Big media has been beating the drum that if Detroit built more fuel-efficient vehicles, buyers would flock back to their showrooms. But there is an inherent lie in this line of thinking. And if investors buy into this lie, they could end up on the wrong side of the trade when it comes to considering the major American auto makers any time in the future.
While China made headlines with a historic interest rate cut this week, the World Bank weighed in with a gloomy prediction about China that received scant coverage. For emerging-market investors who missed the story, the World Bank’s assessment of China’s economic performance in 2009 could reshape their strategy for portfolio allocation.
One of our most reliable indicators about emerging markets shows that investors may have a real slog ahead of them in the coming years. In the past, we’ve used cell-phone sales in growing economies as means of measuring the prospects for investments. Cell phones show how much disposable income is available, in addition to reflecting the entrepreneurial spirit that creates a healthy middle class.
Projections for high-tech hardware makers are looking grim for the coming years. As a result, investors with shares in semiconductor companies or PC makers would be wise to eat their losses - unless they have the stomach to grind it out perhaps into 2010 or 2011.
In the age of the sound-bite, when one of green energy’s high-profile advocates backs away from a $2-billion project, you know that alternative energy is on life support.
While no one was looking the Bush Administration quietly changed regulations that would allow oil companies to extract shale from public lands. The U.S. Department of the Interior made both a land grab and a regulatory grab for enormous swaths of shale that have previously been off limits.
China’s President Hu Jintao just concluded on a victorious trip Havana on Tuesday - expanding a trade pact that could divert commodities from open spot markets.
After working in Silicon Valley for 15 years, I developed this theory called “The Myth of Empowerment.” While the Myth of Empowerment wasn’t intended to act as a qualitative indicator for stock picking, it turns out that it could easily be applied to the decline of Yahoo (Nasdaq:YHOO) - with the fallout inflicting damage on Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT).
As commodity prices continue to plunge, investors watch their favorite charts, tables and graphs in awe and dread.
Tight credit, shrinking consumer buying and the falling real estate prices have commodity investors wondering, when will it turn around?
To find an answer to that question, we look at another indicator to help determine the future of commodity prices. It’s not one most investors think of in trying to predict which way commodities will go.
But if you look at its current moves, you’ll probably draw the same conclusion that we did: commodities will be ugly for a while.
The indicator I’m referring to is Fitch Ratings - the company that provides so-called credit opinions on companies, markets.
Over the past week or so, Fitch Ratings…