it has received no support from the central banks of [...]
Internet TV Battle Heats Up
It’s hard to find a TV network, cable and satellite TV, video rental, telecom carrier, or even a mega-retailer that is not interested in streaming video over the Internet. The acquisition of NBC Universal from General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) by Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ:CMCSA) might have been the first shot fired in the battle, but it [...]
Investors Ponder Telecom After Considering Cisco-Skype (CSCO, EBAY, GOOG, VZ, T, VG, CALL)
Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) wants to buy Skype, or so says TechCrunch. When you consider that Cisco’s Telepresence is still in the emerging phase, suddenly there could be a very robust platform. Skype has filed for its IPO already after Ebay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) sold roughly 70% of Skype. Skype claims more than 500 million [...]
ETF and Mutual Fund Flows: Apples and Oranges
This lead story in the New York Times by Graham Bowley suggests that small investors are “fleeing the stock market:” Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year… But on the same day an LA Times story, “Still in stocks? You’re hardly alone” [...]
Coffee, Tea, & US Treasurys
When the price of something goes up and people still want to buy it, economists call that inelastic demand. For example, I like coffee. Okay, I’ll come clean – I need coffee, at least in the morning. It would take a fairly sharp price increase to reduce my demand for coffee. But at some price [...]
Dell and HP Chess Game Continues
When Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) announced on August 16th that it would acquire storage provider 3Par Inc. (NYSE:PAR) for $18/share in cash, the deal didn’t attract a lot of scrutiny because it made sense given Dell’s success in building its large enterprise business. When Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ) made a counter-offer of $24/share a few days later, [...]
Gold Has a Big Second Quarter
Demand for gold rose sharply in the second quarter of 2010 according to the World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends report. Demand for the shiny stuff rose 36% year-over-year in the second quarter, from 770 metric tons to 1,050 metric tons. Supply grew by 17%, from 963 metric tons in the second quarter of 2009 [...]
Buy and HOLDR? A Decade of Poor Performance
Pretend for a moment that on a late summer day a decade ago you had this great “buy and hold” investment idea. “I know,” you said to yourself, ”I’ll invest a few hundred dollars in each of the world’s 50 largest companies and hold them for at least a decade.” So how would you have [...]
New Home Sales Don’t Hold Down Homebuilders
The report on July new home sales from the U.S. Commerce Department looks like a rehash of the latest report from the National Association of Realtors’ report on sales of existing homes. New home sales plummeted to the slowest rate on record and prices were at their lowest level in more than 6-1/2 years. But [...]
The Yen Threatens Japanese Recovery
Earlier this week, the Nikkei broke below 9,000, a key support level, for the first time in 15 months. Meanwhile, the yen reached a 15-year high against the U.S. dollar. The Japanese government was concerned enough that Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said the movement of his nation’s currency had been “one sided” recently. This was, [...]
