An amazing comeback for equities …

While the last quarter of the tax year [December to February this year] has been fairly flat for most of the international equity markets [the European market has been negative] – the year 1 March 2009 to 28 February 2010 has produced very pleasing results for this asset class.
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Global Markets – 4th quarter 2009 – a year divided

Many of us, when asked, would probably immediately respond that 2009 is a year that we would rather forget. The year started with extreme pessimism, following the most severe market correction since the 1930’s. However, since March, “green shoots” have started to emerge and, if we loo
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Looking back…

Six months have passed since I wrote the Finlaw News article about “Plunging down South to the Big Freezer” [end Feb 2009]. The message then was …“bailing out of your investments, turning back on your long-term investment strategies will only deprive you of the benefits of staying the
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Global Markets – 2nd quarter 2009 “Bull markets are born on pessimism..”

The late Sir John Templeton once said – “bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on scepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria”. According to Wikipedia, pessimism is “… a painful state of mind which negatively colors the perception of life, especially with regard to fut
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Plunging down south to the Big Freezer

“This is your Captain speaking … we have a 10 metre [35ft] swell on the Starboard beam driven by a 50 knot South-westerly wind. Conditions are going to be rough – so please take all precautions to secure yourself and your personal items in your cabin”. That was the news th
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Global Markets – 4th quarter 2008 : The credit crisis – how it all began

When the rumblings of the sub prime credit crisis first emerged in August last year, nobody envisaged the extent to which this would unfold and later become the catalyst for a crisis within financial markets and banking systems around the world. A recent article by Kevin Lings [Econom
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Global Markets – 3rd quarter 2008 : The widening income disparity in South Africa is a cause for concern

The Business Day recently published an article, based on research that had been done by the Bureau for Market Research at Unisa, which reported that “income disparities in SA have widened in the past two years, boosted by more rapid growth in high-income earners…” According to the res
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Global Markets – 2nd quarter 2008 : Food prices in crisis

Did you read the article titled “World Food Riots Spread” that was published in the Business Times in April? We found it enlightening and rather disturbing. The article confirms that global leaders have been raising serious concerns about the food crisis for some time… “while there is
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Global Markets – 1st quarter 2008 : Electricity – now a rare commodity in SA?

“Load shedding” and “blackouts” are words now used with frustration on a daily basis in South Africa. Nobody is immune to these frustrations and none can escape them. Most of us have a “load shedding” table handy at all times, having learnt how to make sense of them in a hurry. It wou
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Global Markets – 4th quarter 2007 : Standard Bank – what’s the deal?

The market was caught completely by surprise in late October when Standard Bank announced that a 20% stake in the bank was being sold to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) for R37bn or R120 per share. Most people in South Africa are unlikely to have ever heard of the I
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