|
Factoids from Business & Investment News News, columns, analysis, forecasts, data, and occasional serendipity |
|
Business Links More Factoids April Part 1 April Part 2 April Part 3 March Part 1 March Part 2 March Part 3 Feb Part 3 Feb Part 2 Feb Part 1 Jan Part 1 Jan Part 2 Jan Part 3 Q1-00 Index Q4-99 Index Q3-99 Index Q2-99 Index Q1-99 Index |
Well, there are going to be many confusing claims and counterclaims emanating from the presidential campaign trail in the next few months about who will do more to put the federal government's finances in order. They start with very different definitions of the debt. Vice President Al Gore puts his emphasis on the national debt held by the public, the $3.5 trillion that the government has borrowed by selling Treasury securities to individual investors, banks, pension funds and foreign governments. Gov. George W. Bush of Texas is taking the view that the government's obligations include not just the public debt, but also the special bonds it is issuing to the Social Security system in ever-growing amounts, representing promises to pay retirement benefits in decades ahead. By that accounting, the current $5.6 trillion in total debt will grow inexorably for years to come. Gore wants to pay off the entire public debt by 2013. He wants to use excess Social Security revenue (more than $2 trillion over the next decade) to do it. Gore would then channel the interest savings from debt reduction to Social Security, in effect committing trillions of dollars of general tax revenue to keep the system afloat. In that way, he would extend the system's solvency from 2037 to around 2050 without cutting benefits, raising payroll taxes or altering the way Social Security works. Gore's plan would free up trillions of dollars for other kinds of investment, helping to put downward pressure on interest rates and create new economic opportunities for companies and individuals. Under Gore's approach, the public debt would sink steadily, but all the while the Treasury's obligation to the Social Security trust fund would be rising even faster, from $855 billion today to $4.2 trillion in 2013. So even if the public debt is retired on Gore's schedule, the total debt would rise, from $5.6 trillion today to $6.8 trillion in 2013. Bush want to add private investment accounts to Social Security, a major change that would require hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars over the next decade. The only place to find that money is the Social Security surplus. To the extent that the surplus is used to finance private accounts, it would not be available to reduce the public debt. Because the private investment accounts would replace part of the government's obligation to pay Social Security benefits in the long run, his approach would in effect reduce the debt, broadly defined.
The goal, according to Michael Thompson, co-president of Bulldog, is objective, analytical data to identify the brokerage firms' best. 'The industry relies on once-a-year surveys,' he noted, referring to the analyst rankings published by The Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor magazine. Brokerage firms like Goldman, Sachs, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and Bear, Stearns have already signed on to the service, authorizing disclosure of their own analysts' names and track records. Others, including Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and First Boston, are not doing so, at least not yet. Mr. Thompson said he expected the holdouts to sign on within a year.
The most plausible explanation, says Steven Wheeler, archivist at the NYSE, traces the origins of "bear" back to 18th-century slang on the London exchange. Securities traders who sold short, or sold shares they did not yet own, were dubbed "bearskin jobbers" after hunters who sold the skins of bears they hadn't yet caught. Short sellers hope to replace the shares later at a lower price and thus benefit from a falling, or "bear," market. The word "jobber" means dealer and is still used in the U.K. financial markets to describe the middleman between brokers. But this only explains half the story. Another explanation: 'The bull attacks by tossing up in the air, and the grizzly comes at you on its hind legs clawing at you,' says Elroy Dimson, professor of finance at the London Business School. But, he adds, 'I think it's figurative.' Harper's Weekly ran an 1857 editorial on the stock market that says in part: 'The bull is a hopeful, enthusiastic animal. He is perpetually ruminating upon the shreds of some lucky hit, and chewing the cud of the last successful speculation. He is buoyed up by the perpetual prospect of a rising market...The bear, on the contrary, thrives on the misfortunes of mankind. Shipwreck and disaster, failures and frauds, revulsions and convulsions -- whatever tends to upset, and unsettle, and destroy -- these are the thickets through which he prowls for his prey, and every token of a coming storm excites him to a jubilant growl.'
The problem with inflation starting to accelerate is that it has a lot of inertia. Once it starts, it continues in the same direction for a while. These things don't change quickly. In the case of inflation, there's both statistical inertia and behavioral inertia. An example of statistical inertia: the rental components of the CPI (owners' equivalent rent and residential rents) account for more than one quarter of the entire index. The booming economy of the past few years has enabled more renters to become first-time homeowners. That's lifted vacancy rates, which means that any survey of rental units understates actual housing prices. While the housing price index rose 5.9% in Q1 compared with a year earlier, the CPI components owners' equivalent rent and residential rents rose 2.6% and 3.2%, respectively, in March from a year ago. That means they have some catching up to do. An example of behavioral inertia: the economic policies that create an excess demand condition will not be felt as a one-time increase in the price level, but as a continuing one. Add one more factor to the inflation puzzle: M2 has been growing above the Fed's upper target (5%) for the past three years. The broad monetary aggregates exploded in the fourth quarters of 1998 and 1999, when the Fed set out to liquefy the financial system for reasons that had little to do with the real economy.That money is still sloshing around in the system chasing goods and services.
But a lot of people don't take the deduction, either out of ignorance or because they don't itemize, says Cincinnati financial planner David Foster. If they do take the deduction, it is horribly complicated. You can eliminate all these hassles for your heirs, by converting your IRA to a Roth. They may still owe estate taxes. But the income-tax bill will be gone. Moreover, if you convert to a Roth, your heirs will be able to take withdrawals over their life expectancy, provided they follow the tax rules. That ensures that they will get years and years of tax-free growth. By contrast, if somebody other than your spouse inherits your regular IRA, the rules are much more restrictive, and your heirs may be compelled to empty the account almost immediately. All withdrawals after age 59 1/2 are tax-free, assuming the Roth has been open five years. Even before age 59 1/2, you can pull out everything except the account's investment earnings and avoid all taxes and penalties.
For some of the smaller ECB member countries, this is an ironic change of circumstances. In the years prior to the formation of the ECB, less economically advanced countries often complained of being held hostage to the monetary policy of Germany's powerful Bundesbank, over which they had no say. Germany was, and still is, the major economic power in Europe and to remain on a level playing field with Germany, other central banks had to follow the Bundesbank's lead. But with the ECB, the rest of Europe thought they would finally have a voice. Instead, they now feel they're hostage to Alan Greenspan. The Euro is suffering because: Ever-stronger economic reports from the US and relatively weaker performance of Europe; the magnetic US stock market; political uncertainty in Italy; the likelihood of highly indebted Greece joining the euro next year; the investigation of Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the Bank of France and heir apparent to the ECB president, for possible wrongdoings when he was in the French treasury; the inability of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank to pull off a merger; and the resignation of the European Commission's executive body last year; the Balkan war; short-term official interest rates in the euro zone at 3.75% are so far below the 6% in the US - meaning dollar assets have higher returns. If the Fed decides to move rates aggressively and the ECB decides it has to follow to protect the euro, the ECB risks choking off growth in a region that was flirting with recession little more than a year ago. Related: WSJ 5-10 Japan's economy has been dragging for years; it's projected to grow just 1.2% this year. Europe's economy, meanwhile, has been perking up, and growth is expected to top 3% in 2000, while unemployment falls and inflation remains slight. So why has the euro dropped 26% against the yen since the common European currency was launched on Jan. 1, 1999? Currencies have traditionally bounced up and down in tune with fixed-income and trade flows, and these still count. But some see a fundamental shift in the way currency markets operate: essentially, they've been harnessed to the hot money chasing stocks around the globe. 'There's a new paradigm that's entered the currency arena, and that is equity flows,' says Mary Ann Bartels, an international strategist at Merrill Lynch. While Japan was attracting an enormous net inflow of equity investment funds last year, totaling the equivalent of about 83 billion euros ($74.53), the countries in the euro zone suffered a net outflow of 56 billion euros. And European corporate chieftains have been lavishing billions of euros on capital investments and acquisitions outside of Europe, chiefly in the US. (In 1997, 1998 and 1999, foreigners bought a net $70 billion, $50 billion and $108 billion of U.S. shares, respectively; and in each of the three years, euro-zone investors accounted for more than half of these purchases.) To buy assets in the US, European companies typically have to exchange euros for dollars, undercutting the home currency and pushing up the greenback. Examples: Deutsche Bank last year shelled out $9.5 billion for Bankers Trust, Germany's Siemens agreed to buy Shared Medical Systems for $2.1 billion in cash, while (Anglo-Dutch) Unilever made an unsolicited $18.4 billion cash bid for Bestfoods. All told, European acquisitions of US companies jumped to $53.9 billion in Q1-2000 from $27.5 billion in Q4-99. And in the first five weeks of the second quarter, European companies have agreed to $37.1 billion of acquisitions of American companies. While not directly affecting the yen, these transactions, in many cases, help to weaken the euro against the dollar. Acquisitions also are an important source of European capital flowing into Japan. In the past year, for example, Renault has taken a 37% interest in Nissan, and DaimlerChrysler agreed to buy a 34% stake in Mitsubishi. At 302 billion yen ($2.78 billion or 3.1 billion euros) in the fiscal year ending March 1999, European direct investment in Japan was up 37% over a two-year period. When the euro was introduced 16 months ago, many Japanese institutional investors expected it to gain in value. Now, left with huge paper losses, Japan's institutional are cutting, hedging or sitting on their euro-denominated portfolios. Japanese investors in late 1998 and early 1999 had basically nothing to invest in at home. Then the market turned around. So they have gone from exporting a lot of capital to re-importing it. And that repatriation largely came from Europe rather than the US, which was performing better. 'The euro has suffered from the failure of Euroland to attract long-term investment capital,' says Paul Meggyesi, a senior currency analyst at Deutsche Bank. 'People were very, very underweight Japan; relative to benchmarks, they had been underweight for a long time,' says Greg Jensen, a senior research associate at Bridgewater Associates. 'In 1997 and 1998 there was a view about Japan that it was in depression,' says Mr. Jensen. When that view changed, money managers around the world had to buy lots of Japanese shares to rebalance their portfolios. That pushed up the yen.
Prompt and proper display of customer limit orders is good for investors and bad for dealers, so the reluctance of some firms to abide by the rules is understandable. After all, if a dealer gets a limit order to buy shares at a price slightly above the prevailing market, he can sell shares to the customer at a profit, never allowing another investor, who would be happy to sell his shares for a slightly higher price, to interact with the buyer. Customer limit orders also narrow the difference between the prices at which a dealer will buy and sell a stock, known as the spread, driving down investor costs. Because this reduces dealers' profits, they have an incentive not to show the order. Investors who place limit orders in Nasdaq stocks appear to fare the worst, according to the SEC. Many Nasdaq dealer firms, for one thing, do not have automated systems to handle their customer limit orders. At one large Nasdaq dealer firm, a trader working manually failed to display 83% of customer limit orders properly. At another firm (with an automated system), an employee unplugged the system for its entire Nasdaq trading desk for several months without anyone noticing. Investors who trade on the NYSE do not appear to encounter such difficulties. The exchange said that last December, it handled just over 6 million limit orders. Of those, only 21 were displayed improperly.
Of the 75 newly public companies Steve Galbraith of Sanford C. Bernstein studied with lockup expirations between mid-March and mid-April, he found that average market valuation dropped 50%, significantly higher than the 20% drop in the Nasdaq. Thomson Financial Investor Relations tracked 132 stocks that started trading in the first half of 1999. Of those stocks, 80% saw no significant selling around their lockup expirations. Why the conflicting results? Since both studies involve very small samples, and Internet IPO lockups are a relatively new phenomenon, only time will tell which is more accurate. Meanwhile, investors should be aware of the risks. Note: All lockup agreements aren't created equal. While most IPO lockups expire 180 days after the offer, about 20% run longer or shorter. Other lockup methods in the marketplace include staggered, multitiered or just plain confusing lockup agreements.
An April survey of 109 businesses by the National Association for Business Economics found that nearly one-third boosted prices in the first quarter to make up for higher material costs. The percentage of companies reporting price increases was the highest in four years. Until last year, many manufacturers enjoyed flat to declining prices for the basic materials they use in producing goods. That has changed. In February, the price of raw materials hit its highest level since February 1995, according to a survey by the NAPM. The impact of higher material costs has started showing up on the bottom line. Although many companies reported strong first-quarter earnings, higher raw-material costs are starting to pressure profits.
Data from the DoE and from several recent university studies show that far from being shy and demoralized, today's girls outshine boys. They get better grades. They have higher educational aspirations. They follow more-rigorous academic programs and participate in advanced-placement classes at higher rates. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, slightly more girls than boys enroll in high-level math and science courses. Girls, allegedly timorous and lacking in confidence, now outnumber boys in student government, in honor societies, on school newspapers, and in debating clubs. Only in sports are boys ahead, and women's groups are targeting the sports gap with a vengeance. Girls read more books. They outperform boys on tests for artistic and musical ability. More girls than boys study abroad. More join the Peace Corps. At the same time, more boys than girls are suspended from school. More are held back and more drop out. Boys are three times as likely to receive a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. More boys than girls are involved in crime, alcohol, and drugs. Girls attempt suicide more often than boys, but it is boys who more often succeed. In 1997, a typical year, 4,483 young people aged five to twenty-four committed suicide: 701 females and 3,782 males. Just the Facts Karen Parker, director of currency research at Chase Securities, said a high consumer price number and a half-point rate increase would suggest that the United States economy was headed for a hard landing -- and equities would take a hit. Further stock market declines could help break the confidence of European investors in the American market, meaning they would sell American stocks and convert their dollars back to euros. In the longer term, the slowing of growth in the United States, in comparison with Europe, is what will weaken the dollar and strengthen the euro. 'More convincing than ever is the notion that the US economy is going to slow," said James McCormick, currency strategist at JP Morgan. 'If the Fed goes half a percentage point and comes up with a strong statement, that is telling you that the growth is going to slow.' An American investor who believes that the euro can turn in the months ahead would do well to buy European stocks now - they are cheaper when the dollar is stronger - and then get the benefit when the euro rallies, making European stocks more valuable in dollar terms. (NYT 5-14) The idea that interest rates do matter is actually starting to register with the stock market, particularly with the share prices of companies that have a questionable business model and no earnings. (Caroline Baum, Bloomberg 5-11) In 1999, sales of home furnishings pushed ahead of apparel sales for the second year in a row as Americans spent $341.8 billion on items for the house and $317.8 billion on clothes, according to an analysis of government figures by Barnard Retail Consulting Group. As people get older and wealthier, they are less enthralled by famous designer statements. (WSJ 5-11) Workers are seeing -- but not necessarily reporting -- widespread illegal and unethical conduct in the workplace, despite many corporate-ethics programs, according to a survey of more than 2,300 employees by KPMG LLP. More than 75% of those surveyed said they had observed violations of the law or company standards in the previous 12 months. And while many workers indicated a willingness to report misdeeds, 61% thought management wouldn't administer impartial discipline. (WSJ 5-11) SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt believes the integrity of earnings reports has been compromised by accounting firms that have been lax in allowing auditors to own shares of client companies and that have used auditors to help sell more-profitable and faster-growing consulting services. Most of the resulting lapses are not clear violations of law, but misjudgments in gray areas of accounting. For big firms, auditing revenue is down to 30% of the total from 70% in 1977. (David Henry, USA Today 5-11) The Economic Cycle Research Institute's monthly inflation gauge hit an 11-year high in April. The measure, meant to anticipate changes in inflation trends, suggests that a peak in US prices isn't on the horizon. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that a survey by BondTalk.com found that 58% of market players think the Fed is behind the inflation curve. (William Pesek, Barrons 5-8) Returns on municipals have been elevated by economic fundamentals -- mainly the necessity of competing with the stock market and the near certainty that interest rates will climb even further. Long-term munis and long Treasuries are basically have the same yield. Roughly half of municipals carry insurance, making credit comparisons with US Treasury's of little practical consequence. Increasing competition has sharply cut insurance premiums, reducing the cost to 10 or 15 basis points (or $1 to $1.50 per $1,000), from 40 or 50 a decade ago. The savings have mostly been passed on to investors in the form of higher yields. (NYT 5-7) The Georgia State University survey of industrial prices shows that industrial material prices at the crudest stages of production fell for the second consecutive month in April. This is not consistent with intensifying inflation. (Donald Ratajczak, AJC 5-7) Treasury reductions in long-term bonds have pushed down long-term interest rates for government bonds. That, in turn, has restrained the growth of mortgage rates. The Treasury will not be reducing its offerings of long-term bonds in the second half of this year. As a result, I expect to see rising long-term rates and a significant increase in mortgage rates in the second half of this year. Furthermore, if the rising labor costs fall more heavily upon profits than upon prices, as I suspect, then stock values will remain restrained. Double-digit gains in stock investments are not likely this year. In other words, there already are forces in motion that will slow economic growth in the second half of this year. A more vigorous increase in targeted interest rates should not add to them. (Donald Ratajczak, AJC 5-7) The Bloomberg average of technology funds has gained 95% in the year ended April 30, 59% a year for three years and 38% a year over the last five. A scary spell now and then is a small price to pay for that sort of reward. Suppose you annually invest $10,000 in each of two funds, the Placid Fund and the Frantic Fund, which behave differently as the market rises and falls. Over a three-year period, you buy Placid shares at $10 the first year, $9 the second and $11 the third, and Frantic shares at $10, $8 and $12. Subsequently, the net asset value of both funds rises to $20. To keep the illustration simple, the funds make no distributions. When you check your statements, you find you own 3,020.2 shares of Placid, worth $60,404, and 3,083.33 shares of Frantic, worth $61,666.60. Let's take this up a notch. If Frantic had swung down to $5 and up to $15, you'd now own 3,666.67 shares worth $73,333.40. (Chet Currier, Bloomberg 5-7) From 1993 through April of this year, its compound annual growth rate was 38.6%, more than double the 17.8% of the S&P 500-stock index. But say an investor was a perfect market timer over that period -- putting all of his or her portfolio into technology stocks, but switching to the broader market every month the technology stocks underperformed. Bingo! That growth rate rises to 59.6%. The problem, of course, is when to jump and when to sit tight. Despite all the investor talk of "January effects" and "summer doldrums," Edward Kerschner (chief investment strategist at PaineWebber) says that there appears to be no seasonality in the technology stocks' outperformance of the broader market. (NYT 5-7) When you are rasing money for a specific need that will come at a known time in the future (like college for the kids, a down payment on a home), what are the odds of losing money in the stock market over that time period, even if you are well diversified? Ibbotson Associates has data on US stock-market performance going back to year-end 1925. That 74-year stretch can be divided into 72 rolling three-year periods, starting with the three years through Dec. 1928. According to Ibbotson, stocks lost money in nine of those 72 three-year periods (or 12.5% of the time), though most of these losses occurred during the 1930s and 1940s. The worst spell since 1945 was the three years through Dec. 1974, when stocks lost a cumulative 25.3%, as measured by S&P 500. If you look at five-year holding periods, you find that stocks lost money in seven of the 70 five-year periods since 1925 (or 10% of the time). The magnitude of these losses also tended to be smaller. In the worst stretch since 1945, stocks lost 11.2% in the five years through Dec. 1974. (Jonathan Clements, WSJ 5-7) Doctors, insurance companies and policy experts each have a laundry list of ways that patients aid and abet waste in the nation's health care dollars. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that roughly 50 million unneeded prescriptions for antibiotics are dispensed each year. Other examples: many people are screened for diseases they are at no real risk of contracting; and unnecessary spending on over the counter items such as vitamins, food additives. (NYT 5-7) Josef Lakonishok and Louis K.D. Chan, finance professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studied nearly every technology stock from 1951 to 1999. In particular, they sought companies whose earnings growth rates were consistently above the median of all publicly traded companies. They found that over periods of five years or more, just 4.7% of companies, on average, had earnings growth that beat the median during all years of the period. The number is statistically insignificant because, assuming that earnings growth was random, 3.3% of the companies would have beaten the median each year in any case. Then the professors searched for technology companies whose earnings growth rates exceeded the median in four out of five years. The results were almost identical. Their conclusion: Sustaining consistent, above-average earnings growth over five years is so rare as to approach statistical insignificance. - According to First Call/Thomson Financial, nearly 280 of the nearly 6,200 companies it tracks have consensus five-year projected earnings growth rates of 60% or more, annualized. The moral of this lesson: fat chance of those forecasts coming true. (Mark Hubert, NYT 5-7) The Barclays-managed World Equity Benchmark Shares, or WEBS, are funds that trade like stocks (They are also called 'exchange-traded funds'). But they (and others that trade like them on the Amex) often trade at significant premiums or discounts to their underlying net-asset values, a detail often overlooked in the investment products' marketing and legal materials. (WSJ 5-5) Most financial planners recommend that you add fixed amounts to your investments at regular intervals. In bull markets, you're better off putting all your money in once. But in a bear market, dollar-cost averaging can help. Look at the 1973-74 bear market, the worst bear market since the Great Depression. Suppose you had invested $3,600 in the S&P 500 in December 1972. Three years later, you would have had $3,529, assuming you reinvested dividends. Now suppose instead you had invested $100 a month for three years (also $3,600). You would have had $4,311. You fared better, in part, because you had very little in the market when it started down. More important, your $100 was buying more shares of stock as the market tumbled. So by the end of the period, you owned more shares than if you had bought all at once. (John Waggoner, USA Today 5-5) The JD Power Initial Quality Study, a report card on auto industry quality, found that on average, Asian brand products (including Korean) had 142 defects for each 100 vehicles, compared with an average of 168 defects for each 100 vehicles for US brands. Excluding Korean brands, the gap between Japanese and US manufacturers was larger. European brand vehicles had an average of 157 problems for each 100 vehicles. The overall industry average score was 158 problems for each 100 vehicles, down from 167 problems for each 100 the year before. The Initial Quality Study is based on responses from 47,000 new-vehicle buyers or lessees of new 2000-model-year cars and trucks. The survey covers 135 different areas of vehicle quality. (WSJ 5-5) The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association said in April that one-third of all Americans had cell phones at the end of 1999. They used about 180 minutes a month, up from 130 minutes in 1998. (Bloomberg 5-5) Today's job report stated that firms worked their employees longer hours (the workweek lengthened by 0.1 hour to 34.6 hours) and paid them more (average hourly earnings rose 0.4%). Manufacturing industries added 11,000 new workers and the manufacturing workweek leapt 0.4 hour to 42.1 hours, a level exceeded only twice in the post-war era. At 4.9 hours, up 0.3 hour from March, manufacturing overtime tied the post-war record. Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse First Boston said `It's beginning to look much more like a traditional late-business-cycle environment. [The Fed is] back in the realm where they don't have to confess that they're flying blind.' [Thus the Fed will] likely up the ante at the next meeting. Another reason for a 50 basis point boost: politics. With a presidential election in November, the Fed would prefer to be on the sidelines in the fall, waiting for the medicine to work. (Caroline Baum, Bloomberg 5-5) US nonfarm productivity rose at an annual rate of 2.4% in Q1, a sharp slowdown from the previous quarter's (revised) 6.9% rate (and Q3-99's 5% pace). The nonfarm productivity increase included a 6% increase in output and a 3.6% rise in hours worked and a 4.2% rise in hourly compensation. Productivity has increased at a 3.7% rate in the past 12 months, compared with a 3% gain over the previous year. Unit labor costs rose at a rate of 1.8% in Q1 after having fallen at a 2.9% rate in Q4-99 (and down 0.3% in Q3-99). Compared with Q1-99, unit labor costs have risen only 0.7%, an even better performance than the mild 1.6% increase in unit labor costs for all of 1999. (WSJ 5-4) Investors who rely on Morningstar's star ratings when picking funds should consider the lesson of the past two months: U.S. stock funds with the much coveted five-star ratings declined an average 8.7% over the course of March and April, while those with lowly one-star ratings gained 1.4%. The five-star funds outshine the one-star funds year to date, with a 3.8% gain compared with a 1.7% increase. The funds that have soared in recent years -- those loaded with technology and other 'growth' stocks -- have been among the weakest performers these past few months. Last year, funds with four- and five-star ratings took in $223.6 billion in net new cash, according to Financial Research Corp. of Boston, while funds with three or fewer stars had overall net outflows of $132 billion. (WSJ 5-3) A recent German opinion poll showed that four out of five respondents have little confidence in the new (euro) currency. The currency has fallen more than seven cents in the past two weeks. (WSJ 5-3) Internet users can now download tastes and smells from the Internet using a device released last week by TriSenx. The $398 FirstSENX device combines water-based chemicals to create smells and tastes that are printed on a fiber card-stock paper. Users click on an image that has a digital scent programmed into the Web page, and FirstSENX prints an image that users can smell and lick. Fragrance manufacturers and food companies have shown
Analysts have downgraded their forecasts for the Nikkei Stock Average of 225 selected issues since a shuffle of 30 Nikkei issues (the biggest change in its 50-year history) boosted the weighting of already popular information-technology related stocks. The problem: They announced the reshuffle one long week before the actual reshuffle. Market players had time to chase the soon-to-be-included stocks sharply higher. (WSJ 5-1) 'If you took a Martian, taught him basic facts of supply and demand and about buying low and selling high and then asked him what he thought of the current market, he'd have to side with the bears. It's just so easy to see. Bull markets begin in periods of maximum pessimism. Bear markets begin in periods of maximum optimism. Where do you think we are now?' We may soon experience a level of loss that most people can't imagine and a recovery time that will make recent market declines look like nonevents. While it took nearly seven years to recover from the bear market of 1966 and nearly 10 years to recover from the bear market of 1973, the actual recovery was even longer if you adjust for the heavy inflation we experienced during that period. An inflation-adjusted S&P Index would show that it was not until 1991 that stock prices recovered to their 1966 highs. That's a 25-year recovery, more time than most people have. (Scott Burns, Dallas Morning News interview with David Tice of www.prudentbear.com of 4-30) The Semiconductor Industry Association tells me manufacturers shipped 300 billion chips last year across the globe. That's 50 for every, man, woman and child on Earth. Semiconductors are 'driving' computers, the Internet, wireless devices, cars, radios, cable television, medical devices, missiles, Palms, Game Boys, fish finders and a thousand other things. (Fred Barbash, Wash Post 4-30) Between 10 million and 20 million people over 45 are playing games on the Internet, according to the major site sponsors -- far outnumbering the young action-game players, who were the pioneers but number only about one million. Night after night, spades draws as many as 50,000 competitors at big sites, including Pogo, Zone, Yahoo!, Won.Net and Mplayer. (WSJ 4-12) Home Page Previous Factoid Top Sites |