Young and Invested

Memory of a Crisis

A few prominent investment banks wiped, a crashed housing market, oil prices plummeted, investors running from the market bears, people hoarding the last remaining gold, American automakers in serious peril … sounds like a financial hurricane went through in 2009, doesn’t it?
Looking back at it now, one question still glows in embers – who was [...]

When Correlations Collide

If you pick up any finance textbook, it’ll tell you that international diversification is good. International diversification is good because the returns on stocks in different stock markets, in different regions, are supposed to be un-correlated, hence falling markets in one region can be offset by growth in other regions. The key phrase in that [...]

Discount Rate Past not Predictor of Future

A few months ago, we were warned by the Fed that the borrowing rate will increase with “greater force than is customary”… then they waited a few long months to act on the warning. So should we, as investors, be surprised? Not really, we expected it. But in order to appreciate the effects of the [...]

Is the United States an “Emerging Market”?

When finance professionals learn about investing in the emerging markets, they are taught to look out for certain key statistics that can provide indications of whether those markets are suitable candidates for investment.
Some of the main indicators looked at include the country’s:

Budget Deficit to GDP: A general guideline is that ratios greater than 4% indicate [...]

It’s Time To Accept The C$ At Parity

It has been a long time coming, but investors need to start seeing that the C$ belongs at parity to the US$, if not even higher. The C$ first breached parity in late 2007 when it became stronger than the US$ and in subsequent weeks literally skyrocketed to 1.0722 as speculators in the C$-US$ trade [...]

SEC Traffic Light – Green if Disclosure is Green

As our civilization moves into the future, future generations will have their minds boggled at how our attitude towards Earth was anything but mindful. Luckily, we are standing at a cornerstone of a green revolution where organizations and individuals are beginning to internalize the right attitude to preserve our home; the SEC is fortunately one [...]

When PIGS Can Fly

And so, as expected by most, the major Western European economies are talking about what they can do to resolve Greece’s fiscal problems. Contagion has already caused anxiety to spread to the fiscally “un-sound” European nations. Specifically, the PIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. PIGS is an acronym that was first used by in [...]

Is this time any different?

Another month, another year, another attempt at a correction and another inevitable bounce. The chart below highlights the sentiments carried by many investors.

All the believers of the mantra that “Nothing ever goes up in a straight line”, have been forced to challenge their beliefs when every attempt at a correction in July, August and [...]

Will Stock History Repeat in 2010?

The S&P500 index has never declined in the second year of a bull market. This is applicable to all individual sectors in the S&P as well, which have never placed an overall decline in the second year of a bull market. To elaborate more on this statistic, over the last half-century, the S&P 500 gained [...]

The New Mantras for 2010

Just as in 2009, in the new year, we’ve had a flood of predictions on what the major trends, movements and opportunities are going to be, looking forward to 2010. There are so many opinions that you can probably find one that corresponds to your exact views. Only time will tell whether any of these [...]