‘Jeonse’ prices continue on upward spiral despite the government’s efforts to reign in its upward spiral

2014-01-19 16:37

‘Jeonse’ prices continue on upward spiral

By Kim Tae-jong
“Jeonse” prices in Seoul have jumped by 0.47 percent in the first three weeks of 2014 year despite the government’s efforts to reign in its upward spiral, recent data showed Sunday. Read more of this post

Storms gather over emerging markets; Fear of taper turmoil should lead to structural reforms

January 16, 2014 6:31 pm

Storms gather over emerging markets

Fear of taper turmoil should lead to structural reforms

Since the financial crisis, emerging markets have enjoyed some indirect benefit from the sluggish recovery of the developed world. The unprecedented stimulus unleashed by the largest central banks has depressed yields on safe assets, pushing investors to search for higher rates in ever more exotic locations. Between 2010 and 2013, private capital inflows to developing countries jumped to about 6 per cent of their combined gross domestic product. Read more of this post

When a financial adviser wants to learn about managing money amid rising interest rates, she turns to a veteran colleague who calls himself the “Old Man and the Sea.”

Raymond James Adviser Learns Ropes About Higher Rates From Old Hand

CORRIE DRIEBUSCH

Jan. 20, 2014 5:43 p.m. ET

When Rachel McNeil, a financial adviser with Raymond James Financial Inc., RJF -0.13%wants to learn from the past, she turns to “the Old Man and the Sea.” Not the Ernest Hemingway classic novel, but Joe Blanton, a 70-year-old colleague who has jokingly adopted the novel’s title as his moniker. Read more of this post

What Do “Insiders” Know That You Don’t?

What Do “Insiders” Know That You Don’t?

Tyler Durden on 01/19/2014 12:28 -0500

With your local friendly asset-gatherer constantly promoting the cheapness of stocks of the TINA (there is no alternative) to BTFATH, TV talking-heads jabbering over ‘stock-pickers’ markets (infuriating Cliff Asness), and CEOs trotted out day after day to espouse how bright the future looks (even if outlooks in the immediate future are down-down-down-graded); it is hardly surprising that sentiment among the sheeple is so extremely bullish. So, when we saw the chart below… we could only ask – what do the insiders know that the average-joe-investor doesn’t? Of course, we are sure someone will try and explain away this avalanche of insider-selling with “tax-related” factors or “taking-profits” but none of that negates the less-than-optimistic tone that it implies about what the short- or medium-term expectations are from management of the firms that comprise the US equity market…

Richest Scandinavian Nation Extends Its Junk Boom

Richest Scandinavian Nation Extends Its Junk Boom

Norway’s record corporate debt binge last year is set to continue as the junk bond market in Scandinavia’s richest nation becomes a magnet for companies seeking ready cash. Corporate bond issuance reached a record 104 billion kroner ($17 billion) in 2013, including 61.4 billion kroner in high-yield issuance, according to Nordea Bank AB. (NDA) Demand will probably continue to propel issuance this year as risk appetite opens up for even more speculative deals, Lars Kirkeby, chief credit analyst at Nordea in Oslo, said in an interview. Read more of this post

Philippines Slips From Best to Worst on Peso Loss: Asean Credit

Philippines Slips From Best to Worst on Peso Loss: Asean Credit

Philippine bonds, Southeast Asia’s biggest gainers in 2013, are delivering the region’s only losses this month after inflation accelerated to a two-year high and the peso slumped. Local-currency government notes dropped 1.3 percent in 2014, after gains of 5.2 percent last year that were the best among 10 Asian indexes compiled by HSBC Holdings Plc. Consumer-price increases of 4.1 percent are giving investors in Philippine 10-year securities a real yield of 0.18 percent, compared with 2.7 percent for Thailand and 1.3 percent for Malaysia, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Read more of this post

Norway’s $833 billion oil fund eyes riskier bets

Norway’s $833 billion oil fund eyes riskier bets

5:58am EST

By Gwladys Fouche and Joachim Dagenborg

OSLO (Reuters) – In May 2012 the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund joined U.S. investors BlackRock and Waddell & Reed to buy a $1.6 billion stake in motor racing’s Formula One. The people who had worked on the deal for months were looking forward to celebrating their hard work. Read more of this post

How You Can Survive a New Era in the Bond Market; Think High-Dividend Stocks, International Bonds and ‘Junk’ Bonds

How You Can Survive a New Era in the Bond Market

Think High-Dividend Stocks, International Bonds and ‘Junk’ Bonds

TOM LAURICELLA

Jan. 18, 2014 8:37 p.m. ET

For investors, last year’s losses in the bond market should serve as a wake-up call that the era of big bond-market returns is over. For the foreseeable future, many say meager returns and occasional losses will be the norm. Read more of this post

How factory-built homes are shedding their ‘cheap’ label and exploding in popularity

How factory-built homes are shedding their ‘cheap’ label and exploding in popularity

Armina Ligaya | January 20, 2014 | Last Updated: Jan 20 6:36 PM ET
After more than three decades in her Toronto bungalow amid growing mildew problems in the 1940s-era home, Ruth Wiens decided it was to start fresh. Falling bonds yields could push mortgage rates lower as banks compete in the spring housing market, the strongest real estate period of the year Read more of this post

Going cold on Turkey: An internal power-struggle further dents Turkey’s hopes of joining the European Union

Going cold on Turkey: An internal power-struggle further dents Turkey’s hopes of joining the European Union

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

IN ANOTHER era, tanks might now be on the streets of Ankara and Istanbul. Over the past year Turkey has seen a crackdown on protests, corruption scandals, a purge of the police and judiciary, paranoid talk of foreign plots and fifth columns, an economic slowdown and more attempts to Islamicise society. Given this turmoil, Turkey’s soldiers would no doubt be tempted to sweep aside the failed politicians (as they have done four times in the past). That the generals have remained in barracks—or, in many cases, in jail—is a sign of democratic progress. But after years of strong growth and political reform, Turkey is sliding backwards, with more than a whiff of authoritarianism about the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Islamist-flavoured AK party has been in power since November 2002. Read more of this post

France Needs an Economic Revolution

France Needs an Economic Revolution

Once in a while the French and British engage in a rhetorical brawl, hurling verbal rotten eggs and stale baguettes at each other across the channel. The one that’s been happening in recent days has been a doozy. Read more of this post

FASB Simplifies Rules on Goodwill, Swaps for Private Companies

January 17, 2014, 3:17 AM ET

FASB Simplifies Rules on Goodwill, Swaps for Private Companies

EMILY CHASAN

Senior Editor

Private companies will soon be able to take advantage of simpler accounting for complex swaps transactions and asset valuations after bad acquisitions. U.S. accounting rule makers on Thursday  issued the simplified alternatives, following complaints from private companies that complex rules intended for public company accounting were too costly and irrelevant to their stakeholders. The overseers of the Financial Accounting Standards Board last year created a Private Company Council to address those concerns. Read more of this post

Europe bundled mortgage defaults hit two-year high; Nearly 80% of CMBS due to mature Q4 2013 fail to repay principal

January 20, 2014 3:44 pm

Europe bundled mortgage defaults hit two-year high

By Christopher Thompson

The default rate of “sliced and diced” loans backed by commercial mortgages in Europe has hit a two-year high, highlighting difficulties in resuscitating the securitisation market. Read more of this post

Drugmakers Wary Brazil Price Index for Medicine to Crimp Revenue

Drugmakers Wary Brazil Price Index for Medicine to Crimp Revenue

Brazil’s government for the first time in nine years has delayed publishing the calculation it uses to set price changes for medicine, raising concern in the pharmaceutical industry this year’s prices will be too low. Read more of this post

CEO Profit Skepticism Backs Decade’s Weakest Stocks Estimate

CEO Profit Skepticism Backs Decade’s Weakest Stocks Estimate

Investors who want to know why U.S. equity strategists are the most pessimistic in a decade need look no further than statements by chief executive officers.

For every company predicting in January that earnings will beat analyst estimates, 2.5 are projecting results that fall short, matching the worst ratio since the rally began in March 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While analysts say Standard & Poor’s 500 Index profits will rise 8.8 percent in 2014, that’s almost the same estimate they generated a year ago for 2013, when earnings ended up increasing at about half that rate, the data show. Read more of this post

BRIC or MINT? Investors suffer acronym anxiety

Updated: Tuesday January 21, 2014 MYT 6:57:33 AM

BRIC or MINT? Investors suffer acronym anxiety

LONDON: Which investment takes your fancy: BRIC, MINT or CIVETS? For many fund managers seeking the next big thing in emerging markets, the answer is none. Acronym investment – putting money into small groupings of markets which often have little in common beyond a broad economic concept – is giving way to acronym anxiety. Read more of this post

Carlos Slim Still Reaping Big Rewards From NY Times Loan

Carlos Slim Still Reaping Big Rewards From NY Times Loan

Billionaire Carlos Slim is poised to double his money after investing $250 million in a 2009 lending agreement with the New York Times, showing how dearly the newspaper’s owners paid for his help. Read more of this post

Both sides now – pros and cons of dual shares

Both sides now – pros and cons of dual shares

Business Times

20 Jan 2014

Adrian Chan

BOTH the Hong Kong and Singapore stock exchanges currently have a “one share, one vote” system. To control a company, one needs to own a significant number of shares. Read more of this post

America’s Real Manufacturing Advantage; A new wave of software innovation is about to transform industry—and give the United States the chance for a lasting edge

January 20, 2014

America’s Real Manufacturing Advantage

A new wave of software innovation is about to transform industry—and give the United States the chance for a lasting edge. See also America’s Manufacturing Advantage—In Pictures.

by Helmuth Ludwig and Eric Spiegel

The industrial sector in the United States is rebounding. Manufacturers are boosting output, building new plants, increasing exports, and creating better-paying jobs that require precise skills—and in the process are helping lead the U.S. out of the long, stubborn slump that followed the market disruptions of 2007. A growing number of political and business leaders, economists, and commentators are taking notice, and talking about a domestic “manufacturing renaissance.” Some are saying it could add millions of new and well-paid jobs, unwind the U.S.’s long-standing trade deficit, and usher in a new era of growth and prosperity. This is a welcome point of view—much more beneficial than the idea, formerly in vogue, that the country could survive on services and finance, without much of a manufacturing industry. But it is, nonetheless, an incomplete point of view. Many of these manufacturing optimists are basing their forecasts mainly on transitory changes in energy supply and relative labor costs that are not likely to provide the kind of long-term improvements they envision. Read more of this post

Korea’s Jeonse money exceeds 90% of sale price for 76,000 households

Jeonse money exceeds 90% of sale price for 76,000 households

Jin Young-tae

2014.01.21 17:44:36

Owing to an unbridled increase in jeonse price, apartments with key money deposits exceeding 90% of their estimated sale value are cropping up one after another in South Korea.
Given that apartments on auction are taken at an average of 83% of their estimated sale price, the situation means there will be an increase in jeonse tenants who end up losing some of their key money if owners are saddled with mortgages and end up selling the apartments through auction.  Read more of this post

Japanese consumers and marketers alike certainly love their ヒット商品 (hitto shōhin, hit products). To understand how this term came about, we need to look back to the decade following World War II

Marketers succeed by generating hitto products

BY MARK SCHREIBER

SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES

JAN 19, 2014

Japanese consumers and marketers alike certainly love their ヒット商品 (hitto shōhin, hit products). To understand how this term came about, we need to look back to the decade following World War II. When living standards gradually began to improve from the early 1950s, Japanese consumers eagerly snapped up home appliances. As a condition for marriage, new brides demanded a home supplied with 白黒テレビ (shirokuro terebi, black-and-white TV), 洗濯機 (sentakuki, washing machine) and 冷蔵庫 (reizōko, refrigerator). These became referred to as 三種の神器 (sanshu no jingi, the three sacred treasures), which was a humorous allusion to the mirror, sword and jewel that were presented to Japan’s ancient emperors during the imperial enthronement ceremony. Read more of this post

AirAsia Prepares Japan Discount Airline After Split With ANA

AirAsia Prepares Japan Discount Airline After Split With ANA

AirAsia Bhd. (AIRA), Southeast Asia’s biggest budget carrier, is close to restarting plans for a Japanese unit after a partnership with ANA Holdings Inc. (9202) unraveled in June, Chief Executive Officer Tony Fernandes said. Read more of this post

Stop pre-launch sales to curb excessive speculation, Malaysian property developers urged

Updated: Tuesday January 21, 2014 MYT 1:19:42 PM

Stop pre-launch sales to curb excessive speculation, property developers urged

KUALA LUMPUR: Property developers should eliminate pre-launch sales to curb excessive speculation, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk SeriAbdul Wahid Omar. Read more of this post

Is Berjaya billionaire chief Vincent Tan set on cashing out on his assets?

Is Berjaya chief Vincent Tan set on cashing out on his assets?

Tuesday, January 21, 2014 – 09:57

Wong Wei-Shen

The Star/Asia News Network

PETALING JAYA – Berjaya group founder and billionaire Tan Sri Vincent Tan has been on a listing spree of late, begging the question if he is set on cashing out on several of his assets. Read more of this post

Taiwan’s Perng Attacks Monetary Easing for Spurring Instability

Taiwan’s Perng Attacks Monetary Easing for Spurring Instability

Taiwan’s central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan criticized monetary easing in advanced economies for destabilizing financial markets, as the Federal Reserve’s record stimulus last year spurs funds into emerging markets. Read more of this post

Thai Default Risk Soars as Funds Pull $4 Billion

Thai Default Risk Soars as Funds Pull $4 Billion: Southeast Asia

The risk of Thailand defaulting on its debt is the highest since August as anti-government protests prompt money managers to sell the nation’s assets. The cost of protecting the nation’s debt soared after investors including Wells Fargo Inc. pulled more than $4 billion from Thai stocks and bonds since Oct. 31, as rallies clogged up Bangkok roads and clashes claimed eight lives. Pacific Investment Management Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Kokusai Asset Management Co. reduced debt holdings before protests first erupted in late October, regulatory filings show. Read more of this post

Toyota may rethink Thai investment plans if crisis lingers; Malaysia said it would further open its auto industry to foreign makers of energy-efficient cars to better compete with Thailand for investment

Toyota may rethink Thai investment plans if crisis lingers

5:35am EST

By Manunphattr Dhanananphorn

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote,Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) may reconsider investing up to 20 billion baht ($609 million) in Thailand, and could even cut production, if political unrest drags on, the head of the Japanese automaker’s local unit said on Monday. Read more of this post

Indonesia Investment to Slow in 2014 Amid Election Uncertainty

Indonesia Investment to Slow in 2014 Amid Election Uncertainty

Indonesia expects investment to slow in 2014, as companies may hold off during an election year, providing less stimulus to an economy grappling with weaker growth and a current-account deficit. Read more of this post

Not time yet to relax Singapore property cooling measures: CEOs; Property market hasn’t quite stabilised, say industry leaders

PUBLISHED JANUARY 20, 2014

Not time yet to relax cooling measures: CEOs

Property market hasn’t quite stabilised, say industry leaders

JAMIE LEE LEEJAMIE@SPH.COM.SG

Key points: TDSR has been effective; gradual removal of measures later this year could be necessary; S’pore risks losing out to competing countries. – PHOTO: REUTERS

[SINGAPORE] Despite a drastic drop in home sales and sliding home prices, cooling measures for the property sector should not be rolled back just yet, say CEOs and industry-group leaders polled by The Business Times. Read more of this post