Currency expert Jack Crooks says South Africa risks becoming the most notorious failed state in the troubled continent. Falling commodity prices are hurting the mining industry. And social tensions continue to destabilize the political climate. Jack says the rand is hugely overvalued right now, making it a “currency crisis in the making”.

This from The Sovereign Society:

Put simply: If things don’t start improving quickly in South Africa, it’s poised to become the next – and perhaps most noteworthy – failed state in all of Africa. Think Zimbabwe, but multiply the chaos as South Africa has long been the best and last hope for Africans striving to build and maintain a modern and efficient market economy.

1. Global economies, most specifically emerging global economies, have been brought to a halt by declining levels of demand. South African resources are particularly exposed to demand destruction as the global recession spreads. Frozen credit

Hello Friends!  Thanks so much for stopping by and visiting my blog, Stock Picks Bob’s Advice!  As always, please remember that I am an amateur investor, so please remember to consult with your professional investment advisers prior to making any investment decisions based on information on this website.

A few moments ago I sold all of my shares of ResMed (RMD), which amounted to 150 shares, at $38.46.  These shares were purchased 2/4/05 at a cost basis of $29.87 giving me a long-term gain of $8.59 or  28.8% on these shares.

This sale brings me down to my ‘minimum’ portfolio size of 5 positions.  I have set my maximum at 20 positions and my minimum at 5.  What this means is that with this sale, as before, since it is on ‘bad news’, which means selling on a defensive …

ETFs are securities certificates that state legal right of ownership over part of a basket of individual stock certificates. Several different kinds of financial firms are needed for ETFs to come into being, trade at prices that closely match their underlying assets, and unwind when investors no longer want them. Laying all the groundwork is the fund manager. This is the main backer behind any ETF, and they must submit a detailed plan for how the ETF will operate to be given permission by the SEC to proceed.

In theory all that a fund manager needs to do is establish clear procedures and describe precisely the composition of the ETF (which changes infrequently) to the other firms involved in ETF creation and redemption. In practice, however, only the very biggest institutional money management firms with experience in indexing tend …

The last week was characterized by investors increasingly taking the view that the worst of the credit crisis was over. They seemed to be shrugging off further substantiation of the dreadful state of the US housing situation, as they digested the latest round of quarterly earnings reports. The latter ranged from plunging profits from Bank of America (ANC) to a dreadful report from Ambac (ABC) to guidance from Microsoft (MSFT) that failed to live up to investors’ expectations.

Stock markets see-sawed as investors assimilated the various economic and earnings reports, with the S&P 500 Index eventually eking out a positive return of 0.5% for the week, thereby consolidating the previous week’s gains (+4.3%).

Evidence of a more relaxed undertone among equity investors was confirmed

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