Finance world!

Every Breath Bernanke Takes

2008-04-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

Normally I wouldn't post this.... but this one I could not resist!Have fun...

Why Indians are interested in Jaguar and Land Rover?

2007-12-18T06:55:00.000-08:00

Reports have been circulating lately that two Indian conglomerates are biding for U.K premium auto brands Jaguar and Land Rover. Tata Motors (TTM), India's largest private sector group with 98 companies and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M - MAHMF), one of the top manufacturers of farm equipment in the world have shown interest in biding for the brands. Jaguar and Land Rover labor union leaders in U.K

Why China may not dump USD reserves?

2007-11-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

Couple of reasons why China may not dump their significant investments in US treasuries in a hurry.First... this may sound strange.... A comment from a senior Chinese official indicated that China may need to take advantage of the stronger currencies (read Euro) to achieve better returns for their huge foreign exchange reserves. These comments led currency markets to dump dollars and move to Euro

Index based mutual funds

2007-10-31T10:03:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Clements of Wall Street Journal has posted a very good analysis of ETFs vs Index based mutual funds, I would recommend everyone to check it out. He rightly points out many that for your regular investing into preselected asset classes mutual funds are far better.

Wealth Of Nations

2007-10-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

The meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors from G7 countries has showcased the growing debate between relatively slow growing G7 vs high growth developing countries.One discussion is about the voting rights of various countries at IMF and how that should be updated to reflect the growing economic might of BRIC . Emerging economy countries including Brazil are threatening to

Emerging markets: Political and Market Risk

2007-08-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

Eurasia group has released their annual index calculating the political risk among emerging market economies giving Hungary the top score and Pakistan plagued by Islamic fundamentalism and political unrest the lowest score. Among the larger countries Brazil has scored the most followed by China, India and Russia in that order.Other countries at the bottom of the list include Valenzuela, Nigeria

iPath India (INP) Premium/Discount

2007-05-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

One subject I did not cover in detail about the INP in my earlier post is premium/discount of this ETN from the net asset value (NAV) or intrinsic value of the assets held. One big advantage of INP compared to IIF (Morgan Stanley India Fund) and IFN (Blackstone India fund) is that with INP one doesn't need to risk the premium/discount issues associated with other ETFs. For e.g. as of this writing

How your next trip to Toy"R"ous affects bond yields

2007-05-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

When you go to ToyRous this week end to buy the latest Little Tikes Endless Adventures Tikes Town for your son or daughter you are not just helping ToyRous with their revenue and profit, in the global connected world your purchase has the potential to affect treasury bond yields!!Most of the toys, electronics and clothing sold in US are imported from Asian countries including China and Japan.

An ETF family tree

2007-05-25T15:10:00.001-07:00

The Bespoke group has a nice ETF family tree that lists all popular US ETFs by style/category such as large, growth, value, fixed Income and commodities.I have been wanting to create one for the international market securities trading in US. This is a great one for US equities.Links: Blog , ETF Family Tree

All you need to know before investing in iPath India ETN:INP

2007-05-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

Does this look like a latest travel offer to fly to India? that is what I thought before I clicked on the ad, it took me to the iPath ETN site promoting Barcleys India exchange traded note.What is an exchange traded note?Exchange traded note as the name suggests is a bond like instrument but trades like a regular stock in the stock exchange. All the iPath ETNs are issued with 30 year maturity and

China's investment company gets down to business

2007-05-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

A post last month talked about the government of China's $400 billion investment company with the purpose of increasing its returns. Well.. their first deal is to invest in Blackstone the US private equity management company that is planning for an IPO in the coming weeks. The $3 billion investment would get Chinese a discount of about 5% from the IPO price.Apparently Blackstone increased their

Merril Lynch survey of the emerging markets

2007-05-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

Merrill Lynch recently surveyed fund managers all over the world about the emerging market trends here are the high lights. Comments are mine!86% of them are upbeat about Brazil and holding positions (they need to be upbeat about their holdings so I wouldn't read too much into this!)43% of them expect better profit growth among emerging market companies in the next 12 months (low but a solid

More than 50% of S&P 500 revenues are from out side US

2007-05-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

Standard and Poor estimates that more than half of the revenue for the companies listed in SP 500 index comes from outside US. I guess this is expected with companies such as Caterpillar, Microsoft and GE included in the index. This ought to be a consideration when deciding the percentage allocation for your domestic equity and foreign equity portions of the portfolio.The foreign revenue does two

Indian stock market outlook

2007-05-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

Indian stock market will be going sideways for the next four to six months according a Wall Street Journal Asia article. Reasons are quite similar to the ones I had posted earlier.- High interest rates- High value of Rupee (around 41 against USD)- High inflation- More money is staying in the banks which earns about 9% savings rateAs I said before, I wouldn't not increase my Indian exposure at

Asset Allocation Vs Trading

2007-05-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

I have spent some time thinking about trading vs asset allocation as a way of managing your money.First off these comments apply only to people who do not manage their money on a full time basis, and I commend people who do manage their money on a full time basis for their courage especially people such as Mike D who has not had a financial career in their prior life.I also commend people who

Monopolizing energy sources in moon!

2007-05-01T11:00:00.001-07:00

Don't we all have enough problems in the world fighting for energy resources on earth. Geopolitics has taken a new angle with countries vying for resources in moon. Russia has accused US that the later is attempting to monopolize resources in moon which apparently is rich in helium-3. Helium-3 can be used in nuclear fusion but is hard to find on Earth.Energia, a Russian company says it will start

Trillion $ Economies

2007-05-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

At the current rate of USD decline every economy will be a trillion $ economy very soon! Credit Sussie took advantage of the media hype around India and points out that India has joined the club based on the latest USD to Indian Rupee exchange rate. With this all BRIC countries are in the trillion $ club if that means anything.In my opinion this is all symbolic, if anything it only supports many

ICICI Bank's hard fall

2007-04-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

ICICI, India's biggest private bank reported earnings increase of 4% to $202.2 million for the fourth quarter. It also reported that it will issue further shares in both Indian and US markets to raise almost $5 billion in new capital to fund growth. The company expects most of the funds to be used for further lending.To put this share offering in perspective the total market cap of ICICI bank is

What is common among France, Brazil, UK & India?

2007-04-27T22:26:00.000-07:00

If someone asks you to name something that connects France, Brazil, UK, India and Bosnia, it may not be an easy question to answer. But there is help from an unlikely place... a steel mill. O.K, it is not one of those old time steel mills, it is called Arcelor-Mittal (NYSE: MT). Indian born entrepreneur Lakshmi Mittal started his career in steel business in India more than three decades ago. On

India's growth engine may slow down

2007-04-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

India's currency, rupee is at all time high trading at 41.24 against the US dollar. This is affecting the revenue of the outsourcing industry which has been the primary growth engine for Indian economy producing a growth of about 9% for the last few years.Most of the $8 billion revenues generated by the outsourcing industry is from US. When the rupee gets stronger Indian companies don't get to

World is less dependent on US

2007-04-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

Another article/research confirms the IMF's view point that world markets (emerging markets specifically) are increasingly less dependent on the US markets.During the two-year period that ended in February, correlation between U.S. and other developed markets was 0.63, according to ING Asset Management. That is a big decline from 2003 to 2005, when they practically moved in lockstep, at 0.93. (

Merrill Lynch survey on markets

2007-04-21T04:04:00.000-07:00

Merrill Lynch Global Securities Research & Economics Group recently conducted a survey of more than 200 funds managers. The results are covered in various press articles.India's economic times reportsThe report is based on a poll of international fund managers. It says that more than 71% of the fund managers have named India as the least preferred destination among BRIC (Brazil Russia India China

IMF possitive about emerging asia

2007-04-21T02:02:00.000-07:00

Most of the economists have concluded that US economy is headed for a slowdown. The question is how much and whether it will plunge into a recession. IMF just released its world economic report, among the lengthly analysis (323 pages) is the effect of US slowdown on emerging economies.The report shows that the emerging markets especially emerging Asia is less dependent on US exports now compared

Weekly country briefing: China

2007-04-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

This is the first in the country briefing series I am starting this week. The idea is to offer readers summary of news on economy, key markets statistics for the last week and other interesting news about the country. I am not planning to go scout for news every week, it will just be based on what I came across during the week.EconomyChina's 1Q Economy Surges 11.1 Percent - Forbes Apr 19th

Emerging market ETF gala continues

2007-04-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

Following up with the iShares filing of several new emerging market ETFs, New York company Xchange-Traded Funds, Inc (yes that is the name of the company!) filed for quite a few new funds focused on emerging markets.Wilder Asian Emerging Markets fund using their index Wilder Asian Emerging Markets Index includes exposure to all major Asian emerging countries including China, India, Indonesia,