Surprise, China just devalued its currency... again! Over the past 24 hours, the People's Bank of China decided to depreciate the Yuan by 1.9%, making the U.S. dollar the strongest performing currency to date. This monetary action is nothing new in the current era of globalization; in fact, China has long been (rightfully) accused of purposely devaluing its currency so as to increase foreign direct investments and heighten its export-driven economy.
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China's Twitter Twin
Last Thursday (April 17) Weibo (WB), a premier Chinese social media company, began trading on the NASDAQ. Weibo’s social media app is widely considered to be the “Chinese” version of Twitter (TWTR). Most interest in Weibo’s IPO stems from investor concern over future Chinese listings on American exchanges. For many prospective investors, Weibo is considered a case study meant to reflect the success of Alibaba’s future IPO.
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Raise The Bar, Raise The Flag
It's a curious thing... the impact of economics on societal progress. For instance, understanding macro models allows the masses to understand economic growth, and how to facilitate or stymie it. Likewise, microeconomics provides the populace with insight into how people make seemingly rational choices at the individual level.
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Recognizing Reality
Recently there has been what some investors believe are “corrections” to major stock markets. However, the reality is that these major corrections may instead be extreme turning points – the result of major economies, like America, trading long-term growth for short-term stability.
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The Golden Hoax
The value of gold has taken a tremendous hit over the past few months and has had an extremely tumultuous 2013. This precious metal, touted as a hedge against market instability, has proven extremely volatile since 2011. Yet, gold remains at the forefront of news with many critics and supporters. Given the mixed signals investors receive from analysts, what are we to conclude about the value of gold? How are we to determine its worth?
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The Snowden Effect
Let’s face it, technology isn’t going anywhere; hence, neither is Cisco (CSCO). In fact, the IT sector is expected to grow in key verticals such as cloud computing, thanks to the advent of big data, and by the potential of the Internet of Everything. As technology becomes more pervasive, and companies such as Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB) collect increasing amounts of user information, the demand to organize and prioritize this big data has resulted in an unprecedented demand for analytic equipment.
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