The German economy is the largest in Europe with population of about 81 million and a GDP of about $3.0 Trillion in 2011. By all measures the German economic growth since the unification with the former East Germany has been a huge success with Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine devoting a cover story on this topic. The country …
Continue reading ‘Germany vs. USA: A Short Economic Comparison using Three Factors’ »
Brazil’s Bovespa index is up just 6.5% year-to-date(YTD) and China’s Shanghai Composite index is basically flat YTD. Investors’ attraction towards China has waned much more than towards Brazil in the past few years. The Shanghai Composite index fell deeper during the financial crisis than the Bovespa. But unlike Chinese stocks, Brazilian stocks have recovered strongly since the …
Continue reading ‘Performance Comparision of Brazil and China Stock Market Indices’ »
China and India have two of the world’s largest population at over 1.3 and 1.2 billion respectively. As these countries emerge from an agricultural-based economy to a modern industrial economy, the demand for electricity continues to rise. Among the BRIC countries, Brazil generates most of its electricity from hydro power and is able to meet …
Continue reading ‘CIBC: China’s Electricity Infrastructure Spending Should Benefit Copper in 2013’ »
The Federal Reserve announced the launch of the third Quantitative Easing (QE) program (or the QE3 program) in September this year. This program involves the Fed buying bonds of agency mortgage backed-securities from the market for $40.0 billion per month. Earlier programs were called as QE1 and QE2. The current QE3 program differs from earlier …
Continue reading ‘The Impact of Fed’s QE Programs on Gold’ »
Some of the companies in emerging countries are slowly moving up to become global multinationals by expanding in countries outside of their home market. As these companies gain technological know-how and look for ways to deploy excess capital it is only normal for them to try to imitate their developed world peers. Hence the once-dominant …