While browsing and reading a bit I found an interesting chart from The Big Picture that shows how different investments did last week and over the past 52 weeks.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the best investment you could make last week was the US dollar, this currency gained an average of 4.2%. That’s one percent more than last week’s return of gold and significantly better than all other investments, which lost significantly last week amidst a broad market selloff. The biggest losers were European stocks, emerging-market stocks and global stocks.
The best investments of the past 52 weeks look pretty similar, both the dollar and gold would have given you a positive return. Gold netted a gain of 14.3% and the US dollar rose 6.9 percent. The next best thing was crude oil, but that investment would have cost you 7.2 percent. The worst three investments of the past 52 weeks were emerging-market stocks, European stocks and global stocks.
Rumour has it that Fox is going to terminate The Sarah Connor Chronicles because of high costs and lack of viewers. First Firefly and now this great show is getting the axe? What a shame. If the rumor is true I hope they’ll at least air the rest of the second season.
The year 2008 is slowly coming to an end, just three more months to go! The fourth quarter is usually the best in terms of ad dollars for most sites and I hope revenue will start picking up soon.
Earlier today I’ve compiled the numbers of the revenue my business generated in September and it’s not looking too good. Last month’s income was about 5 percent lower than September 2007 – that doesn’t look that bad but unfortunately a relatively large chunk of the September income were one-time deals. Without these extras the revenue would have been 35 percent lower than a year ago.
The amount of traffic I receive is still pretty much the same as a year ago, it seems the advertising money is drying up due to the slowing global economy. Especially Google AdSense and Chitika are generating a lot less money than a year ago.
Last week was pretty crazy but it has become even worse. The Bel20 (a Belgian index) lost 7.98% today while the Dow Jones plunged 700 points (-6.98%) which is its biggest-ever point drop. The Nasdaq crashed 9.14% today and the stocks of most firms are down hugely. The S&P500 dropped 8.79% – it’s biggest loss since October 1987.
Here’s a quick overview of some tech firms: Intel -10.16%, NVIDIA -13.77%, AMD -16.86%, Apple -17.42%, Google -10.68%, Microsoft -8.39%. What a bloodbath! According to Google Finance the biggest losses today were in the energy, basic material and financial sectors. The stock markets opened in the red due to the problems in the financial sector in Europe and the US and things got a lot worse when the Paulson plan got rejected.
Hypo Real Estate, Bradford & Bingley, Glitnir and Wachovia got saved and I was also surprised by what happened here in Belgium. In the past couple of days the credit crisis made two victims in my country. Authorities feared for a run on the bank and worked out a plan this weekend to restore the public’s faith in Fortis, the largest bank and insurance group in Belgium. Last week there were a lot of rumours regarding the health of this bank, Fortis denied it and said they were in good shape but it turned out it was just another lie.. Anyway, due to a a long list of circumstances the market had completely lost its faith in Fortis and as this group is vital to Belgian’s economy the government didn’t dare to make a gamble on this one and announced Friday night that a deal would be worked out before Monday.
After two days of negotiations a deal was made. The bank will receive an injection of 11.2 billion EUR by the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments in return for a 49% participation of Fortis’ bank divisions in each of the three countries and Fortis decided they will sell the ABN AMRO activities they acquired last year – but likely with a loss of more than 10 billion EUR. To make a long story short: the acquisition of ABN AMRO was one of the reasons why Fortis got in so much trouble, they paid a lot more for a piece of this Dutch bank than it was worth. After that the credit crisis turned the financial markets upside down and it became hard for Fortis to raise enough cash for their expensive takeover. A lot of bad news and rumours followed and shareholders lost a lot of money but fortunately savers can now be certain that their money is 100% safe. I’m not really a big fan of government interventions but I think this is the best that could be done in such a brief timespan. The only other alternative seemed to be a sale to BNP Paribas and they wanted to give only 1.6EUR per share (Fortis closed at 5.20EUR on Friday) and demanded lots of guarantees from the Belgian government as well.
I was also surprised today when the government announced they’re working on a bailout of Dexia, the second largest Belgian bank. Until today the bank denied all rumours that they would need to raise new capital but then, almost out of the blue, an announcement came that Dexia is in need of 7 billion EUR. A deal is in the works and according to the financial press the 7 billion EUR will likely come from the Belgian federal government, regional governments, Dexia’s largest shareholders and perhaps even France and/or Luxembourg.
A bit more positive is that oil dropped 10 percent today but the overall market looks very bloody. I wonder if the night is darkest just before the dawn or is the worst yet to come?
