a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_T9VXVyuEITg/SVXq_Wn9ZRI/AAAAAAAAAms/2Hy4p_jyDYw/s1600-h/Basketball.png"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_T9VXVyuEITg/SVXq_Wn9ZRI/AAAAAAAAAms/2Hy4p_jyDYw/s320/Basketball.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284388111914984722" //abr /At last night's Lakers versus the Celtics basketball game, tickets supposedly went for $20,000 each from the scalpers. Basketball, in addition to being a great aerobic sport for participants, a great spectator sport for fans, and is big business. The following companies are involved the sport of basketball in some way, some just a small portion of their business.br /br /Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC) Their Madison Square Garden division owns and operates the New York Knickerbockers basketball team; they also own the Madison Square Garden Arena, the New York Rangers hockey team, the New York Liberty women's basketball team, and the Hartford Wolf Pack hockey team. The stock has a PE of 45, a PEG of 5.62, and a yield of 2.7%. br /br /Comcast (CMCSA) The company owns Comcast-Spectacor, which ...

Interesting article worth reading about the Philippines.brbrRoughly 10% --- nine million people --- of the Philippines population has left the country to take a title=nanny target=_blank href=http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/sports/migrants.phpoverseas jobs/a, primarily as maids, nannies, and nurses. brbrThere are only two Philippine stocks listed on U.S exchanges (Etelcare Global Solutions and Philippine Long Distance Telephone) so I haven't paid much attention to the Philippines for investment ideas.

Trading on the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), Elixir Gaming Technologies Inc. provides turnkey gaming solutions to venue owners. They work with their major shareholder Elixir International who is part of the Melco Group. Elixir Gaming’s main business is the placement of gaming machines on a revenue share model in three, four and five star resorts, hotels, cruise ships, and other venues across emerging gaming markets in the Asia Pacific region. The Company has offices in Macau, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Manila, and Cambodia.

Elixir Gaming has established operations in the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam. They are building a stronger gaming presence via contracts for more than 5,500 electronic gaming machines for placing across more than 30 venues in the near future. The Company focuses their efforts on Asia as revenue from casinos and other regulated gambling activities in Asia is forecast to grow 14 percent a year to 2010.

Elixir collaborates with

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One of our most reliable indicators about emerging markets shows that investors may have a real slog ahead of them in the coming years. In the past, we’ve used cell-phone sales in growing economies as means of measuring the prospects for investments. Cell phones show how much disposable income is available, in addition to reflecting the entrepreneurial spirit that creates a healthy middle class.

These countries whose communications systems have suffered from decades of neglect and under-investment could never match the needs of a fast-growing economy. So rather than wait for the government to lay cables, consumers instead opt for instant communications via cell phones.

Now a new report from market-research firm Gartner, Inc. says that cell-phone sales in emerging markets will hit a wall. Investors should take this information to mean that these markets will continue to be soft through 2009.

In Q3 2008, about 309 million mobile phones were sold world-wide,

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The only licensee so far for the DJIM ASEAN is by a traditional equity fund manager, Malaysia-based Corston-Smith Asset Management.

 

Dow Jones Indexes launched the Dow Jones Islamic Market ASEAN Index on Monday, the first index to cover Shari'ah-compliant companies in six of the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The DJIM ASEAN Index will serve as the basis for exchange-traded funds and other investment products. Islamic nations in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia are ramping up efforts to develop their local ETF marketplaces.

Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, four of the six countries covered by the new index, have already taken baby steps into ETF waters.

At the end of the third quarter, Singapore had five ETFs; Malaysia had three, Thailand had two, and Indonesia had one ETF portfolio, according

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Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and even the mighty Dubai are getting dragged down by the global economic turmoil.  “The global financial storm rolled across the Persian Gulf on Sunday,” reports the WSJ, “as Kuwait’s central bank guaranteed bank deposits and cobbled together a hasty bailout for one of the country’s largest banks.”

– Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has announced it will pour $2.3 billion in loans to low-income borrowers.

– There are also signs of trouble in boom town Dubai. The WSJ reports that real-estate brokers there say they are seeing signs of “price weakness” there. We can only presume this is real-estate broker speak for “Nobody’s buying.”

– Over the weekend, “Dr. Doom,” aka New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini, told The Times that the world economy was “at a breaking point” and that

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Back in 1997, a minor currency crisis in Thailand rattled a few regional market players. But the rest of the world ignored it … at first. They said it wouldn’t matter to the U.S. and would be just a blip on the radar screen. But soon the decline in Thailand’s currency, the baht, accelerated. It went from a gentle slide to a full-scale rout. Before long, currencies in the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Korea began to fall out of bed. Then regional stock indices later crashed. Our Dow suffered what was then one of the largest point declines on record. And the International Monetary Fund was forced to step in and bail out several economies — to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. It was a scary time. But compared to what ...

Overseas markets surged early Tuesday as government-backed bank-bailout plans in the United States, Europe and Japan persuaded investors to jump back into stocks.

Flexibility is the name of the game when it comes to operating in the commodity materials marketplace. As feedstock material prices rise, a company needs to be able to adjust and change its manufacturing capacity to markets where margins are more predictable and profitable. Some commodity manufacturing sectors can make this change more easily than others, but when they do, they will be more able to capitalize on the changing dynamics that commodity oriented markets bring.

China Clean Energy Corp., a specialty chemicals manufacturer, works to manufacture and market specialty chemicals from sustainable waste feedstock sources. The company is currently manufacturing high performance hot-melt adhesives while maintaining capabilities to manufacture bio-diesel.

The company operates on a commodity pricing basis. Its primary specialty chemical feedstock is waste palm-oil, imported from Malaysia and the Philippines, which is highly susceptible to swings in commodity prices. In the past, through its wholly owned subsidiaries Fujian Zhongde

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by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell, Europe's leaders have finally bitten the bullet. Faced with what IMF head Dominique Strauss Kahn warned could turn into a global financial meltdown, our leaders have risen to the challenge, at least to a certain extent. The details of what has been agreed continue to remain vague, but obviously I think it is a good FIRST move. More will now almost inevitably follow, but our reluctant leaders have finally got their feet wet, and the bathing costume is on. Now it is only left for them to dive into the ocean which lies in front.And, of course, the situation was not without its theatricals. Initially billed as a "eurozone only" meet-up, Gordon Brown was ultimately summoned, a move which was not totally essential, but since he was the only one with a real "going plan" on the table, the invitation made sense. ...