These Apartment Hunters Are the Happy Renters

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/realestate/13HUNT.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

When the LeCounts moved in this summer, they felt a huge weight lifted. If anything goes wrong, “we don’t have to shell out more money to have it repaired,” Mr. LeCount said. They no longer worry about parking, but drive right to their door. If they have many grocery bags, they wheel them up in a cart provided by the building.

Need a container ship?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession.html

You may wish to know this because, if ever you had an irrational desire to charter one, now would be the time. This time last year, an Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost £31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500).

French: The Most Productive People In The World

http://www.businessinsider.com/are-the-french-the-most-productive-people-in-the-world-2009-8

The real message here is that the French are likely some of the most productive people in the entire world.

France has $36,500 GDP/Capita and works 1,453 hours per year. This equates to a GDP/Capita/Hour of $25.10. Americans, on the other hand, have $44,150 GDP/Capita but work 1,792 hours per year. Thus Americans only achieve $24.60 of GDP/Capita/Hour.

Wall Street on the Tundra: Iceland

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904

Iceland’s big change began in the early 1970s, after a couple of years when the fish catch was terrible. The best fishermen returned for a second year in a row without their usual haul of cod and haddock, so the Icelandic government took radical action: they privatized the fish. Each fisherman was assigned a quota, based roughly on his historical catches. If you were a big-time Icelandic fisherman you got this piece of paper that entitled you to, say, 1 percent of the total catch allowed to be pulled from Iceland’s waters that season. Before each season the scientists at the Marine Research Institute would determine the total number of cod or haddock that could be caught without damaging the long-term health of the fish population; from year to year, the numbers of fish you could catch changed. But your percentage of the annual haul was fixed, and this piece of paper entitled you to it in perpetuity.

[...]

Even better, if you didn’t want to fish you could sell your quota to someone who did. The quotas thus drifted into the hands of the people to whom they were of the greatest value, the best fishermen, who could extract the fish from the sea with maximum efficiency. You could also take your quota to the bank and borrow against it, and the bank had no trouble assigning a dollar value to your share of the cod pulled, without competition, from the richest cod-fishing grounds on earth. The fish had not only been privatized, they had been securitized.

[...]

The other, more serious problem was the Icelandic male: he took more safety risks than aluminum workers in other nations did. “In manufacturing,” says the spokesman, “you want people who follow the rules and fall in line. You don’t want them to be heroes. You don’t want them to try to fix something it’s not their job to fix, because they might blow up the place.” The Icelandic male had a propensity to try to fix something it wasn’t his job to fix.

[...]

Back in 2001, as the Internet boom turned into a bust, M.I.T.’s Quarterly Journal of Economics published an intriguing paper called “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment.” The authors, Brad Barber and Terrance Odean, gained access to the trading activity in over 35,000 households, and used it to compare the habits of men and women. What they found, in a nutshell, is that men not only trade more often than women but do so from a false faith in their own financial judgment. Single men traded less sensibly than married men, and married men traded less sensibly than single women: the less the female presence, the less rational the approach to trading in the markets.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized - Part 1

WOW - n'oubliez de continuer avec la partie 2!

Economic Collapse: the Japanese solution

Economic Collapse: the Japanese solution

It would serve America well not to follow the blundering steps of the Japanese government in trying to resolve the problems of what was once the Land of the Rising Sun.

[...]

The Japanese government has prolonged its downturn for an additional decade by not allowing bankrupt banks and corporations to liquidate. Zombie banks and corporations existed for decades without writing off the billions of bad debts. They hoarded all of the money provided by the government. The Japanese tried every trick in the Keynesian playbook. Zero interest rates, public works projects tax rebates and tax decreases. The government built thousands of bridges and roads, driving up government debt to enormous levels. Between 1990 and 2000, the Japanese government instituted 10 fiscal stimulus programs totaling $1 trillion. None of these programs worked.


[...]

The remaining mega-banks that have caused this crisis need to be put out of our misery. The shareholders and bondholders of Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and any other insolvent banks need to be wiped out. The bad banks should go out of business. The prudent banks that did not take financial system destroying risks should be allowed to succeed based on their merits. Failed companies with failed strategies must go bankrupt. If the American auto industry is propped up by taxpayer money, the capitalist process of rationalizing manufacturing capacity to final demand will never happen. Allowing companies to fail brings about restructuring and the remaining healthy companies buy the good assets.

[...]

Only infrastructure projects that benefit the citizens of the country should be undertaken. These would include water pipe replacement, electrical grid upgrades and repairing structurally deficient bridges. If the money is spent on worthless make work projects, good investments will be crowded out. Tax rebate checks are just a redistribution of wealth from future generations to the spend thrift generation of today. A tax decrease today that is borrowed is a tax increase on our children. They will not stimulate spending.

versus

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. The Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, was the 15th-largest bank in North America one year ago. Now it is the fifth-largest. It hasn't grown in size; the others have all shrunk.

Commentaire sur la crise financière américaine

Comme vous le savez, la crise financière américaine est préoccupante - même pour le Canada puisque près de 80% de nos exportations vont aux États-Unis. Malheureusement le fameux "bail-out" est une tentative des politiciens pour sauver les super-riches qui ont pris des super-risques qui va probablement faire chavirer les États-Unis et entrainer le Canada. La tentative de Bush d'ajouter à la peur et la panique est non seulement néfaste mais une manipulation transparente du public.

La crise est principalement un manque de confiance dans les institutions financières américaines qui mènent à un resserrement du crédit, outils essentiels à celles-ci. La solution est probablement de laisser la plupart des institutions financières techniquement en faillite disparaitre, protéger les épargnes des individus (FDIC) et s'assurer que les grands investisseurs privés capitalise les institutions financières en bonne santé. Il faut voir l'investissement de 5 milliards de Warren Buffet dans Goldman-Sachs par exemple qui enlève la nécessité du gouvernment d'intervenir pour "sauver" Goldman-Sachs - une entreprise avec des reins solides tellement profitable qu'elle a remis récemment 600K$ en moyenne en bonus par employé!

Voici le meilleur vidéo sur le sujet:



NOTE: moi et Min Lin détenons des actions autant dans Berkshire-Hathaway (compagnie dont Warren Buffett est le CEO) que Goldman-Sachs.

11 reasons America's a new socialist economy

Back in 1999 a Democratic president and Republican Congress were in love with a fantasy called the "new economics." Enthusiastic lobbyists invented the brilliant idea of dismantling the wall between commercial and investment banking: They killed the Glass-Steagall Act that was keeping the sleazy hands of short-term hustlers out of the pockets of long-term lenders.

Flash forward: We lost 85-year-old Bear Sterns and $32 billion IndyMac. Lehman's iffy. And 90 banks. With the virtual takeover of Freddie and Fanny, Wall Street's grand experiment with free-market ideology is backfiring, having socialized the housing market. They have nobody to blame but their self-centered greed.

Le nouveau "stock screener" de Google

Le nouveau "stock screener" de Google Finance est vraiment cool puisqu'il permet de visuellement sélectionner une liste d'actions basé sur la distribution des compagnies qui répondent à des critères particulier avec une liste mis à jour en temps réel!

Short Seller Tells CNBC Why Warren Buffett Has Met His "Watergate"

"Look, I worship at the knee of Warren Buffett and all he's accomplished over the years. But the reality is in the last decade he's underperformed dramatically and he's drifted in terms of strategy. He calls derivatives 'financial weapons of mass destruction' yet he has about 40 billion dollars on his books and lost 1.2 billion in the first quarter. And everyone admires him and goes to the Woodstock of Capitalism in Omaha and praises his accomplishments. His stock is starting to do poorly.

Kass isn't the first to argue over the years that Buffett has lost his touch. Many of those who have bet against him in the past have lost out in the long-run. It's very hard to argue with the world's richest man.

Le meilleur ETF pays en ce moment

Ouf, ça m'a pris un méchant bout de temps, mais je pense que j'ai trouvé le meilleur ETF basé sur un pays... Voici ma méthodologie (le résultat est un document Google Spreadsheet):

• Copie des pays avec le plus haut GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita de la liste compilé par la CIA
• Éliminé tout les pays en dessous de la Corée du Sud (50ième)
  
• Éliminé tout les pays dont l'information n'était pas à jour (et donc suspecte)
• Éliminé tout les pays bénéficiant principalement du boom pétrolier (que je crois temporaire)
  
• Identifié tout les pays avec instabilité politique quelconque (en rouge)
• Lu le résumé économique de la fiche CIA et identifié ceux dont le sommaire était positif
• Identifié un fond ETF pour tout les pays (certains n'en n'ont pas...); la plupart des fonds sont iShares
  
• Identification du P/E global pour l'ETF (il s'avère que Google, Yahoo et le site iShares ne sont pas en accord!)
  
• Enregistré le yield en pourcentage du site de iShares

Les trois gagnant de cet exercice:

• #3 Grande-Bretagne (EWU)
  
• #2 Hollande (EWN)
  
• #1 Suède (EWD)
  

L'ETF EWD (32.07$) pour la Suède a un yield particulièrement intéressant. Comme pays, la Suède a une fiche CIA reluisante; pour plus d'infos, voir la fiche française Wikipédia et l'information sur NationMaster.

Autres opinions:

• Should Sweden (EWD) and Malaysia (EWM) Be In the Doghouse?

• Sweden's GDP growth hits a wall

Dommage quand même que je n'ai pas trouvé de véhicule d'investissement pour la Slovénie, le Danemark et le Luxembourg qui semblait tous des pays très intéressants...

Exchange-Traded Fund

source: Morningstar

Les ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund) sont des paniers d'actions vendus sous forme d'action vendus et achetés en bourse. Ils ont des frais beaucoup moindre que les fonds mutuels et suivent en général un index quelconque. Puisque chaque action représente plusieurs compagnies, c'est un bon moyen de se diversifier sans avoir à suivre constamment les compagnies de son portefeuille.

Le choix à faire est sur le secteur, la région, la taille des entreprises ou le type. Le tableau représente ici des fonds avec des coûts de gestion (expense ratio) de moins de 0.2% (comparé généralement à 1.5% pour les fonds mutuels) ordonné par le ratio Prix/Profits (Price/Earnings).

Prem Watsa, le Buffett du Nord

D'un article intitulé "The next Buffetts", le seul candidat qui semble un intéressant substitut pour Warren Buffett est Prem Watsa, un Canadien:

Prem Watsa
Fairfax Financial
Toronto

Why he’s like Buffett: Watsa, too, is a value investor. And just as Buffett has built his empire around Berkshire, which is primarily an insurance company, Watsa has built his empire around Fairfax, which is also an insurance company.

Sa compagnie est Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, une compagnie d'assurance. Malheureusement (ou peut-être avec raison), il croit plutôt à une forte récession et a donc surtout des investissements très conservateurs en ce moment. Son action est à 272.40$ aujourd'hui alors que la valeur aux livres est de 230.01 (2007). Selon sa présentation à la réunion annuelle (16 avril 2008), les risques pour l'économie américaine sont liés à tout les aspects du marché boursier, "corporate bond market", l'immobilier et le fait que les marchés boursier sont à des records partout dans le monde.

Ça pourrait être un bon moyen de compenser le risque dans un portefeuille avec trop de compagnies à risque d'être affecté par une récession (Goldman-Sachs).

Depuis avril, Fairfax a au moins 18.73% de CanWest Global Communications, une compagnie qui est passé de 7.29$ en début d'année à 3.79$ aujourd'hui :

Canwest is Canada's leading international media company.

[...]

The broadcast brands are complemented by 26 specialty networks capturing a 30.1% share of commercial specialty network viewers in Canada.

Canwest operates one of Canada's largest newspaper chains reaching 4.8 million engaged readers on a weekly basis.

[...]

In Australia, Canwest is indirectly (through a wholly owned subsidiary) the majority and controlling shareholder of the TEN Television Network and Eye Corp.

[...]

Canwest's international assets also include FM radio stations in the United Kingdom, under the Original 106fm brand, and several stations in Turkey. Canwest has a full interest in The New Republic magazine, a 93 year-old US-based political magazine that offers intelligent, stimulating and rigorous examination of American politics, foreign policy and culture.

Ça semble en soi un bon achat parce que les résultats de cette compagnie sont surtout affectés en ce moment par l'impact financier la grève des auteurs entre Novembre et Février dernier.

L'article "The next Buffetts" amène quand même une autre question; puisque les seuls investisseurs dans la liste sont Nord-Américains, où sont les "Buffett" dans l'international? Qui sont les investisseurs intelligents, éthiques avec une vision à long terme dans le monde? Il doit bien y en avoir des candidats en Europe, en Amérique du Sud, en Océanie, en Asie ou en Afrique... Peut-être qu'il prendra aussi une forme différente de celle d'un gestionnaire d'une compagnie d'assurance cherchant à investir son "float"!

Warren Buffett, Berkshire-Hathaway

Petit commentaire rigolo de l'homme le plus riche au monde, Warren Buffett:

"I kind of go to the office everyday and wait for the phone to ring and hope it isn't a wrong number," he quipped to describe his strategy of letting companies come to him rather than searching them out.

Moi et Min Lin on est bien content d'avoir des actions dans sa compagnie, Berkshire-Hathaway, un holding de 76 compagnies. Sa lettre annuelle aux actionnaires est toujours très intéressante.

We made one large sale last year. In 2002 and 2003 Berkshire bought 1.3% of PetroChina for $488 million, a price that valued the entire business at about $37 billion. Charlie and I then felt that the company was worth about $100 billion. By 2007, two factors had materially increased its value: the price of oil had climbed significantly, and PetroChina’s management had done a great job in building oil and gas reserves. In the second half of last year, the market value of the company rose to $275 billion, about what we thought it was worth compared to other giant oil companies. So we sold our holdings for $4 billion.

At Berkshire we held only one direct currency position during 2007. That was in – hold your breath – the Brazilian real. Not long ago, swapping dollars for reals would have been unthinkable. After all, during the past century five versions of Brazilian currency have, in effect, turned into confetti. As has been true in many countries whose currencies have periodically withered and died, wealthy Brazilians sometimes stashed large sums in the U.S. to preserve their wealth. But any Brazilian who followed this apparently prudent course would have lost half his net worth
over the past five years. Here’s the year-by-year record (indexed) of the real versus the dollar from the end of 2002 to yearend 2007: 100; 122; 133; 152; 166; 199. Every year the real went up and the dollar fell.

Il conclu cette lettre avec un petit paragraphe inspirant:

At 84 and 77, Charlie and I remain lucky beyond our dreams. We were born in America; had terrific parents who saw that we got good educations; have enjoyed wonderful families and great health; and came equipped with a “business” gene that allows us to prosper in a manner hugely disproportionate to that experienced by many people who contribute as much or more to our society’s well-being. Moreover, we have long had jobs that we love, in which we are helped in countless ways by talented and cheerful associates. Every day is exciting to us; no wonder we tap-dance to work.

Warren appuie aussi Obama comme candidat démocrate:

"I think that the US has followed and is following policies which will cause the US dollar to weaken over a long period of time," he said.

Citibank vs BMO

Min Lin a retiré deux fois du guichet automatique à Munich pour payer son loyer.

Une première fois en utilisant sa carte de la Banque de Montréal où elle a eu 1.626449 pour le taux de change + 3$ de frais.

La deuxième fois, elle a retiré de notre compte Citibank US. Le compte Citibank ne charge aucun frais pour des retraits dans ses guichets dans d'autre pays et leur taux de change courant + 2% (1% pour les clients Citigold) qui revient à 1.58784.

Sur un montant de 500 EUR, c'est une vingtaine de dollars de différence en frais!

À noter que le taux de change réel varie ces jours-ci autour de 1.54 alors même le taux de change soi-disant compétitif de Citibank a déjà un certain coût déjà ajouté...

En conclusion, les banques vont toujours mettre le plus de frais possible mais certaines banques sont plus gourmandes que d'autres... Et les plus gourmandes sont les banques canadiennes, probablement à cause de leur oligole...