31
Where do I find the option to smite somebody with positive or negative karma on this forum? 
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
32
Shares / Barclays Africa Group - BGA
« on: August 22, 2013, 10:20:19 am »
When did BGA list on the JSE, in effect replacing ASA?
Assuming 2 Aug 2013, anybody followed this?
Assuming 2 Aug 2013, anybody followed this?
33
Off topic / Three big trends to replace the BRICS
« on: August 01, 2013, 08:41:59 am »
Commentary: Investing ideas: Tech, Africa, huge corporations
By Matthew Lynn
LONDON (MarketWatch) — When Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neil coined the term BRICS back in 2001, he created one of the most powerful investment themes of the last decade. The group of countries he identified — Brazil, Russia, India and China, with the later addition of South Africa — were fast developing into major economies with the potential to match, and even outstrip the United States, Japan and Germany in the top-tier of industrial powers.
That was a trend that few investors would want to miss out on. And over the following years, dozens of BRIC funds were launched, as people sought to get a share of their turbo-charged growth.
More than a decade later, however, the BRICS are not looking the sure bet they once were. But the one thing we know for sure about the markets is that there is always a big growth story somewhere. Investors need to believe in something.
Why stocks aren’t as cheap as you think
Even as profit growth has slowed for corporate America, stocks still appear to be fairly valued. But Steven Russolillo has a note of caution. Photo: Getty Images.
So what might replace the BRICS? Technology, mega-caps, and Africa are the three most likely candidates — each has the same story of explosive potential growth that the BRICS used to have.
There is little question that the quintet of nations identified by O’Neil as the giants of this century look a lot less robust than they did just a few years ago.
Brazil’s gross domestic product grew by only 1% last year, and it is not expected to grow by more than 2% this year. Riots in the streets suggest that public anger at inequality is rising — and that spells trouble for the future.
Russia’s economy is not expected to grow by any more than 2% this year, even though the oil price, the main driver of its growth, is above $100 a barrel. India does not look in much better shape. Growth has slowed to 4% this year, from 11% two years ago, and inflation is taking off. South Africa grew by only 2.5% last year and may not grow faster than 2% this year.
And China, the biggest of them all, is heading into rougher waters. Growth slowed to 7.8% this year, the first time it has been below 10% in a long time, and there are fears that its economy may crash as it attempts to make the transition from export-driven growth to domestic demand.
China, with its huge population, and industrial dynamism, is still on track to become a major economy. Brazil might be, but it is increasingly open to question. Russia is making far less progress than people hoped; it is struggling to move on from natural resources. And so are India and South Africa — neither looks certain to sustain rapid growth rates.
In reality, the BRICS concept does not stand up to serious scrutiny any more. You can argue about why that is. Maybe they never had the potential that was once assumed. Perhaps they have been hit by the slowdown in the developed world. Or they could be simply experiencing the bumps that are always on every road to development. But there is little doubt that their growth has slowed significantly — and they are hardly star performers anymore.
And yet, the markets always have a big growth theme. For the last decade it was the BRICS. Before that it was the dot-com bubble. Reaching back into the Sixties, it was the Nifty Fifty of huge companies, and in the 1920s it was the radio revolution. Markets are inherently excitable — and they need something to get excited about it. It is part of the psychology of investment to have a big story that turns into a bandwagon.
So what might it be in the decade ahead? Here are three possible mega-themes to replace the BRICS.
First, technology. We have already been through one huge wave of technological change, with the rise of computers, the Internet and smartphones. But perhaps we are only just getting stated? Computing is about to transform some very big industries.
Such as?
July 31, 2013, 6:31 a.m. EDT
By Matthew Lynn
LONDON (MarketWatch) — When Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neil coined the term BRICS back in 2001, he created one of the most powerful investment themes of the last decade. The group of countries he identified — Brazil, Russia, India and China, with the later addition of South Africa — were fast developing into major economies with the potential to match, and even outstrip the United States, Japan and Germany in the top-tier of industrial powers.
That was a trend that few investors would want to miss out on. And over the following years, dozens of BRIC funds were launched, as people sought to get a share of their turbo-charged growth.
More than a decade later, however, the BRICS are not looking the sure bet they once were. But the one thing we know for sure about the markets is that there is always a big growth story somewhere. Investors need to believe in something.
Why stocks aren’t as cheap as you think
Even as profit growth has slowed for corporate America, stocks still appear to be fairly valued. But Steven Russolillo has a note of caution. Photo: Getty Images.
So what might replace the BRICS? Technology, mega-caps, and Africa are the three most likely candidates — each has the same story of explosive potential growth that the BRICS used to have.
There is little question that the quintet of nations identified by O’Neil as the giants of this century look a lot less robust than they did just a few years ago.
Brazil’s gross domestic product grew by only 1% last year, and it is not expected to grow by more than 2% this year. Riots in the streets suggest that public anger at inequality is rising — and that spells trouble for the future.
Russia’s economy is not expected to grow by any more than 2% this year, even though the oil price, the main driver of its growth, is above $100 a barrel. India does not look in much better shape. Growth has slowed to 4% this year, from 11% two years ago, and inflation is taking off. South Africa grew by only 2.5% last year and may not grow faster than 2% this year.
And China, the biggest of them all, is heading into rougher waters. Growth slowed to 7.8% this year, the first time it has been below 10% in a long time, and there are fears that its economy may crash as it attempts to make the transition from export-driven growth to domestic demand.
China, with its huge population, and industrial dynamism, is still on track to become a major economy. Brazil might be, but it is increasingly open to question. Russia is making far less progress than people hoped; it is struggling to move on from natural resources. And so are India and South Africa — neither looks certain to sustain rapid growth rates.
In reality, the BRICS concept does not stand up to serious scrutiny any more. You can argue about why that is. Maybe they never had the potential that was once assumed. Perhaps they have been hit by the slowdown in the developed world. Or they could be simply experiencing the bumps that are always on every road to development. But there is little doubt that their growth has slowed significantly — and they are hardly star performers anymore.
And yet, the markets always have a big growth theme. For the last decade it was the BRICS. Before that it was the dot-com bubble. Reaching back into the Sixties, it was the Nifty Fifty of huge companies, and in the 1920s it was the radio revolution. Markets are inherently excitable — and they need something to get excited about it. It is part of the psychology of investment to have a big story that turns into a bandwagon.
So what might it be in the decade ahead? Here are three possible mega-themes to replace the BRICS.
First, technology. We have already been through one huge wave of technological change, with the rise of computers, the Internet and smartphones. But perhaps we are only just getting stated? Computing is about to transform some very big industries.
Such as?
July 31, 2013, 6:31 a.m. EDT
34
Off topic / Supermoon 23 June 2013
« on: June 23, 2013, 12:33:13 pm »
Market seems moody lately, just as we'll as I'm holidaying
Look out for supermoon 2night, good luck for next week.
Look out for supermoon 2night, good luck for next week.
36
Off topic / I knew this
« on: May 03, 2013, 11:43:01 am »
Science: Money makes you happier
No limit to impact of increased wealth on satisfaction, research finds
By Quentin Fottrell
For those who haven’t won the lottery and have never sold a startup to Yahoo for $30 million, science has long offered a small consolation: At a certain point, earning more money won’t make you happier. But new research debunks such feel-good claims.
There’s no end to how much happier money can make you, according to research to be published in the May 2013 edition of “American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings” by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, professors at the University of Michigan. “The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise,” the study — Subjective Well-Being and Income: Is There Any Evidence of Satiation? — concludes. “If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it.”
The correlation between increased income and increased happiness is no different with the rich than it is with the poor, the study finds. The “positive association between family income and reported well-being is remarkably consistent and shows no signs of petering out even at very high incomes,” the study reports. This proves as consistent when making cross-national comparisons between rich and poor countries as when making comparisons between rich and poor people within a country, Stevenson and Wolfers conclude.
Specifically, just over one-third (or 35%) of Americans making less than $10,000 reported being “very happy” and just under one-quarter (24%) said they were “very satisfied” with their lives. Of those making over $500,000, 100% reported being “very happy” and said they were “very satisfied” with their lives. Outside the U.S., Stevenson and Wolfers found the same trends. “In particular, there is no evidence that the slope flattens our beyond any particular ‘satiation point’ in any nation,” they wrote.
Why does more money mean more happy days ahead? Wolfers says he leaves that up to others to decide, but he has one theory: “It may be that the relationship is not between your income and the number of iPhones you can buy; it’s about the choices you can make.” And the more money you make, he says, the more choices open up. “But I would never say become a corporate lawyer and not work for a nonprofit if you found that more fulfilling,” Wolfers says.
Money can't buy happiness? Think again.
A new study finds that for rich and poor alike, as income climbs, so does one’s sense of well-being. Brenda Cronin reports.
Stevenson and Wolfers’s study seems to contradict work in 1974 by economistRichard Easterlin, who argued that economic and happiness data suggested a “paradox” in which increasing income after a certain point did not increase well-being. Easterlin famously wrote that people in poorer countries were happier once they could afford basic necessities. A follow-up study by London School of Economics professor Richard Layardconcluded that above $15,000 per person, “higher average income is no guarantee of greater happiness.”
Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, disputes the new research. “More Money does not make you happier when you look at what happens to people over time as their income trends upward,” he told MarketWatch. “If you compare people at a point in time, those with higher income are typically happier. But you cannot generalize from the point of time relationship to the relationship over time. That is what the Easterlin Paradox is all about.”
Those banking on increased wealth as a path to happiness may be disappointed in other ways: Materialistic people are less happy than those who don’t care about being upwardly mobile, other studies show. Couples who say money is not important to them score about 10% to 15% better on measures of “relationship quality,” meaning they fight less and have more stable relationships, according to a 2011 study of 1,700 married couples by Brigham Young University and published in the “Journal of Couple & Relationships Therapy.” Jason Carroll, lead author of that study, cautions, “income level is different than materialism.”
And Americans have not seen a bump in happiness since the recession. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has surveyed 1.7 million Americans since it began in 2008 and attempts to measure the happiness of residents in U.S. states, found almost no improvement over the past five years, despite signs that the economy is improving. The index asks respondents about well-being, physical and emotional health, work environment, and whether they worried or smiled the previous day. For the four consecutive years, Hawaii came in first and West Virginia came in last.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/science-money-makes-you-happier-2013-04-30?link=mw_home_kiosk
No limit to impact of increased wealth on satisfaction, research finds
By Quentin Fottrell
For those who haven’t won the lottery and have never sold a startup to Yahoo for $30 million, science has long offered a small consolation: At a certain point, earning more money won’t make you happier. But new research debunks such feel-good claims.
There’s no end to how much happier money can make you, according to research to be published in the May 2013 edition of “American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings” by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, professors at the University of Michigan. “The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise,” the study — Subjective Well-Being and Income: Is There Any Evidence of Satiation? — concludes. “If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it.”
The correlation between increased income and increased happiness is no different with the rich than it is with the poor, the study finds. The “positive association between family income and reported well-being is remarkably consistent and shows no signs of petering out even at very high incomes,” the study reports. This proves as consistent when making cross-national comparisons between rich and poor countries as when making comparisons between rich and poor people within a country, Stevenson and Wolfers conclude.
Specifically, just over one-third (or 35%) of Americans making less than $10,000 reported being “very happy” and just under one-quarter (24%) said they were “very satisfied” with their lives. Of those making over $500,000, 100% reported being “very happy” and said they were “very satisfied” with their lives. Outside the U.S., Stevenson and Wolfers found the same trends. “In particular, there is no evidence that the slope flattens our beyond any particular ‘satiation point’ in any nation,” they wrote.
Why does more money mean more happy days ahead? Wolfers says he leaves that up to others to decide, but he has one theory: “It may be that the relationship is not between your income and the number of iPhones you can buy; it’s about the choices you can make.” And the more money you make, he says, the more choices open up. “But I would never say become a corporate lawyer and not work for a nonprofit if you found that more fulfilling,” Wolfers says.
Money can't buy happiness? Think again.
A new study finds that for rich and poor alike, as income climbs, so does one’s sense of well-being. Brenda Cronin reports.
Stevenson and Wolfers’s study seems to contradict work in 1974 by economistRichard Easterlin, who argued that economic and happiness data suggested a “paradox” in which increasing income after a certain point did not increase well-being. Easterlin famously wrote that people in poorer countries were happier once they could afford basic necessities. A follow-up study by London School of Economics professor Richard Layardconcluded that above $15,000 per person, “higher average income is no guarantee of greater happiness.”
Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, disputes the new research. “More Money does not make you happier when you look at what happens to people over time as their income trends upward,” he told MarketWatch. “If you compare people at a point in time, those with higher income are typically happier. But you cannot generalize from the point of time relationship to the relationship over time. That is what the Easterlin Paradox is all about.”
Those banking on increased wealth as a path to happiness may be disappointed in other ways: Materialistic people are less happy than those who don’t care about being upwardly mobile, other studies show. Couples who say money is not important to them score about 10% to 15% better on measures of “relationship quality,” meaning they fight less and have more stable relationships, according to a 2011 study of 1,700 married couples by Brigham Young University and published in the “Journal of Couple & Relationships Therapy.” Jason Carroll, lead author of that study, cautions, “income level is different than materialism.”
And Americans have not seen a bump in happiness since the recession. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has surveyed 1.7 million Americans since it began in 2008 and attempts to measure the happiness of residents in U.S. states, found almost no improvement over the past five years, despite signs that the economy is improving. The index asks respondents about well-being, physical and emotional health, work environment, and whether they worried or smiled the previous day. For the four consecutive years, Hawaii came in first and West Virginia came in last.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/science-money-makes-you-happier-2013-04-30?link=mw_home_kiosk
37
Shares / CNBC Top Trader Virtual Trading Competition
« on: April 25, 2013, 05:06:29 pm »
Just received an email for the CNBC Top Trader Competition, 6-31 May – Trading with virtual money, first price R25 000, second iPad, third iPhone.
Top 30 will enter into a new trading competition June-Nov for R250 000.
Click here for the TopTrader competition rules, information, YouTube videos and registration
https://www.sanlamitrade.co.za/register/TopTrader.aspx
Top 30 will enter into a new trading competition June-Nov for R250 000.
Click here for the TopTrader competition rules, information, YouTube videos and registration
https://www.sanlamitrade.co.za/register/TopTrader.aspx
38
Shares / Today's Outlook
« on: April 05, 2013, 07:34:10 am »
European futures down but not too much at the moment. US down but seeing they are still sleeping I will discount for now. A busy day with Euro GDP (11:00), Germany factory orders (12:00) US non-farm, unemployment and trade balance at 14:30. Maybe we might start off a bit wobbly but end the day in the green? What do you think?
39
Shares / LDT - Dividend amounts and Last Day to Trade
« on: April 03, 2013, 04:50:57 pm »
For planning your days ahead, this might help: 
LDT: Friday 5 April
AFE 1.85
AFR 0.15
BEL 0.40
EXX 1.50
SOL 5.70
LDT: Friday 5 April
AFE 1.85
AFR 0.15
BEL 0.40
EXX 1.50
SOL 5.70