Banks will be in the S&P’s 500 spotlight this week as they release their quarterly earnings one by one. The question of the various analysts is whether the surviving financial institutions will repeat the performance of the first quarter, when they surprisingly posted profits.Read More »Banks Coming Back To Profit
It is a matter of public knowledge how envious is Google on Microsoft’s success with the X-Box game console. After all, Microsoft managed to diversify itself very successfully in the hardware sector via a single, yet very desirable product. Google’s forrayal into the hardware software has led to the creation of the Android mobile phone, which was not by any means a success (nor a failure, since it brought some profit to the company). Yet, Google has its own standards for the success – and anything below the number one position in a market seems to be unacceptable.
This is probably the reason why Gogle has embarked on a dangerous journey. Google is planning to attack the Microsoft corporation on its very core turf 0 the operating system market.Read More »Google Trying To Diversify On Operating Systems
Two weeks later after the previous update on our portfolio and the news are not so good. From the very beginning we decided to go for a buy and hold approach. This is something very simillar to what a normal investor would do. After all, not everybody (including our doitinvest.com team, the authors of this blog) has enough time to watch the market and place the deals. And as the technical analyst Martin Pring mentioned in one his latest books, trading often can eat a lot of your profits due to the high percentage of commmissions you pay. In other words, most of your profit can go to the broker, not to your pocket.
Coming back to our Doitinvest US portfolio of shares, the matters are quite simple. After the rally we experienced two weeks ago (see our post on June 9th), the hopes that the recession was over did not materialize. Therefore, some of the big investors marked their profits and sold some of the shares. This of course puched the price down – actually it stopped the rally. Nevertherless, in hindsight it is alaways easy to manage an investing portfolio, but in practice we have to live with our decisions. Which we do.Read More »Update On Our Doitinvest Investment Portfolio no.1 – U.S. Blue Chip Stocks (5)
You might have heard of this already – Ely Lilly has been actively marketing drugs supposed to counteract the Alzheimer disease for older people, which did not work. And this is more than a $6.8 billion suit already – the prosecutors have lots of documents to prove it, according to the media.
Insurers and other so-called third-party payers evaluated that Lilly could pay as much as $6.8 billion in damages for downplaying Zyprexa’s health risks, including excessive weight gain and the risk of contracting diabetes, and marketing the drug for unapproved uses to pump up profits, says Bloomberg.Read More »Ethics in the Pharma Business – Why Did Ely Lilly Prescribe Non-Working Drugs?
Today Rio Tinto PLC (RTP), the world’s largest mining company, has announced that it stroke an agreement with Nippon Steel on reducing its prices for the ore iron it supplies to the Japanese manufacturer. The price reduction (contractually agreed) amounted to as much as 30% of the previous year’s prices.
Is this good news? The market seemed to think so, since the price incresed with 7% in the hours following the announcement.Read More »Rio Tinto Following the Downward Trend on Raw Materials
In such a bad environment, where travelling and tourism are down more than 20% vs. 2008 (and last year was a bad one too), Accor continues toplan for expansion. It has recently announced plans to expand further its business. Accor, Europe’s largest hotelier, plans to set aside 100 million euros ($132.8 million) a year to buy hotels put up for sale as a result of the global downturn, the group’s chief financial officer said on Sunday.Read More »Accor, the French Hotel Group, on the Expansion
It took 20 years and undisclosed millions of dollars to build the Resort at Pelican Hill on the California coast just south of Los Angeles. The centerpiece of the complex is the “Coliseum”—a two-storey, semicircular, epic-scale colonnade enveloping the world’s largest circular pool, decorated with $1 million-plus hand-cut custom glass tiles. Read More »Is MGM Mirage Still Worth Investing?