This week traditional Christmas shopping season is starting with Black Friday for retailers and with Cyber Monday for online sellers. Many of them already started with promotions and discounts. You can find out a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/27955155" target="_blank"strategy for online retailers/a in latest CNBC article.br /br /Today I would like to post on StockWeb also some deals worth of your interest. I have short listed couple of magazines related to business, investing and world of finance. All these magazines you can get for free. For each I put information about availability because some of them are for US readers only.br /br /* * *br /br /For me span style="font-weight: bold;"BusinessWeek/span is number one among business and financial magazines. I like especially December special edition with the projection for the global stock markets for the next year. Also with analysis and trends for coming year.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelona Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány announced yesterday (Wednesday) that the government had reached an agreement with commercial banks intended to protect the interests of those who have taken out foreign currency loans. The agreement, which is expected to be signed early next week, has three key components: 1) At the request of the debtor the banks will allow the duration of the loan to be extended (with fixed monthly instalments) so that the depreciation of the forint “does not place an unbearable burden on the debtors". 2) FX debtors who deem that exchange rate fluctuations carry excessive risks for them will be allowed to convert their foreign currency-based loan to a forint loan. In this case the banks “will accept this request and make the switch without extra charges". 3) If a debtor finds him- or herself in a position where he or she cannot pay the monthly instalments, e.g. due ...

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány announced this morning (Wednesday) that the government had reached an agreement with commercial banks intended to protect the interests of those who have taken out foreign currency loans.The agreement, which is expected to be signed early next week, has three key components:1) At the request of the debtor the banks will allow the duration of the loan to be extended (with fixed monthly instalments) so that the depreciation of the forint “does not place an unbearable burden on the debtors".2) FX debtors who deem that exchange rate fluctuations carry excessive risks for them will be allowed to convert their foreign currency-based loan to a forint loan. In this case the banks “will accept this request and make the switch without extra charges".3) If a debtor finds him- or herself in a position where he or she cannot ...

Business New Europe Jason Corcoran in Moscow September 1, 2008Andrei Movchan, founding chief executive and co-head of Renaissance Investment Management (RIM), is banking on his bulging Rolodex of rich clients to help his firm emerge from the long shadow cast by its investment banking stable-mate, Renaissance Capital. RIM, the emerging markets fund arm of the Moscow-based financial group, has racked up $7bn in assets under management since its inception of 2003, with $5bn in assets being generated by its wealth management business, where individual accounts range from $3m-5m. This significant proportion of high net worth clients is in contrast to the more modest growth in mutual funds, where RIM manages just $200m. Conversely, rival Troika Dialog Asset Management has a total of $10bn in assets under management in retail, ...

Avid readers will know that I rather like General Electric at these prices.

Here I point out just how good the weak USD is to them.

And here I point out just how fantastic GE’s asset sales have been. [Just imagine if GE still owned FGIC and Genworth. The former is in deep trouble. The latter is merely problematic.]

Regular readers will also know that I subscribe to the GE press-release blog which you will find here.

But when I am long a stock I always look at what is wrong with the story. Indeed the central investment trap I fall into is to ignore the positives in my shorts and ignore the negatives in my long. This post is a conscious effort to correct that.

The negatives

With GE I point to a few negatives:

The ...

General Automotive Company (OTCBB: GNAU) recently announced that they have added two members to their board of directors, Anthony J. Dowd and Kenneth F. Adams. The company is a provider of original equipment and aftermarket automotive parts, mobile electronics, and related automotive products spanning different areas of distribution within the United States and internationally.

Anthony Dowd is the managing partner of the private equity partnership, Charter Oak International Partners. During his sixteen years at Charter Oak, Dowd directed and led numerous acquisitions and investment ventures with privately held businesses. His team has completed more than forty-five acquisitions since founding Charter Oak’s private equity business.

Kenneth Adams brings with him an extensive background of management experience. He served as vice president and CFO of Saab Cars USA, Inc. for thirteen years, a subsidiary of General Motors Corporation and a wholesale distributor of Saab cars, producing

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Knock on wood but we continue a strange streak of no major earnings blowouts from the myriad fund holdings. I had reduced both positions going into earnings to reduce risk, but looks like both came through quite well. As opposed to Huron Consulting (HURN) which we sold out of yesterday, peer FTI Consulting (FCN) just continues to execute quarter after quarter; beat estimates and raise guidance - par for the course for these guys. All the drivers that should be driving HURN are in fact driving FCN. All this earnings growth even with a large share count increase (nearly a quarter) - even more impressive. Business advisory firm FTI Consulting Inc. said Wednesday its first-quarter profit more than doubled, surpassing Wall Street's expectations, as fallout from the subprime mortgage mess spurred strong revenue growth across all business segments. For the three months ended March 31, the company reported income ...