Archive for July 28th, 2009

After China presented a glittering 7.9% economic growth rate in the second quarter, some began to question whether the Chinese picture was really that rosy or whether it had been air-brushed by excess fixed-asset investment. Since China has to invest its record foreign reserve holdings of 2.1 trillion anyway, building more roads and bridges at… »

Sprint Nextel is still on the long road back to redemption, but investors will see how far they’ve come from breaking out of its “perennial loser” status behind AT&T and Verizon.”Issues are still present,” said Steve Clement, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, “they continue to lose a lot of customers, and they’ve been losing… »

With more people are out of work and struggling to pay their debts, credit card issuers are bound to suffer. For MasterCard and Visa, it’s a different story. Though credit cards often bear their names, MasterCard and Visa aren’t in the lending business. They simply process payments, a low-cost business that’s expected to keep both… »

The economy is improving, but Jessica Hoversen, a foreign exchange and fixed-income futures analyst at MF Global, warns that the currency market may have already overextended itself in the short term, while long-term trends endanger the U.S. dollar.Hoversen looked at the ISM and nonfarm payroll numbers during economic downturns. Following historical trends found that the… »

As the stock market rout of 2008 has become the rally of 2009, many of the best-performing industries have been the ones that looked most threatened by the financial crisis. No business was closer to the epicenter-real estate and real estate finance-than publicly traded property companies, known as real estate investment trusts, or REITs.REIT shares… »

Italian consumers don’t have it easy: Unemployment is soaring and gross domestic product expected to fall by more than 5% this year. Still, they seem to be upbeat. Consumer confidence in the Mediterranean country rose more sharply than previously thought in July, its highest level since November 2007.Seasonally adjusted consumer confidence index rose to 107.5… »

Meet the British homeowner’s newest lender: China.Bank of China, one of the country’s four, state-owned banks, is ramping up its lending business in the U.K. as British banks remain cautious in their lending.The bank, which had already been offering loans to the Chinese community in the U.K., will begin offering mortgages for landlords, known in… »

The first monthly increase in a key measure of home prices since 2006 could not shore up a rocky Street Tuesday, and the major averages made fresh lows heading into the afternoon.A disappointing reading on consumer confidence and second-quarter losses from commodity-related names like U.S. Steel and Valero Energy weighed on equity prices, sapping any… »

Space travel won’t just be for billionaires if Richard Branson gets his way. Fresh from selling a stake in his Virgin Galactic space-tourism subsidiary to Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Group, Branson’s Virgin Group has an even more ambitious aim in mind: To float the company on the stock market, while still retaining a significant stake.”The aim… »

Luxury carmakers appear to be moving ahead of their mid-market counterparts in Europe. Analysts at investment bank JPMorgan say premium car sales in Western Europe are finally finding a bottom.”The share of total luxury car sales in Western Europe continues to improve, month-on-month, to 16.3% in June, versus 16.1% in May 2009 and 15.9% in… »