A lot of smart traders are putting greater emphasis and focus on Asia.
More Than Half Of The World's Population Lives Inside This Circle.
Take a look at this simple, but eye-opening, take on global population distribution.
There are more Muslims in the circle than outside of it. There are more Hindus in the circle than outside of it. There are more Buddhists in the circle than outside of it. Moreover, the circle pulls all of this off while being mostly water and including the most sparsely populated country on earth (Mongolia).
The EU unemployment rate set a new all-time high of 12.2 percent. But it's the youth unemployment crisis that's truly terrifying. In Spain, unemployment surged past 56 percent, and Greece now leads the rich world with an astonishing 62.5 percent.
According to the Atlantic, youth unemployment is bad for all the obvious reasons ,
including the big loss to future productivity and earnings. But Europe's
youth unemployment is strange, because we've never seen a generation
*this educated* also be this unemployed. For example, nearly 40 percent of Spain's
20-and early-30-somethings are college educated.
When did playing 'smart' start to mean that you were a cheater?
Recently, Apple got grilled for its low-tax strategy. While not every business can, or does, copy that approach … many do.
Here is a look at what S.&P. 500 companies paid in corporate income taxes — federal, state, local and foreign — from 2007 to 2012, according to S&P Capital IQ.
At its core, our democratic process and legal system were designed to take care of issues like these over time.
Likewise, our free market system will adjust to level the playing field. There is game theory in government. If you make things too difficult, the smart players find a different game to play.
Meanwhile, other countries certainly are incented to find a way to make to entice big players to play on their turf … and creating a tax haven is one way to do it.
Going back to Apple, on one hand I'm sure the government wishes they had paid more taxes, but on the other hand I'm sure they are glad that Apple didn't move away and take their tax dollars with them.
As you have probably surmised, this happens on many levels and in many places.
In trading, for example, statistical arbitrage was once an easy way to make money (if you knew how to do it). The reason was that relatively few people knew how to do it, so there was limited competition (and fairly easy winnings). Then, as the success of the early winners signaled others into the game, it got harder to win. People started programming computers to find mis-priced assets and the discrepancies filled themselves in moments. As you might guess, many traders who have tried statistical arbitrage have moved on to other things.
Identifying inefficiencies (or loopholes) in a system is potentially good for everyone involved. It benefits the person who identifies the inefficiency, because they get paid. Yet, it is also good for the system because it identifies weaknesses or areas that need additional attention, oversight, or regulation. And it provides a feedback loop allowing the parties to course-correct and play smarter. Over time, this often results in real progress.
Are you more worried that China is cyber-snooping on us … or that the American government admitted doing it too?
When I travel on business in a foreign country, I assume that my
computer use is monitored. Likewise, many organizations are now
prohibiting production laptops, iPads, or other personal electronic
devices from traveling to certain countries. Instead, the users given a
clean travel device and instructions on certain types of communications
and activities to simply forgo until they're back in the country.
But here we are safe … right?
Many
years ago, my father told me he assumed that people could see what he
did and hear what he said. With that in mind, he told me, it wasn't hard
to act accordingly.
These days, it is hard for me to imagine
someone being genuinely surprised to learn that nation-states monitor
telephone conversations, email, or Internet usage.
Nonetheless,
it is somewhat surprising that digital privacy hasn't been more a higher
profile ("real") social issue in our society.
On some level,
people are becoming desensitized to 'sharing' … For example, look how
much personal information people freely give out every day
via social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and other social
media sites.
The rules of engagement will get more clear as we
start to hash out the laws and protections here in America, and the
conventions and accords that will at least superficially guide global
behavior.
You may have heard that the highest-paid employee in each state is usually the football coach at the largest state school. Don't believe everything you read … Sometimes it is the basketball coach.
Remember, though, the bulk of this coaching money—especially at the big football schools—is paid out of the revenue that the teams generate (not your tax dollars).
It is not limited to big State schools. I went to Duke, which is a small liberal arts college. Their basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski (better known as 'Coach K'), took home about $10MM. Good work if you can get it.
A year ago, investing in Apple and Facebook seemed like 'smart' choices.
Back in February 2012, when Facebook announced its plans to go public, the tech world went crazy. The hype was enormous over what many believed would become one of the biggest IPOs of all time.
On May 18, Facebook started trading at $38, giving the company an implied valuation of $104 billion. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a sure shot investment, hasn't turned out that way.
On its first trading day, the stock closed just above its IPO price but only thanks to the company’s underwriters, led by Morgan Stanley, who bought heavily to keep the stock above its offering price.
The next week, Facebook’s stock began crashing, and it did so until it hit rock bottom at a price of $17.73 on September 4th. Those who had bought shares at the offering price of $38 had lost 54 percent of their initial investment in less than four months.
After Facebook’s biggest lockup expiration in November did not trigger the feared fire sale, Facebook’s stock slowly started to recover. Carried by decent results and the introduction of mobile advertising products, the stock gradually climbed back up; but as of yesterday it was still closer to its all-time low than it is to its IPO price.
Those who bought Facebook shares at $38 are still down 30 percent, and there are countless investments that would have yielded better results over the past year.
Remarkably, even AOL and Yahoo, both Internet companies of the first generation, which had already been pronounced dead, would have been much better investment choices than the much hyped Facebook IPO.
