Ecofinglobe.com and its statistics from an year ago

I was chancing to look upon my blog’s readership and it has skyrocketed in last few months. To give you an idea of how much the readership for http://www.ecofin.wordpress.com has gone up by, Alexa rating has shown a consistent rise in my webpage ranking (it currently stands at 755139 worldwide and its India ranking is better at 58137. Furthermore, my year old blog stats shows my blog to have averaged 9999 hits way in May 2007. The current count stands at 77791.

Above means nothing if people don’t read posts. Simple page views/hits serve no value absolutely. The most important indicator that indicates the health status of a blog is its post:comment ratio. My blog’s average post:comment ratio is at about 1:2. This means, for every post I put up, I get double the # of comments. This ratio was about 2:1 last year at about the same time and it had not even reached breakeven. So, it is a satisfaction that my blog is a success in terms of these critical metrics.

Thank you, all for making this blog readable! Its only my readers who can turnaround this blog and I hope to keep you as repeat readers so the value of this blog is enhanced further!

Keep visiting back - you know where to look for me: http://www.ecofinglobe.com!

Derivatives, the sub prime mess, US recession, Bear Stearns bailout by the Fed/JPMChase

 We know this story so we will not repeat this again: JP Morgan Chase set to acquire Bear Stearns for a paltry $2 a share - based on the transaction price of March 14th 2008!

http://www.bearstearns.com/sitewide/our_firm/press_releases/content.htm?d=03_16a_2008

http://investor.shareholder.com/jpmorganchase/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=299805&ReleaseType=Current

You can refer to the following article to get the update from the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) on Bear Stearns - NYSE: BSC(http://www.bearstearns.com/) and its survival thanks to the revival package of the Fed and JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120580966534444395.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

Texas Instruments - BA II Plus Professional Financial calculator acquired!

I bought this advanced financial calculator (the Texas Instruments BA II PLUS Professional) for all my complicated calculations and to manage my portfolio of assets. Actually, this is primarily used only by CFA’s and CPA’s as its one of the only two authorized calculators for their examinations etc. Its cool!

Some macro economic predictions for 2008

Here’s a caveat: I fully understand economic predictions are foolhardy and its a bunch of crap since it is not something that can be predicted. Famous investors such as billionnaire Warren Buffett etc. also share the same viewpoints about economic predictions not being practical due to the changing dynamics of economies worldwide!

I still choose to defy this and some of my predictions for 2008 are as follows. Do not worry - I will not try to state the obvious and this is a result of some tad bit of analytical analysis thrown in for it to have some meaning.

Blogging guidelines - my two cents

What are the important factors one needs to consider before one begins to blog:

1. First, get over this obsession of Google adsense. 99/100 bloggers I meet first think of making a quick buck on adsense rather than focus on quality of their blogs and its relevance towards the topic(s) chosen! This is really very disturbing statistics.

Technically, what is a recession?

There is so much talk of the world’s most misused word i.e. recession. When can we exactly use the term recession?

Indian stock markets tank

This is due to a volatility in the global indices due to the meltdown in the US numbers coming out. Who said the adage of “US sneezing and rest of the world catching a cold” is not applicable anymore?

There are almost a 75-25 odds of an impending ‘deep’ recession in the US now. Will talk about this later in detail with numbers.

Mint - the new kid on the block for Financial news!

http://www.livemint.com

I just subscribed to its print edition that comes at a cool Rs. 299 per year fee. The good part about the Mint is that you have access to some select Wall Street Journal news that otherwise costs a lot of money to subscribe to sitting here in India! So, Mint becomes my flavored taste for access to some WSJ stories in addition to the local food for thought I get from my daily dose of my good old Economic Times that I subscribe to daily for the past 4-5 years now!

Its the new kid on the block that keeps me abreast with the latest news in India/abroad in the Financial space!

Its also got a handy e-paper and a desktop update. Sounds cool!

The US subprime crisis - increasing chance of a US recession/burst of the US housing bubble

Cross posted in http://www.acc101.com 

First of all, there’s been a lot of talk about this US subprime crisis and it causing a worldwide economic slump.

Lets look at it methodically and analyze it with an analytical perspective before jumping to conclusions about how the entire world economy can sink into a recession.

What is the subprime lending (B-paper, second chance or near prime lending) market - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime ? 

Right time for land in Bangalore South - read this

Given the RBI hiked the CRR yet again 2 days ago, the banks have cut their rates on their fixed deposit schemes almost immediately. Some banks did this even before the CRR rate hike came into effect thereby ending a dream run for investors looking to push their money into lucrative FD interest rates of almost 10%. While the stock market can deliver an average annualized rate of return of about 8-9%, FD’s are considered a more safe bet. By the way, the stock markets have tanked recently due to a spillover effect from the Dow.

Other developments include:

1. UTI Bank has been renamed to Axis bank - there is a brand name confusion between UTI (Unit trust of India) and the bank. This is what is mentioned on their website at: http://www.axisbank.com/aboutus/ChairmainAndCEOMessage/Chairmain-And-CEO-Message.asp

Coming to the post on the blog itself, is this the right time for purchasing land?