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Daniel B

Which oil & gas stocks to buy in volatile environment - 0 views

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    This article shows the best possible market where inelastic demand is common. The oil and gas are the products that have the price elasticity of demand below the one. It is caused by the cooperation of the industries and miners as well as it is really hard to find such a good substitutes for it.
Haydn W

Royal Mail shares soar 38% as Labour complains of knockdown price | UK news | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Royal Mail shares soar 38% as Labour complains of knockdown price
  • Ed Miliband blames government for underpricing in 'fire-sale of a great British insititution' as investors make £284 paper profit
  • The government has been accused of shortchanging taxpayers by selling off Royal Mail at a knockdown price after shares in the privatised postal service rose by 38%
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  • Miliband, the Labour leader, said the jump in the share price – which made an immediate £284 paper profit for almost 700,000 Royal Mail investors – showed that the privatisation was a "fire sale of a great British institution"
  • Royal Mail stock, which the government sold at 330p, leapt to 455p
  • Royal Mail's market value rose by £1bn to £4.3bn – confirming that it will join the FTSE 100 list of Britain's biggest companies.
  • The government had valued Royal Mail at a maximum of £3.3bn, and had attacked analysts' valuation of £4.5bn as "way out".
  • Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, tweeted: "Privatising #RoyalMail has become little different from selling five pound notes for four quid."
  • George Osborne said the privatisation had been a huge success.
  • Asked whether the shares had been sold too cheaply, the chancellor said: "All privatisations are done at a discount.
  • The National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog, will investigate the pricing of the float, but Cable dismissed the huge share price rise – which was bigger than that experienced on the 1980s flotation of BT and British Gas – as "froth and speculation" and said "what matters is where the price eventually settles".
  • The stockbrokers Peel Hunt said: "This is not 'froth'; it's real people buying, selling."
  • Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capital, described the share price surge as a "dazzling stock market debut".
  • Private investors who bought their shares directly from the government will have to wait until at least Tuesday if they want to sell. About 690,000 people were granted 227 Royal Mail shares worth £749.10 (at the 330p float price) following overwhelming public demand for the shares.
  • The public applied for more than seven times the number of shares available to them, which meant nearly everyone did not get as many shares as they had asked for.
  • More than 36,000 people who applied for more than £10,000 worth of shares were prevented from buying any at all. About 40 people applied for shares worth £1m or more.
  • It is understood that about 20% of the shares available have gone to sovereign wealth funds – including those of Kuwait, Norway and Singapore – and other foreign funds. Royal Mail's 150,000 employees collected 10% of the shares free of charge, worth about £2,200 each at the flotation price and now worth £2,900. Employees were also allowed to buy a further £10,000 worth, but are not allowed to sell for three years
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    This article shows how demand for shares in the newly floated UK postal service Royal Mail has pushed the price up from 330p a share to 450p. This is the price in which demand is seen to be equal to supply, something the UK Government are being criticised for failing to notice as they believed 450p was a far to high price. The move itself if highly controversial and has been a hotly debated topic ever since it's proposal with many employees fearing that jobs will be lost.
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    I think this is really normal. Simply because private companies tend to have higher efficiency rates and therefore make more profits, this is the business part of the reason. Now if we consider the economical reason, I think that higher profits (deviants) will attract a lot more shareholders, this means higher demand. from the other side, shareholders will be willing to keep their shares as the company is making more and more profits, therefore less shares supply. So in short, more demand, less supply of shares could not lead to anything else except hiher prices and greater value of the company.
Mariam P

Robusta coffee going the arabica way,prices fall below cost of production on good crop ... - 0 views

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    This article is about the fall of the price of robusta coffee. The largest producer of robusta coffee, is pushing prices down in the global market.And they believe that the output will increase. As there is an oversupply, the stock is likely to be sold at a discount before the harvest for the next crop begins.
Haydn W

Coal India could have helped slash production cost by 12%: Power Companies - The Econom... - 0 views

  • KOLKATA: Coal India Ltd could have helped power companies save their production cost by 12%, or 35 paise a unit
  • The state-run monopoly coal supplier on Tuesday declared a dividend of Rs 29 a share.
  • CIL increased coal prices by a minimum 30% for all thermal coal used by power companies over the past three years
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  • This enabled the company to increase its cash and bank balance from about Rs 45,000 crore during 2010-11 to Rs 62,000 crore in 2012-13,
  • Most of the additional reserves came from higher prices as production did not rise at the same pace. This fiscal year, the company is likely to miss its target on coal production by about 17 million tonnes and sales by some 15 million tonnes.
  • Power tariffs are regulated by Central and state regulatory commissions, however, coal prices are not. Every increase in coal prices leads to increased power generation costs which need to be passed on to consumers.
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    This article explains how production costs in India could have been cut if Coal India had kept prices lower. The article also tells us that the company has a monopoly on the industry and is state-run which has lead some people to criticise the government. The company has been accused of protecting its own interests by raising prices to cache its bank balance. 
Haydn W

BBC News - Royal Mail 'confident' after revenues rise - 0 views

  • Royal Mail 'confident' after revenues rise
  • Royal Mail has said it is "confident" about hitting its targets after posting a 2% rise in like-for-like revenues in the nine months to 29 December.
  • Parcel deliveries accounted for 51% of revenues, and chief executive Moya Greene said the firm handled 115 million parcels in December.
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  • The postal service was privatised in October 2013.
  • Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said the update was "perfectly acceptable".
  • She said the company's European parcels business was doing well after exploiting "growth opportunities in the eurozone". Letter revenue fell by 3% on a like-for-like basis, the company said, as the impact of London 2012 collectable stamp sales waned.
  • Shares in Royal Mail closed down 2.6% at 572.5p, against a flotation price in October of 330p-a-share.
  • Mr Hunter said Royal Mail's shares had had a "very strong run" since October but that it may struggle to make "further meaningful progress" in the shorter term. The company was "simply a hold" for investors, he said.
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    This article from the BBC News website details how Royal Mail, the recently privatised public service has seen a 2% increase in revenues. Th controversial move triggered widespread uproar from opponents and share prices rose rapidly above the target when the company was floated in October 2013. This article shows that despite the move the firm has continued to make money and appears to be in no immediate danger.
Aleksi B

BBC Sport - Cristiano Ronaldo: Real Madrid forward agrees new contract - 0 views

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    Real Madrid CF have reported to give Cristiano Ronaldo a new contract making him the most expensive player in football. Now the question is will the club benefit from all this money being spent on this one player? This this the opportunity cost Real Madrid are taking hoping this will lead them to some football glory 
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    I believe you are right. I never though of applying economic concepts to sports and especial soccer. But you are right, soccer teams are similar to companies now days and some are even in the stock market. They are investing money on Cristiano Ronaldo hoping to get back some glory and therefore money. I find that is horrible to classify a soccer player and therefore a human being as an economic good.
Marenne M

Apple's 9 million iPhone weekend: The good and bad - CBS News - 1 views

  • the stock closed last Friday at $467, well off the 52-week high of $705
  • 5C as an attempt to shore up the low end of the market
  • expand market share
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  • price of the 5C, starting at $99 for what a U.S. consumer would pay with a two-year service commitment with a mobile carrier, was nowhere near low enough
  • more price sensitive
  • missed its opportunity to improve its standing in such important markets as China and India
  • a small share would be a significant boost over previous years
  • sold out virtually everywhere
  • old out customer satisfaction and convenience to fuel its need for PR
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    This article describes the sales of the new Iphone 5s and 5c over the first weekend. They had a great number of sales, however the demand for the Iphone 5c is not what they expected. It is said that the price is still too high for their target market. Apple was hoping to expand their market into Asia by producing a cheaper version of the IPhone in order to increase their market share, however it is likely that they will fail to do so, because the demand will remain low as the product is still not affordable for many Asians. Relating to our question of the week, the price helps allocate a product in the free market because it determines who the target market is, and if the pricing is off, it will effect the efficiency of the sales.
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    This article describes the sales of the new Iphone 5s and 5c over the first weekend. They had a great number of sales, however the demand for the Iphone 5c is not what they expected. It is said that the price is still too high for their target market. Apple was hoping to expand their market into Asia by producing a cheaper version of the IPhone in order to increase their market share, however it is likely that they will fail to do so, because the demand will remain low as the product is still not affordable for many Asians. Relating to our question of the week, the price helps allocate a product in the free market because it determines who the target market is, and if the pricing is off, it will effect the efficiency of the sales.
Haydn W

Taxing Carbon Is Like Taxing Diamonds | Mary Manning Cleveland - 0 views

  • Taxing Carbon Is Like Taxing Diamonds
  • To reduce carbon emissions, we must tax fossil fuels -- but, say the pundits, we can't do so because the tax would be regressive, clobbering the poor.
  • Imagine that we impose a sales tax on diamonds. Would we worry about the burden on middle-class purchasers of one-fourth-caret engagement rings? What about the part of the tax "passed back" onto the DeBeers Group? Not much sympathy for global monopolists either.
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  • Surprisingly, a carbon tax would operate much like a diamond tax, for reasons both of demand and supply.
  • Demand: The wealthy actually consume a disproportionate amount of carbon. Discussions of a carbon tax usually focus on the price of gasoline. One gallon of gas produces about 17 pounds of CO2. One metric ton is 2,204 pounds. So a $100 tax on a ton of CO2 comes to $0.77 per gallon -- a significant cost to low-income commuters and small truckers.
  • But the very poor don't drive or travel or occupy much space; the rich fly planes, including private jets; drive to low-density suburbs; occupy and heat multiple houses and hotels; and buy lots of stuff. Clearly the rich consume much more carbon per capita than the poor.
  • Demand elasticity for oil is low, about 0.5; so a 1 percent increase in oil price would cause a 0.5 percent decrease in consumption. That makes sense, since in the short run, it's hard for people to cut energy consumption, especially if they must drive to work. But, though numbers are hard to come by, elasticity of supply is much, much lower, for two reasons. First, oil production takes decades and billions in capital investment; producers cannot quickly increase or decrease supply. Second, oil producers form an international cartel, an organized mega-monopoly, which holds down production to drive up prices. Since they're already charging what the traffic will bear, they can't much raise prices to cover a tax.
  • As economists long ago figured out, buyers and sellers share a tax in inverse proportion to elasticity. Therefore, if supply elasticity of carbon is, say, 0.1, while demand elasticity is 0.5, the suppliers will pay five times as much of the tax as consumers. That reduces that $0.77 per gallon gas tax to only $0.13. Moreover, precisely because most of the tax falls on suppliers, it will generate plenty of revenue to help those unfortunate long-distance commuters and small truckers, to build more public transportation, to invest in renewable energy, and even to cut super-regressive taxes like the payroll tax.
  • According to Edward Wolff, in 2007, the top 1 percent in the U.S. owned 43 percent of non-home wealth, mostly securities, including of course energy company stocks and bonds. The top 10 percent of wealth holders owned 83 percent.
  • A May 2013 federal study of the Social Cost of Carbon estimated costs of additional CO2 emissions for 2010 to 2050 ranging from $27 to $221 per metric ton in 2050, depending on assumptions.
  • So we have good news and bad news. Good news: The cost of reducing carbon emissions will fall hardest on the 1 percent, who consume the most energy and own the energy companies. Bad news: Ditto. Expect a fight!
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    This article talks about the economic implications of imposing a tax on carbon emissions and how this would affect the different social classes of society in different ways. The article makes specific reference to economic theory and the elements on elasticity.
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    Taxation almost always decrease the economic surplus and therefore it makes a decline in effectiveness. In this case, the energy companies will be the most affected group.
Haydn W

Ukraine Uncertainty Depressing Growth and Investment | The Moscow Times - 5 views

  • As world leaders increase or trash their political clout depending on their audience and the statements they make about the situation in the Ukraine, some analysts were revising Russian GDP growth estimates to as low as 1.1 percent for the year.
  • Wednesday was a calmer day on the stock markets, following a dip of 10.8 percent Monday morning that vaporized near $60 billion of valuation from Russian companies.
  • Although Russia has seen some short-term budget benefits from ruble devaluation and increasing oil prices, the current impasse is not helping to fight stagnation or attract investment.
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  • The ruble strengthened slightly to 36 against the dollar and 49.4 against the euro Wednesday evening. This was well above the lows reached on Monday
  • Tightening fiscal policy was topped by possibly impending U.S. sanctions, including economic ones, followed by President Vladimir Putin's claims that Russia may use force in Ukraine if necessary.
  • The heap of these latest events has caused some analysts to revise their overall economy forecasts.
  • PSB Research said Wednesday it would decrease its initially modest GDP growth estimates for the year from the range of 1.5 to 1.8 percent to 1.1 to 1.3 percent.
  • Political standoff will also further stimulate the outflow of capital, Fedotkova said, as investors are reluctant to channel their money into the country that may be possibly involved in any kind of military activity
  • As for businesses, a recent survey done by the Gaidar Institute suggests that more than a third of CEOs and owners of private companies would consider investing in production this year if the price for equipment went down and if the macroeconomic outlook were more certain, Vedomosti reported Monday. At the same time macroeconomic uncertainty was a headache for only 10 percent of surveyed state-controlled companies. No margin of error was given for the survey.
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    This article explains how the recent stand-off crisis in Ukraine is having a negative effect on the Russian economy, with the Rouble taking a further fall and GDP growth estimates being revised downwards. Predictably sanctions imposed by the west on Russia in response to the occupation of Crimea, an autonomous region of Ukraine populated largely by ethnic Russians, have affected businesses in Russia. We learn from the article that some $60 billion valuation has been lost by Russian companies in light of the tensions. This article relates to the macroeconomic concept of circular flow being a complex process with international trade and governments being involved majorly in proceedings.
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