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Do bitcoins belong in your retirement portfolio?

"For years, investment firms and professionals have advocated the need to include a small percentage of high risk and potentially high reward assets into your retirement portfolio. The thinking is that including a small percentage of your overall asset allocation (from 5% - 10%) into these assets can provide high potential returns with only a small impact on your portfolio if the risk becomes too great. Robert Powell wrote on this site recently of how defined benefit plan managers often go beyond stocks and bonds to achieve high returns by pursuing more 'nontraditional strategies'." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDo bitcoins belong in your retirement portfolio?

Researcher: Facebook spammers make $200 million just posting links

"Spammers posting links on Facebook fan pages to send people to third-party scam sites are earning $200m every year, according to calculations by a team of Italian security researchers who have investigated hundreds of thousands of posts on the social network. Trying to catch and get rid of the spammers is a growing problem for Facebook. The revenue that the spammers do not form part of Facebook’s revenue, but instead piggyback on the success of the social network, which now has more than a billion users worldwide. In April, the Italian team uncovered the multimillion-pound business of selling fake Twitter followers, estimating then that as many as 20m were created by spammers." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingResearcher: Facebook spammers make $200 million just posting links

Turning Off The Spigot In Western Kansas Farmland

"Big irrigated fields of corn in this part of the country are taking water out of underground aquifers much faster than rain or snow can fill those natural reservoirs back up. If Kansas farmers keep pumping water out of the High Plains aquifer as they have in the past, the amount of water they're able to extract will start to fall in just 10 years or so. They'll still be able to continue harvesting more corn for another generation, though, because technology will let them use that water more efficiently. But after that, even the latest technology won't save the corn fields. Irrigated fields will start to disappear, followed by cattle feedlots. The long expansion of agricultural production in western Kansas will end." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingTurning Off The Spigot In Western Kansas Farmland

The cost of being the world’s No.1 uranium producer

"Kazakhstan has steadily risen to become the world's No. 1 uranium producer, surpassing such nations as the United States, Canada, and Australia, which require more cleanup. Rather than employing miners to haul rock up to the surface, mine operators in Kazakhstan have embraced a newer – and generally cleaner – process by which a chemical solution is injected down a pipe to dissolve the underground uranium deposits and then is sucked back up to the surface. This in situ leach (ISL) method avoids making a mess above ground, but leaves toxic levels of heavy metals in the ground water." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe cost of being the world’s No.1 uranium producer

South African labor unrest spreads, gold, construction strikes loom

"Tens of thousands of construction workers prepared to down tools next week and unions in the gold sector also signaled their intention to call a strike over wages. NUM represents about 64 percent of the roughly 140,000 miners in the South African gold industry, where major operators include AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Harmony and Sibanye Gold. Seshoka also announced that NUM's 90,000 members in the construction industry would go on strike from Monday. South Africa's faltering economy is already losing an estimated $60 million a day to a strike by 30,000 workers in the car manufacturing sector that accounts for 6 percent of gross domestic product." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSouth African labor unrest spreads, gold, construction strikes loom

Gold flows from Britain to Switzerland surge in first half

"Britain's gold exports to Switzerland surged in the first half of this year, Australian bank Macquarie said on Monday, suggesting bullion being sold out of exchange-traded funds may be heading for Swiss refineries before being sold on in Asia. The UK exported 240 tonnes of gold to Switzerland in May alone, while its exports over the first half of this year totalled 797 tonnes. In contrast, Britain exported just 92 tonnes of bullion to Switzerland in the whole of last year. 'The UK does not have gold mines, so where has it all come from? The obvious source is the gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs), most of which hold their gold holdings in London vaults, and which saw huge outflows in 1H 2013,' Macquarie said." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGold flows from Britain to Switzerland surge in first half

In Bhutan, a stock trade a day keeps stress away [2009]

"The outside world is coming to Bhutan, slowly. Television arrived here in 1999 and there are now around 10,000 Internet connections in a country of under 700,000 people. Bhutan still has no traffic lights since the first one was withdrawn after protests from residents that it was unsightly. In the stock exchange's bare trading floor, computers sit on sparse wooden desks. There are no TVs on the walls, no shouts into telephones, no empty coffee cups or discarded paper. Peldon, dressed in traditional Bhutanese dress, typed in her one trade for the day before an 11 am deadline, when buy and sell orders are matched up by computer software that has not been updated since 1993." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingIn Bhutan, a stock trade a day keeps stress away [2009]

India’s Sonia Gandhi seeks support for law to banish hunger

"Gandhi told MPs to send a message to the world that India was ready to eradicate hunger and malnutrition. 'The big message which will go out to the country and rest of the world is clear and concrete: that India is taking the responsibility of providing food security of all its citizens,' she said. 'Our goal for the foreseeable future must be to wipe out hunger and malnutrition from our country,' Italian-born Gandhi told lawmakers to applause in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. Her government says the programme will add 230 billion rupees ($3.6 billion) annually to India’s existing 900-billion-rupee food subsidy bill." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingIndia’s Sonia Gandhi seeks support for law to banish hunger

Warren Buffett’s bubble cash-out strategy revealed in 38-year-old letter

"A recently released 1975 letter offers new insight into how early Buffett was to grasp both the difficulties of pension fund management and the inability of Wall Street to provide adequate solutions. Perhaps even more valuable is the way the letter throws light on Buffett's approach to value investing. Buffett tries to act not like a typical fund manager but like a company owner thinking about buying another company. The crucial ingredients: patience, to get a good purchase price; courage, to stick with your investment if the business is doing well but the market doesn't agree; and a willingness to sell into a bubble when, as so often happens, one comes along." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWarren Buffett’s bubble cash-out strategy revealed in 38-year-old letter

Official wants E-cigarettes covered in school rules

"The Citrus County School District wants to crack down on anything that even looks like cigarette smoking. According to the Citrus County Chronicle, Planning and Growth Management Director Chuck Dixon has proposed adding language that would include electronic cigarettes to the school's no smoking policy. Dixon said the Florida Department of Health recommended language for e-cigarettes be inserted into the district’s policy. Since the Food and Drug Administration doesn't have a minimum age for who can purchase E-cigarettes, the district wants to make sure the students don't have them." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingOfficial wants E-cigarettes covered in school rules