Investment Gems

(Photo credit: Sankarshan) First of all, we have to get the context for this transaction. IBM (IBM) proposed taking over Red Hat (RHT) in a $30 billion deal. There are some specifics that must be covered. One of the most important is the fact that this is a friendly deal, i.e.,…

(photo credit: Aaron T. Goodman) Nader Naeimi, the guy who correctly called the emerging market selloff back in October, is now being quoted by Bloomberg as being bullish on Chinese shares. That doesn’t surprise me. First, the market rout happened very fast and the performance went down by a lot. For…

Summary Two decades ago, no one would say that open-source would survive private code competition. However, open-source not only survived, as it also thrived. Red Hat’s business model, based on subscriptions and services, has delivered good margins.   (Photo credit: Sankarshan) Open source evolved, developing an entrenched market position For years…

Summary Debt has no place in traditional academic macroeconomic models. Successful traders and speculators, however, have always relied on debt cycles to predict crashes. After the Great Recession and following Minsky heritage, academics started to pay more attention to debt cycles. They use High Yield corporate credit as reference. In…

Summary QE money returning home is mainly responsible for the fragile economies’ massacre. The trade war seems to be the catalyst for the disorderly return, and the movement seems blind to fundamentals. China should be resilient through the increased focus on its internal market. If a hard-landing fails to materialize,…

Summary Genetics will be one of the future branches of healthcare. The technology might be complex, but investors shouldn’t dismiss it on that ground. There are already great business models around this technology that should make investors salivate.   Usually, the technology field is populated by a special type of…

Conventional wisdom tells us that we should avoid tech stocks in an increasing interest rate scenario. However, tech stocks are fundamental for healthy portfolio returns. As happened before, low debt and well-managed companies should be able to weather higher rates.   Tech stocks will get overvalued on a frequent basis.…

Summary Portugal has an uncompetitive economic structure, meaning that it’s hard to find good companies. However, as many foreign investors start looking for value on the periphery, they might turn to Portugal. In the most inauspicious conditions, one might still find some interesting companies. Investing in Portugal Portugal is a…

The current bull market in US equities is screaming for investors to reinvest profits elsewhere. The Swiss franc has held safe-haven status for a long time and it might be wise to lay a nest egg there. VAT Group seems like an interesting proposition for diversifying away from the US.…