Crestmont Research The Diplomat Magazine China has made dramatic economic progress during the last five years, weathering the global financial crisis and becoming the world’s largest exporter and second largest economy, surpassing Japan. By James A. Dorn for The Diplomat November 29, 2013 Facebook0 Twitter0 Google+0 LinkedIn0 China has made dramatic economic progress during the last five years, weathering the global financial crisis and becoming the world’s largest exporter and second largest economy, surpassing Japan. China’s authoritarian development model appears robust, generating high real growth year after year. The flaws in China’s development model will become increasingly evident as inflationary pressures build, differences in rural-urban living standards mount, a growing middle class demands an end to censorship, capital controls narrowly limit investment alternatives, land rights are strictly curtailed, and freedom of movement is infringed upon by a draconian internal passport system. James A.
Jesse's Café Américain My Investing Notebook Michael Pettis Beyond Brics China: first global “megatrader” since the British empire China’s weak March trade numbers today rattled markets and raised new questions about both the extent of the economy’s slowdown and just how reliable any trade data ex Beijing is in itself these days, given the huge distortions seen last year due to over-invoicing. But then all of that is testament to the fact that China’s monthly trade data are, for good reason, the most closely watched of their kind in the world today. Why? Standard Chartered offers a good reason in a new report, also out today: China is the first “megatrader” the world has seen since the fall of the British empire. Continue reading » Parsing the top 10 risks for EM investors There is no doubt that emerging market (EM) investors have cheered up considerably of late. The bellwether stock index, the MSCI EM index, is up 9.6 per cent from its low on February 5. China’s first junk bond default highlights risk China’s ZTE gets a shot of First Lady power
The Big Picture Alphaville Elsewhere on Wednesday, - The real problem with HFT. - Summers’ inverse Say’s Law. - The impolitic wisdom of Simon Kuznets. - Buying the future. Markets: Japanese stocks suffered as hopes for monetary stimulus faded, but the rest of Asia-Pacific was upbeat after Wall Street staged a rally. We all know the role played by the vendor financing feedback loop of hell in dotcom bubble mark 1. Quickly summarised, tech equipment suppliers became overly dependent on sales to internet startups funded through vendor financing, a situation which saw them lending money to companies with dubious track-records for the purpose of buying equipment directly back from them. Nevertheless, it’s still a model replicated on a consumer level in the west, whether it’s through car company lending money to customers so that they can buy their cars or sofa company loans for purchases of sofas. Read more If you’re short the rupee* the past few months have been uncomfortable. From Goldman, for example: Read more Read more
Weblog and Essays Let's Clear Up One Confusion About Bitcoin November 3, 2017 If bitcoin can be converted into fiat currencies at a lower transaction cost than the fiat-to-fiat conversions made by banks and credit card companies, it's a superior means of exchange. One of the most common comments I hear from bitcoin skeptics goes something like this:Bitcoin isn't real money until I can buy a cup of coffee with it. In other words, bitcoin fails the first of the two core tests of "money": that it is a means of exchange and a store of value. The confusion here is the same one that plagues the conventional understanding of the foreign exchange markets: people confuse exchange and convertibility, which are both flows, i.e. transactions. Here's an illustration of the difference. Let's say Hipster Coffee Bar accepts payment in bitcoin (BTC) for a cup of coffee. The Hipster Coffee Bar branch in Mexico converts the BTC into pesos, the branch in Thailand converts the BTC into baht, and so on around the world.
International ETFs | ETF MarketPro Investment case US Stocks When you step back and take a look at US Equity performance for this decade, you pretty quickly come to the conclusion that there's gotta be a better way. After the dot com bubble burst, the S&P 500 has taken its time to climb back to year 2000 levels, finally getting there in October 2007. Then, just when we thought we were above water, along comes 2008. So the 2000s have not been kind to US stocks. International Stocks Over the same time period international stocks also bottomed out in 1993, but the recovery for international was faster and went beyond Year 2000 levels. So if you haven't been in international stocks, chances are you are still looking back fondly on your account statements from 8 years ago. But what about the downward slide we are seeing in 2008? Single Year Performance In this chart, you see a of summary single year performance over a 10 year period for 3 international markets and the S&P 500. Overview Organization Framework Top 6 International ETFs 1.
Silberzahn & Jones China has long been touted as the next leading power, and for many it seems that the question is no longer if China will overtake the US but when. Recently, however, a number of dissenting opinions have started to be heard. Economists point to the strong imbalances in China’s economy; political analysts observe that the political and social structure is unstable; human right activists warn of increasing censorship and repression, while historians suggest that, like the USSR in the late 80s, China’s communist regime has run its course and is on an unsustainable path. Indeed, “hard landing” stories about China have started to appear, by Roubini or by Gordon Chang. Like any such debate, or lack of debate (instead, it is a series of proclamations), positions are often taken being selective about facts, based on false analogies, shallow extrapolations, ideology, or just plain ignorance. The first choice is to select the analogs, ie what we should compare China to. Like this: Like Loading...