The largest banks in the Baltic region might fase losses of a total amount of  USD 25 billion at the end of 2012, the Swedish regulators stresstest shows. That’s twice the amount of the current estimates, but still “managable”, according to the regulators. The Swedish authorities underline a substatial uncertainty. “We see a negative scenario as unlikely, but not impossible” Finansinspektionen – [...]

Chongwen district in Beijing has announced that, following renovation, Qianmen street will re-open at 11:08 on September 28, 2009, and the 103 stores along the street will all be open for business. According to reports in local media, the restoration of this street was basically completed in April 2008 and it was opened to the public [...]

Swedish apparel retailer H&M has announced plans to vigorously expand in the Chinese market during 2009 by opening five new specialty stores in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Beijing will be H&M's development focus this year. The retailer's first flagship store in Beijing will open on April 23 on Qianmen Street and its second store in [...]

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 ...

I wanted to follow up on the farm land, and related, stocks. Allow me to disclaim the hell out of this research. I do not vouch for the accuracy of any of the ticker symbols as things get lost in the translation going from the symbols on the local markets and the US five letter identifier. Further I have not done what I would call proper research on any of the names this merely an acknowledgment that these companies exist. This post is just my sharing what I have found so far but there is more looking still to be done. Remember the big macro which I think is that the dynamics of supply and demand for food are changing. There has been a combination of more demand from incrementally richer countries, investment demand for certain products, funky weather in some places (Australia had ...