The game show Let’s Make a Deal has got nothing on Wall Street in 2015. According to a July 14th report from investment services firm EY, mergers and acquisitions activityin the first half of 2015 was the strongest in recent memory. That said, EY is projecting the second half of the year will see even more…
The Bitcoin is one of several crypto currencies being used throughout the world. Its popularity has been questioned since its introduction just 18 months ago and its price has zoomed up as high as $1000 and fallen as low as $250. Has it now become another safe haven currency to be used during financial upheavals across…
Last week’s five trading days were earnings-heavy for banking stocks. Effective cost-control measures including reorganization and absence of high legal expenses reaped benefits for banks outpacing the Zacks Consensus Estimates. These ultimately led to positive share price movement. Further, with the economy gaining strength, consumer and commercial loan demand was on an upswing. However, the…
Since its inception, critics of the eurozone have been pointing to its incomplete nature — everyone uses the same money but keeps their own national budgets and tax regimes — and speculating that this “fatal flaw” would doom the system. Other observers, however, gave the euro’s creators more (Machiavellian) credit and assumed the initial version…
If investors had any apprehension about Goldman Sachs (GS), that fear should have dissolved early Thursday as the investment-banking firm released its quarterly earnings. Here are some of the highlights from the report: The bank had earnings per share of $1.98 Revenue of $9.07 billion, -0.5% year over year, but beating the consensus by $290 million…
In the short-term the market doesn’t know crap! Despite revealing important news that shows their business prospects are actually improving, irrational fear has driven these stocks to oversold territory. Buy these two leading stocks today to lock in great yields and growth at discount prices. One of the questions I get a lot is whether a…
I spent the last two weeks in Boston at the NBER Summer Institute where I learned about a lot of interesting new economic research. Here I describe a new paper by Jae Song, David Price, Fatih Guvenen, Nicholas Bloom, and Till von Wachter on the role of firm-specific factors in rising income inequality. These researchers constructed…
EUR/USD The EUR/USD pair finally broke down below the 1.09 level, which is what I thought needed to happen in order for the pair to fall further. It appears that people don’t trust the whole “solution”, as we have seen this time and time again. With this, I feel that this pair is looking to…
Gold Fields Limited (GFI – Snapshot Report) has announced its production and cost guidance for the second quarter of 2015. The company expects the second quarter to be better than the previous one. Gold Fields estimates attributable gold production in the second quarter to be about 535,000 ounces (oz) compared with 501,000 oz in the first quarter. All-in…
The global capital markets have entered a new phase. The transition has partly been obscured by the crisis in Greece and the sharp fall in Chinese shares. It is the policy response to those events that are key. Similarly, the policy response to Great Financial Crisis differed, so it is hardly surprising that after a lag,…
