Gold prices reached an intraday record $1,637.50 today as the U.S. debt crisis and the weaker-than-expected economic growth made investors flee equities and other risky assets to the safety of the precious metal. In the past decade, gold has had an incredible run from under $300 an ounce to the current price outperforming stocks and …
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In June of last year I wrote a small post about the world’s top diamond producers in 2008. Botswana was the top producer then followed by Russia. Russia became the largest diamond producer as shown in the the following chart for 2009: Source: The Economist Except Russia and Canada, the rest of the top producing …
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The S&P 500 is up 6.3% YTD. Most emerging markets are down so far this year. The following are the YTD performance of select Latin American country indices: Brazil Bovsepa: -13.5% Mexico IPC All-Share: -8.0% Chile IPSA: -6.2% At current prices some Latin American stocks have high dividend yields. Five Latin American equities with …
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The fall of European equities in the past few weeks due to the sovereign debt crisis has made some of the equities cheap. Many German companies especially are worth a look at current levels. The export-driven German economy is weathering the crisis well and is poised to expand further once the dust settles. According to …
China’s savings rate is one of the largest in the world even in dollar terms. Chinese tend to save a higher proportion of their incomes due to the lack of social safety nets such as healthcare, social security and other state-provided benefits. From a recent IMF report on China: On account of its large annual …
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