The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) started out as a credit crisis. In simple terms, the credit crisis was a situation whereby banks stopped lending, credit markets stopped operating and the availability of money to many businesses (and individuals) became so scarce that those most exposed became insolvent. The survival of the biggest banks around the …
Monthly Archive: August 2010
pub-5731955080761916
Aug 30
Simple Economic Update
The month of July saw the return of strong sharemarkets both in Australia and overseas with the first positive monthly performance for four months. This return of confidence was largely due to investors reacting positively to the European Banking stress tests where 92% of European banks tested passed. Alongside of the good sharemarket performance was …
pub-5731955080761916
Aug 27
Jonathan Pain slams fund manager benchmarking
Apparently Mr Pain is of the belief that equity managers should have benchmarks that are more aligned with their client’s needs and therefore, as far as I can tell, have more of a cash plus or absolute return benchmark. Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted the report but anyway… …whilst on face value this sounds quite reasonable as …
pub-5731955080761916
Aug 25
Fear Creeping Up and may be appearing in Oz
Source: Bloomberg After another down day in US Equities markets we can see the VIX is starting to creep up…it increased overnight by a little more than 7% and currently stands at 27.5. If the VIX is one thing it is certainly volatile. Whilst the chart shows that over the last 12 months the VIX …
Aug 23
Australian Government Bond Yield Curve – August 2010
Source : RBA The above chart shows the Australian Government Bond Yield curve the day after each of the RBA’s interest rate increases this year (i.e. 4 March, 8 April, and 6 May), the end of the financial year and through to last Friday. Since 8 April the yield curve has continued to flatten suggesting …
Aug 23
Interesting Market Stat from Paul Krugman
The link to his blog is here…anyway…the stat is… One thing you sometimes hear is that the game will be up when the ratings agencies downgrade U.S. debt. I wonder how many of the people saying this know that Moody’s and S&P downgraded Japanese debt in 2002, with Moody’s actually putting it below Botswana and …
Aug 21
I’m reconsidering my business card strategy
I currently have three business cards depending on which hat I’m wearing…this guy has it all sorted…click here Send article as PDF
Aug 20
The often forgotten risk of active funds management
On Wednesday of this week (18 August), the portfolio management team of 452 Capital announced to Colonial that they are calling it quits (at an undisclosed date) and will no longer be managing their Australian Equity Funds. So of course, the Research Houses downgrade their ratings to Sell, Redeem, Hold etc (we moved to Sell) …
Aug 05
Advice about Advisers from the Reformed Broker
I love following other’s blogs and the Reformed Broker is one of them. At the time of writing his latest post provides some “free advice to the Hollywood set when working with an adviser” and I lay these points out for you below (I hope he doesn’t mind but please check out his blog…its excellent …
Aug 04
RBA Rates stay on hold – may stay that way for a while
The current setting of monetary policy is resulting in interest rates to borrowers around their average levels of the past decade. With growth likely to be close to trend, inflation close to target and the global outlook remaining somewhat uncertain, the Board judged this setting of monetary policy to be appropriate. This was the final …