Outrage about the $165 million in bonuses paid to executives at AIG may just be the tip of the iceberg. There are many more important concerns in the minds of public that have real ramifications for national policy and for those at the highest levels of politics and finance - reports Forbes.

U.S. taxpayers are being “forced” to accept that those people who brought AIG down should now be rewarded with (exponential) bonuses, just because only they can dis-entangle the mess they have …

Read complete post >>

Financial services firm UBS feels that India is, still, one of the most attractive places in Asia at present, reports the Economic Times of India. In fact, UBS has upgraded India from moderate underweight to overweight as it feels that valuations have improved substantially and that the Indian economy is less affected by the global financial crisis than most other markets. The foreign financial major, however, does expect further weakness in the coming quarters. Among Asia’s leading economies, China remains UBS’ largest …

Read complete post >>

Top-10 fund schemes return over 25% each In 1 year as Sensex loses about 50%…

A touch of gold has done wonders for mutual fund investors in India. Over the past one year, from a group of 925 mutual fund schemes, 10 have given returns of 25% or more. And, these funds are either a gold exchange-traded fund (ETF) or a gilt scheme. Among the top five, four are gold ETFs and one is a gilt fund. Compared to positive returns …

Read complete post >>

HURRAY! INDIA has proved herself once again. After a sweeping win of Indian artists at the Oscars (I am referring to Slumdog Millionaire winning 8 Oscar awards), an Indian bank has now surpassed the till-now global banking major - Citibank - in terms of market capitalization.

According to a report published in The Times of India, Citigroup, with assets worth $1.95 trillion (Rs 9,72,075 crore), now values less than our own the State Bank of India (SBI). On Tuesday morning (at …

Read complete post >>

Zimbabwe’s central bank has today released the new note into circulation in their attempt to battle hyperinflation…

Zimbabwe’s central bank has today launched a $50billion note into circulation, despite the currency being virtually worthless, as per Money.co.uk reports. According to today’s estimates the $50billion note will trade at $1.25 US dollars on the black market and have enough purchase power to buy just two loaves of bread or three newspapers.

Three weeks previous, when the government introduced a $10billion note, the equivalent …

Read complete post >>

There are funds which, while having the potential to give higher returns in the long term, also carry the baggage of high volatility. These particular schemes tend to remain in losses in the short- and even medium-term – that’s longer than some of the other funds – because of aggressive investment strategies. As a result, such schemes are good only if you have the ability to see off the negative returns in your portfolio for a fairly long time. In …

Read complete post >>

As an analyst’s job is to analyse and not forecast, it’s time individuals used common sense approaches for picking stocks

We are going through turbulent times and investors have lost heavily as they had based their investment decisions on forecasts of the so-called experts. Many experts would agree that there are no geniuses in the markets. It’s the media who makes them (experts) or a short spell of luck.

Let’s go back just six months in time. We had practically most of the …

Read complete post >>