As investments go, India has really great long-term prospects. No doubt about it. Indeed, India has enjoyed very decent growth rates for the last decade, pulling many of its people out of poverty in the process. But investing in India…
Category: Investment
Home Prices Near a Double Dip!
With the latest data pointing to a double-dip in home prices, it has become increasingly clear that the wobbly economic recovery won’t be getting any help from the housing sector.
Existing home sales in February sank 9.6% from the previous month, while prices fell 5.2% to a median of $156,000, the lowest since April 2002. Existing homes comprise 90% of the housing market.
Meanwhile, new homes sales in February plummeted to an annual rate of 250,000, far below the norm of 700,000 and a level half that of 1963, when the United States had 120 million fewer residents than its current population of 310 million. The median sales price plunged 8.9% year-over-year.
But the worst news came with last Tuesday’s release of Standard and Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index. The index average of 20 major housing markets in the United States fell 3.1% in January, putting it within 1.1% of its April 2009 low. A drop below that level would establish a new post-peak low – the dreaded “double-dip.”
10 Stocks off to a Good Year
Neither the multifaceted disaster in Japan nor the domino-like progression of political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa has prevented the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ($INX) from climbing 13.4% in the first quarter of 2011. And some stocks performed as if we were living in the best of times.
Among the index’s top 10 performers was CB Richard Ellis Group (CBG), a commercial real estate company that offers services to tenants, owners, lenders and investors.
The Los Angeles company’s stock climbed 30.4% in the first quarter, helped by better-than-expected fourth-quarter financial results and an improving outlook for commercial properties.
CB Richard Ellis recently raised $800 million through term loans to purchase the real estate investment unit of ING (ING).
Some analysts think the share price has limited upside potential after soaring 68.5% in the past 12 months. Yet the commercial real estate market, considered by some “the next shoe to drop,” is turning around faster than many observers expected.
Start investing with just $100
Start investing with just $100!! I’ll let you in on a little secret about investing: Start investing: How new investors can begin with $100 © MedioImages/Corbis
Extra3/5/2010 4:00 PM ET
Start investing with just $100
Faced with a dizzying array of investment options, deciding where to put your money can be daunting. But starting small doesn’t mean it won’t pay off big.
It’s not nearly as hard as you think.
However, the fact that most people do it badly might lead a reasonable person to believe the opposite.
How badly? A study by Dalbar, a Boston investment research firm, found that from 1988 to 2008, when the S&P 500 Index ($INX) grew at an average annual rate of 11.8%, individual investors in equity mutual funds saw average returns of 4.5% a year, before taxes.
Stock exchange mergers will do nothing to help us invest internationally
The NYSE Euronext Group (NYSE: NYX) and Deutsche Boerse AG are attempting to merge and the London Stock Exchange Group PLC and TMX Group Inc. are also getting together.
The deals are the latest in a consolidation cycle among exchange operators that has accelerated over the past decade. In 2010, Singapore Exchange Ltd. (PINK: SPXCY) agreed to an $8.3 billion takeover of Australia’s ASX Ltd (PINK: ASXF) to create Asia’s fourth-largest stock exchange. And IntercontinentalExchange Inc. (NYSE: ICE) purchased the Britain-based Climate Exchange PLC (PINK: CXCHY) that same year for $597 million…