The first decade of the 21st century saw the golden period of the BRIC countries. Brazil, Russia, India and China enjoyed tremendous economic growth and accordingly their equity markets soared. With all the hyper regarding these countries it seemed that the future simply belonged to BRICs. The term “BRICs” was coined by Jim O’Neil of …
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Gold is generally considered as an asset to hold against inflation. During periods of market volatility investors tend to flock to the yellow metal. Today gold for August delivery closed at $1,356 an ounce. Over the course of many decades gold has seem dramatic rises and falls. The following chart shows the price of gold …
Commodities have performed well so far this year with silver easily beating gold in terms of returns. The following table shows The Periodic Table of Commodities Returns with data for the first half of this year. Click to enlarge Source:Silver Takes the Gold: Commodities Halftime Report 2016, US Funds
The S&P 500 is up by 4% year-to-date.Many Latin American equity indices have easily outperformed the S&P 500. For example, Mexico’s IPC All-Share has increased by 6.4% and Brazil’s Sao Paulo Bovespa has grown by over 22%, etc. Brazilian stocks declined heavily last year and they have recovered with the political situation improving. In addition to looking …
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Some of the major European banks have seen their market values decline substantially this year. The STOXX® Europe 600 Banks Index is down about 33% year-to-date in Euro price terms. A few individual banks have lost much more. The following graphic from a recent journal article shows the serious damage to market capitalization of the world’s …
Continue reading ‘On the Decline in Market Value of Big Global Banks’ »