hey youguuuuys!

So made a killing last night, let me tell you the story

So, at around 1am last night the pound was heading towards annihilation as the Japanese and Australians sold, sold, oh and sold. However, they were wrong to do so

The reason they were selling was because the UK economy’s manufacturing sector is slowing down, according to statistics. This means that there is a likelihood that the prime interest rate in the UK will be cut by a quarter-point. To make matters worse, the Eurozone economy is doing just great, so an increase in rates is expected there. Basically, an increase in rates means an investor would want to buy bonds in that currency, as it offers a higher return. This however isn’t it’s main purpose, lower interest rates stimulate an economy, but we don’t need to worry about that here…

Anyway all goes slightly pair shaped this morning though. Looks like the Euro-guys didn’t increase rates and the UK-guys didn’t decrease rates. So nothing has changed, which is why investors have been trying to undo what they did.

Which is why I win!

Looks like the internet race to see who can be the first to dual boot Windows on a Mac has actually inspired/pushed Apple to create a product which actually allows you to do this without following the instructions provided by the original bounty winners.

The announcement was made by Apple before the markets opened which pushed their share price up immediately by around 5.5% (9.87% at the close of trade). You have to note that this is almost instantaneous (1 or 2 minutes) so if you wanted to make that kind of short-term return of the news you either had to own shares yesterday or have been lightning fast in executing the order at the open of trade.

Further references:
Bloomberg
Macworld
Engadget

hey youguys. i’ve found a couple of atricles in the new york times that i think you might be interested in. the first is about internet movie piracy, it’s apparent heirarchical structure and what hollywood needs to do to combat it. here’s a small extract.

“The Internet was designed to facilitate file transfer. That’s what it’s all about, so whether it’s in e-mail, instant messaging, music or films, it’s all going to increase as sure as the sun comes up tomorrow,” said Mr. Fleischer at BigChampagne. “I think the movie business is in the same place the music business was in 2001 and 2002. They’re just sitting it out and not doing much to put legitimate movie offerings online.”

HOLLYWOOD veterans say they are well aware of the momentous changes afoot. “Our industry is trying very hard to make sure that what happened to the music industry doesn’t happen to our industry,” said Barry M. Meyer, chairman of Warner Brothers, which was one of the first studios to mount a serious antipiracy campaign. “We don’t want this to become mainstream behavior.”

click here to read the entire feature. (sorry you have to sign up, but it’s free)

the second article i think you guys would be interested in is about the current situation between google and cnet. this is about the reaction by google ceo, eric e. schmidt to a cnet article dated 14th July about his personal financial state of affairs. the twist here is, as you may already know is that this information was collatd by the cnet reporter using google’s own search engine. eric e. schmidt didn’t take kindly to this article being written however, even though less that an tenth of the article referred to him. this information is freely available on the net anyway - here’s an extract from the cnet article.

“Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn’t reveal much about himself on his home page.
But spending 30 minutes on the Google search engine lets one discover that Schmidt, 50, was worth an estimated $1.5 billion last year. Earlier this year, he pulled in almost $90 million from sales of Google stock and made at least another $50 million selling shares in the past two months as the stock leaped to more than $300 a share.”

for a direct link to this article click here.

personally, i don’t care that schmidt has made so much money, i mean it’s expected, so why is he so annoyed with cnet for revealing freely available information? the point of the cnet article was to explore the issue of privacy concerns regarding internet entities such as google - however it has resulted in a vow from the google ceo that his company will not talk top any cnet reporter for a period of on year.

here’s a link to the nytimes article which analysis the situation. i have to say as a disclaimer though that the nytimes have seemed to have taken a slightly anti-google stance, as can be seen in a previous article which accuses the company of being ‘evil.’ read at your own risk!

$67.32 - That was the New York closing price of crude oil last night. It’s also a nominal record. Why should you care? You, personally probably shouldn’t at the moment, but I’ll tell you about it anyway. The record it actually broke was reset on the 12th August, although it is only 22 cents more. Why is this happening and what does it mean? Well at the moment supply and demand are perilously close to each other. Basically, there’s about a million extra barrels a day produced to cope with any surges in real demand, so that’s why the markets are so shaky. Traders are buying up stock, anticipating an upsurge in demand, however this perpetuates the problem. Then you have rising prices creating a rise in general prices, where really, there needn’t be.

The fact that the U.S. Department of Energy announced that stocks had fallen by 2.3m barrels instead of the expected 1.5m sent shockwaves throughout the commodities markets. If this situation continues to perpetuate then it doesn’t bode well for the world economy at large, so what’s the alternative?

The U.S. Government, quite ironically some might say, has invested U.S. tax payer’s money into researching alternative fuel technologies. One of the main areas have been hydrogen fuels which are pollutant free and would greatly reduce the problem of fuel scarcity which sees prices rocketing and the environment suffering. This is all well and good, however the problem lies within the incentives or the drive behind the decisions to research these areas by the U.S. government. The reason the current administration gives is that they would like to reduce their dependence on foreign sources of fuel. This is worrying as the U.S. is the world’s largest economic power and if they reduce the level of imports it will have a detrimental effect on the world economy at large.

Well looks like that electronics company we all know and love isn’t doing so well. Their expected profit has been slashed by 90% due to investments into areas which aren’t paying dividends, coupled with both falling demand leading to falling prices. All this means that Sony expects net profit to amount to $89.3 million, not bad eh? Not for this big cat.

Well it’s not all bad news, their cinema division is growing due to such hits as ‘Hitch.’ The gaming division has also seen a 64% increase in sales, however this was offset by the huge marking costs leading to a net loss of $52.7 million.

Personally I don’t mind all this happening, maybe it’ll force the guys at the top to restructure and simplify this huge organisation where money can easily go down a never ending black hole. Maybe this will be a kick up the backside. I hope it is.