Small Investors and the U.S. Equity Market

Jason Zweig wrote an interesting piece titled “Will Small Investors Ever Warm Up to Stocks Again?” in The Intelligent Investor column of The Wall Street Journal. From the article: For millions of Americans, spare cash is a lot scarcer than it was in the days when unemployment ran at 6% and home-equity loans made houses …

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The Top 20 Foreign Holders of U.S. Treasury Securities

The graphic below shows the top 20 foreign holders of U.S. Treasury Securities at the end of October, 2010: Click to enlarge Source: Department of the Treasury/Federal Reserve Board Note: United Kingdom includes Channel Islands and Isle of Man. Oil exporters include Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,the United Arab …

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The Top 10 Most Risky and Least Risky Countries

CMA, the London-based world’s leading credit default swap pricing service has published the ‘Sovereign Debt Credit Risk Report’ for Q4 2010. Sovereign debt investors will find this report extremely valuable. The top 10 most risky countries are listed below: Click to enlarge Greece continues be the most risky country in terms of defaulting on its …

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Personal and Corporate Tax Income Tax Rates by Country

The chart below shows the Personal and Corporate Income Tax Rate for OECD countries: Click to enlarge Source: The Debt of Nations, Citigroup Global Markets Among OECD countries, Japan has the highest corporate tax rate at 39.5%. The U.S. has the next highest rate at 39.2%. However most U.S. companies do not pay taxes at …

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World Economic Forum: Global Risks 2011

The prestigious Switzerland-based World Economic Forum has published the Global Risks 2011 report. The graphic below shows the top global risks in 2011: Click to enlarge The top 10 risks by likelihood and impact combined are listed in ranked order below: Climate change Fiscal crises Economic disparity Global governance failures Extreme weather events Extreme energy …

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