Is the Norwegian economy really out of the resession? Is the economy recovering or deteriorating? Are the Norwegians facing “Japanese conditions”, or at risk of catching the “Dutch desease”? And was the Central Banks’ rate hike a big mistake? There seems to be more questions than answers. But it’s pretty clear that anything still can [...]

Vice chairman Jan F. Qvigstad share some interesting thoughts on the central banks transparency policy in this transcript of a speech he held earlier this week. Central Bank of Norway acknowledge the need for greater transparency, but according to Mr. Qvigstad full transarency is not possible. The balance between tranparency and finacial stability is difficult, [...]

Oops…(I did it again)… Sometimes, not often, but once in a while I make people a little bit upset with my writings.  This time the good people of Norways leading bank DnB NOR don’t like my view on their Baltic operations, and surtainly not that I called the Norwegian banks daughter company in Denmark/Latvia for a “Baltic Lab [...]

Norways leading commercial bank, DnB NOR, operates in the Baltic countries throug its daugther company DnB NORD. The Norwegian bank is a major provider of houshold loans in the region, but the Baltic division is also a laboratorie for developing new advanced structured financial instruments – off-balance products and Special Purpose Etnities. It also serves [...]

“The economic activity in Norway has recovered faster than expected and the unemployment rate has risen far less than expected. The World economy shows signs of growth, chairman of Central Bank of Norway said in a statement relating to the interest hike last week. Todays PMI reading for Norway tells a different story”   “Norwegian Industry is [...]

Image by Qtea via Flickr  It’s fairly easy to get your old car valued, and there’s surtanly no problems in deciding what a bottle of coca cola should cost. But to figure out the price of money seems to get more and more difficult.       “I believe that basically the system is broken and needs to be reconstituted. We cannot afford to have [...]

Image via Wikipedia Det internasjonale pengefondet, IMF, har torsdag lagt frem sin undersøkelse av situasjonen i finanssektoren. I de største mediene blir den beskrevet som et lyspunkt og en bekreftelse på at problemene i bankene så godt som er løst. Er det noen som i det hele tatt har lest rapporten?     IMF presenterer torsdag sin ”Global Financial [...]

[Editor's Note:When the journalistic sleuths at Slate magazine recently set out to identify the stock-market guru who correctly predicted how far U.S. stocks would fall because of the global financial crisis, the respected "e-zine" concluded it was Martin Hutchinson who "called" the market bottom.

That discovery was no surprise to the readers of Money Morning - after all, Hutchinson has made a bevy of such savvy predictions since this publication was launched. Hutchinson warned investors about the evils of credit default swaps six months before the complex derivatives KO'd insurer American International Group Inc. He predicted the record run that gold made last year - back in 2007. Then, last fall - as Slate discovered - Hutchinson "called" the market bottom.

Now investors face an unpredictable stock market that's back-dropped by an uncertain economy. No matter. Hutchinson has developed a strategy that's tailor-made for such a directionless market, and that ...

A Selective Investment in Scandinavia As evidence of commercial interest in developing an ETF for the Nordic region, Global X Management has recently filed for such a product, based on the FTSE Nordic 30 Index. The Global X filing specifies that, "The underlying index tracks the performance of the 30 largest and most liquid companies in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. The Adviser uses a passive or indexing approach to try to achieve the Fund’s investment objective." In contrast, the ETFI Nordic Region PerformIdex is a semi-active ETF proposal with quarterly rebalancing among all companies in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland with market caps over $1 billion USD. Currently, 92 companies qualify for the index with only the top 40 rated stock ...

Top 10 Rated Nordic Companies Nordic Region: Stats for All 116 & Top 40 Companies Nordic Region: Breakdown by Country As evidence of commercial interest in developing an ETF for the Nordic region, Global X Management has recently filed for such a product, based on the FTSE Nordic 30 Index. The Global X filing specifies that, "The underlying index tracks the performance of the 30 largest and most liquid companies in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. The Adviser uses a passive or indexing approach to try to achieve the Fund’s investment objective." In contrast, my NordiCaps Top 40 Rated ETF proposal is ...