Category: Finance & Investing
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Stubborn China and the impending currency war
An excellent column from Martin Wolf about fighting the currency wars with stubborn China. China has become the nation with largest current account surplus in the world. It amassed more than $2.5tn reserves which are growing at $300bn per year. The impact on other high income countries, notably US, who are net importers of capital is devastating. Major economies are…
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The New American Normal – NYTimes
Op-Ed Columnist – The New American Normal – A great column in NY Times about the uncertainty facing the US economy today. Clearly, there is no new direction emerging from the current economic trends. No one is sure where the unemployment is heading or whether there is a need for further stimulus or not. The…
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SEC on Dark Pools
It looks imminent that SEC will clamp down on the dark part of the of dark pools. As of 2009 there are more than 30 dark pools operating in US markets. Together they add up to 7.2% of trading volume. The concern that SEC has is that actionable IOIs (indication of interest) are not in…
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Equity allocation in US household wealth
It is interesting to track how the equity allocation trend is changing in US with the underlying changes in demographics. Although last year’s economic crisis (It feels nice to say that in retrospection!) would have pushed households to move away from equities the longer term demographic trends will have even bigger impact. The charts show…
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What's up with Gold?
Gold is riding high at $1200/oz on the back of high profile purchases by the central banks in India and Russia. The gold reserves as proportion of total forex reserves is less than 5% for both countries – so no big deal. But there is a theory making rounds that this may be the beginning…