Facebook now worth $9.5 billionFacebook’s private shares are now for about $21 each — a 42% increase since July — valuing the company’s common shares at $9.5 billion. Will the company go public soon?
Business / Markets
Wall St conspiracy theories: a field guide
Is Goldman Sachs really a Giant Vampire Squid? Did naked short-selling kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros? The Big Money ranks some of the paranoid theorising going on atop the financial world’s grassy knoll.
FBI wiretaps expose Wall Street’s seedy underbelly
Details uncovered from FBI wire-taps of Wall St insider trading rings are like The Sopranos, The Wire and Gordon Gekko’s Wall Street all rolled into one, complete with secret tips, kickbacks and disposable mobile phones.
An inconvenient truth sobers thinking on weak state of US banking
Markets are not known for their consistency. Last night, the US market went up 148 points very quickly, then slid back into the red, only to close up 76 points.
We’ve passed Wall St, next stop Hang Seng
Australian investors need to stop believing that Wall Street is god of the Australian economy, writes Michael Pascoe. We’ve survived the GFC, even if the US didn’t, and our focus should be on Asia.
Your store? Myer lists, but can’t take a trick
Myer shares were listed under the issue price of $4.10, but opened today at $3.88 on the ASX — a reminder that timing is everything.
80 years since the Great Crash
It’s the 80th anniversary of the Great Wall St Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. Steve Keen looks at what we’ve learned — if anything — eight decades on.
The real estate spinners who are artificially inflating prices
Despite its ubiquity, residential property remains one of the least transparent asset classes in Australia. Most buyers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an asset which they know very little about.
How Wall Street makes its billions
All the major Wall St banks’ profits come from trading, but who is on the receiving loss end of trades? asks Philip Greenspun. Banks don’t just shift Federal money around and skim off profits for themselves, do they?
How to stop houses being so damn expensive
Australia needs a solution to its rising house prices, which have jumped dramatically thanks to the laws of supply and demand, writes Tom Elliot. Is reducing immigration the answer?
Despite rebound, US still hasn’t got its housing in order
Stand by for the “two-speed America” story to start emerging: that’s where the rebound in financial markets and on wall Street is way ahead with the sluggish wider economy, especially housing.
Experts get it very wrong on rentals
The rental market is fairly uncomplicated, but business journalists are commonly thinking of reasons as to why rents go up or down. This is only one reason: the number of vacant rental properties.
Hedge fund operators fiddled while investors burned
The secretive world of hedge funds disclosure has been exposed in a report published in the US, which reveals that up to half of funds and managements lied in their disclosure to customers and investors.
Dragon roars ahead
China isn’t shrinking away into economic oblivion with the GFC but instead now holds the title of the world’s biggest exporter. Seems the love for small crappy ‘Made in China’ trinkets by migrant workers isn’t ceasing yet.
Knee-deep in the Myer or what?
So is the Myer share issue the knock ‘em down sure thing that its promoters are trying to tell us it is? Then why is a leading broker trying so hard to whip up interest?
The market is up! Ergh. Who cares?
The market is rebounding, but can be up and down and all over. Should investors be concerned with day to day market events? Well, not really. Unless you’re a day trader, you’re investing long term.
graph pr0n It’s about the housing shortage, stupid
Our biggest public policy problem is that we don’t have enough dwellings for people who live here, with an estimated shortage in 2008 of 34,000 dwellings. Plus, we’re importing people at a rate of knots.
Reality bites global economy, again
Suddenly realism is back in fashion on Wall Street and in other parts of the business world. Which is why markets across the globe are falling, quickly and sharply.
How a luxury item helped the poor grow richer
The spread of mobile phones in the developing world has boomed thanks to micro entrepreneur programs like Grameenphone. The Economist tracks how mobiles have influenced fish prices, political corruption and election outcomes.
Telstra split paves way for better competition
The government’s plan for Telstra appears to require a form of divestiture, says Andrew Bartlett. It would be great to have better laws — forcing asset sales — wherever anti-competitive behaviour exists.
graph pr0n Rich pickings: luxury firms retreat to the elite
This videographic from The Economist shows why the producers of luxury goods — who briefly flirted with the cashed-up aspirational middle class — are likely to retreat to their traditional super-rich clients.
Nest eggs bounce back
Super funds have just seen the sixth straight month of gains after six months of falls, says Shane Wright. But not before the uncertainty of the market has changed retirees’ approach to their superannuation.
Foreign buyers blow out the housing bubble
The causes of Australia’s ever-inflating housing bubble are many but one hasn’t received a lot of attention: the influence of overseas buyers since the government relaxed its foreign property investment rules.
Car sales snap out of reverse
Despite the ending of some tax assistance for small to medium businesses on June 30, car sales jumped up in August.
