Category: Finance

Stocks Fall on Concern Japan’s Quake to Hurt Growth; Treasuries, Euro Gain

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Global stocks slid, following the biggest drop in Tokyo since 2008, and Treasuries gained amid concern Japan’s biggest earthquake on record will hurt economic growth. The euro rallied as European leaders agreed to expand the region’s rescue fund.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 0.6 percent to 1,296.39 at 4 p.m. in New York, paring a drop of as much as 1.4 percent as energy shares rebounded. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average plunged 6.2 percent, with about $285 billion in equity value erased from the Japanese market. Ten-year Treasury yields lost 4 basis points to 3.37 percent. Oil reversed losses after dipping below $99 a barrel. The euro rose against 15 of 16 major peers.

Companies that operate nuclear power plants or supply the fuel helped lead stocks lower, with Entergy Corp. down 4.9 percent in New York and Cameco Corp. tumbling 13 percent in Toronto, while natural gas rallied amid speculation that the atomic-energy industry will suffer as Japan works to contain radiation at damaged reactors. Tiffany & Co. and Coach Inc. lost more than 5.2 percent for the biggest declines in the S&P 500 on concern sales of luxury goods in Japan will slow.

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Currency Investing: Where to Turn When the Dollar, Euro and Pound Let You Down

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If you’re looking to short Western currencies, one possibility is to short them against emerging-market currencies, such as the Chinese yuan, the Indian rupee, the Brazilian real and the Russian ruble.

India and Brazil are running large government budget deficits, in spite of their amazing booms, and both currencies are highly vulnerable to a sudden monetary tightening or a downturn in the global economy.

China, tightly manages its currency. There is certainly potential for the yuan to rise, provided that China maintains its present policy of allowing fairly free inflows of foreign capital while barring outflows of its own savers’ money.

Canada and Australia are reasonably well-run countries with large commodity exposures. So they should do well as long as the current commodity boom continues.

In the Asia-Pacific region, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore all have superbly-run economies that are structurally sound.

A currency portfolio that contains those five currencies – the South Korean won, the new Taiwan dollar, the Singapore dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Australian dollar – could thus be relied upon to maintain its value better than most.

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Oil could reach $300 a Barrel

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If the entire Middle East falls under radical control – we could be looking at $300-a-barrel oil and pump prices of $9.57 a gallon. Definitely a stunner.

U.S. oil prices yesterday (Tuesday) hit their highest levels since September 2008 as investors reacted to fears that Middle East tumult would spread from Libya to such key Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as Iran and Saudi Arabia. But never fear: Even if the Middle East melts down and oil prices soar, there are moves you can make to hedge away your risk.

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Gold prices will hit $2,500 in the near future

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Gold prices will hit $2,500 in the near future.
Government Pushing Gold in China, although it’s rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Chinese government is encouraging their citizens to buy physical gold bullion as part of an effort to cool further investment in the red-hot real estate and housing sectors.

“Unlike the property market, investment in the gold sector is something the government is encouraging,” ICBC’s Zhou told Reuters.

“There is frantic demand for non-physical gold investments. We issued 1 billion yuan ($151 million) worth of gold-price-linked term deposits in 2010, but we managed to sell the same amount over just a few days in January this year,” Zhou said, adding that investors will deposit more than 5 billion yuan ($759 million) in gold-linked accounts this year…

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Baby boom fuels gold rush

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Young Chinese couples believed that people born during these years would be blessed with tremendous good fortune and luck. The current baby boom is expected to last until 2015 and will see China having more than 100 million children under the age of 6 every year. In 2009 alone,…..

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