World Share MarketA stock market means a market where the trading of company shares, stocks, and bonds take place on a large scale along with issuing and redemption of the securities and other financial instruments. Shares offered by companies,pooled investment products like unit trusts and bonds are the securities that are generally traded in share markets. In order to trade certain security in the market, the security has to be listed in it.Global share market participants range from small individual stock investors to large-scale hedge fund investors.One type of stock market may include traders going for verbal bids, while the…
Life Insurance
ECB Outlook: It’s Time to Cut Interest Rates
In the days leading up to the European Central Bank’s rate decision on July 3rd, 2008, many political leaders around Europe publically pleaded for the ECB to leave interest rates unchanged. Among others, French President Sarkozy voiced the opinion that the recent rise in inflation was due primarily to the spike in commodity prices.¹ As such, Sarkozy suggested that though hiking interest rates would not really help in lowering inflation, it would adversely impact growth. The ECB went ahead and hiked interest rates anyway, and looking back now, a month and a half later, we can begin to asses…
Life Insurance
U.S. recession seen likely to go through summer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A gauge of future economic activity fell for the third month in a row in March, showing the recession may persist through the summer, a nonprofit research group said on Monday. Reuters – A man stops as he looks for a job during a job fair at the Miami Dade College … The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index declined 0.3 percent last month, steeper than the 0.2 percent analysts polled by Reuters were expecting. It also fell 0.2 percent in February, which was originally reported as a 0.4 percent drop.”The recession may continue through the summer,…
Facebook
Odds Of Facebook Governance Vote Counting: Next to Nothing
When Facebook announced the “Facebook Governance” voting back in February, Mark Zuckerberg hailed it as an “unprecedented” effort to involve users in the development of the terms of service. Almost two months later the voting has finally begun and around 260,000 individuals have voted on which terms to use. Within one week, 30 percent of the site’s population, or 60,000,000 individuals, will have to vote in order for the decision to stick. In other words, the vote is more symbolic than an actual vote.
Not All Users Will Be Active This Week
So why do we say that this vote…
Facebook
Top Facebook Applications See 25 Percent Drop In Traffic Since Redesign
If you thought the last redesign spelled the death of the Facebook platform, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Last July Facebook released their new design and within a matter of months, widget applications had become a thing of the past. A few of those applications were able to withstand the changes but there’s a grim picture being painted weeks after Facebook’s latest redesign.
While LivingSocial and Quiz Monster have become leading developers thanks to the recent changes, many top developers like Slide, RockYou, Familylink.com, and a number of others are getting punished. Many of the top applications have seen a…
Cisco Systems
Status Update 02/28/09: 3rd Attempt Scheduled
Just a quick note to say that I was able to secure a lab date for May 28th at RTP! For those of you still trying to get a date before the changes in July, stay diligent and keep looking. Seats are being dropped all the time. I kept looking throughout the [...]
Forex
The British Pound Approaches Support
The British Pound has been selling off rather sharply over the past 2 months but is now approaching a significant area of support. If you measure the rally from July 2001 to the high made in 2007, you will see that we are now at the 50% retracement level. The Pound is also approaching the low that was made in 2005 which turned out to be a major support area. It will be interesting to see how this
Forex
Japanese Yen Gains On The Euro
Since last July the Japanese Yen has been one of the strongest currencies when compared to the Swiss, Euro and British Pound. Above we have a chart which shows the relationship of the Yen vs. the Euro. You’ll notice that the downtrend has been broken. This means that the Yen is now the stronger currency with the Euro being the weaker. The top chart is a weekly chart of the Japanese Yen and in my
