From the category archives:

market trends

Today MicroCapital.org, a microfinance publication, announced the introduction of pre-paid, reloadable Mastercards in Peru.  The “LATODO Mastercard” is a project launched by NovoPayment, a US-based prepaid card provider that will run the business through Servitebca Peru.
NovoPayment also works in Florida, Mexico, Colombia and launched a similar prepaid credit card program in Venezuela in 2005, MicroCapital [...]

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In some sense, economics itself is about predicting the future. It makes forecasts based on past performance and behaviours.  Statistics, quarterly reports and other numerical data facilitate this process.  In order to plan your own life out another 5 years or more, in order to achieve goals you’ve set, you adopt budgets and you might [...]

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I’m not going to tell you that you should already own Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), especially now that it has a juicy dividend – because you already own it.  Same with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), right?
So here’s a list of some other great companies that are leading us into the next decade.  Perhaps, [...]

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No truly comprehensive environmental cost analysis can afford any longer to ignore the growing impact of global data and systems for organizing and storing it.  Not only does more data require more storage, but storage and processing require energy supplies of their own.  And this doesn’t even get at the issue of “data exhaust” or [...]

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The US Dollar has sunk to 2.5 year lows.  This is a significant time frame, as currently, Brent oil futures are also at 2.5 year highs.  Outdoing both of these, gold is at all-time nominal highs, having closed April 2011 at $1563/oz.
Bernanke keeps saying that a strong dollar is in the U.S.’ best interests, and [...]

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Should we be concerned about $110+ oil?  Since the beginning of March, and noticeably after the March 11 triple tsunami-earthquake-nuclear disaster in Japan, oil prices have shot through the roof and show no signs of abating.  Events in Libya have helped keep oil support levels high as well, but many argue this is no mere [...]

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