b2 gurus | business news

Wow, after watching the olympic ceremony yesterday, I have to admit that it was spectacular. An awe-inspiring show that was truly worth its millions. Anyways, would this and any Olympics affect global finance in any way? Of course, China spent a total of about $43 billion in preparations including city projects, and it is expecting billions and billions in television contracts and advertisement deals. China is also forecasting their economy to be stabalizing around 10.6% growth during the third quarter, up 0.5% from the previous one. However, after doing some reading and watching some videos, I actually found out that their economy is aiming to be growing in high single digits, after balancing economic factors such as inflation and internal demand. Although spending is booming globally during this time, traders will probably be too busy watching the games to be moving the markets *chuckle.

Well, now, lets move back to domestic issues. Fannie Mae posted a 2.3 billion dollar loss today, three times larger than expected. Again, another downward spiral will go on in the mortgage industry. Rates are destined to increase, credit will as as tight as ever, refinancing homes will probably be impossible, and forclosures will increase. Well, it seems that no government home financing plan will go underway until Bush comes back from the games, but this mess will probably be left to Obama or McCain to sort out, along with health care, foreign policy, and trade agreements such as NAFTA. The closing games and its aftermath will have massive significance and symbolic meaning for future policies in finance and politics.

Lastly, some positive news, oil is down to $115 a barrel, due to deflating commodities, assumed lower demand for oil, and a rising U.S. dollar. So, to close off, I hope Beijing has a happy and safe Olympic Games for the next two weeks, until the 24th, while the whole world watches and anticipates the end of China’s humiliating 100 years, and a brand new beginning towards the future.

Signing out

-ZEZ

P.S. If you have some extra time on your hands, here is this week’s video on global finance, it is a bit long, but none-the-less insightful.

http://www.cnbc.com//id/15840232?video=817573399&play=1

This week, as rain pours over Ontario, more wealth drains out of North America. The housing industry continues to drop, but it seems the rate is finally slowing down. Wachovia, SunTrust and three other banks reported a combined loss of over 11 billion, while their shares rose in value by about 11 billion. It seems, that expectations were so low, that the losses were better than what analysts saw coming. This, in turn, fueled the blind increases in their stock.

The only good news came out of tech stocks, as Apple, and Amazon posted amazing results. Speaking of Apple, there was some news regarding the health of Steve Jobs, but it seems that it has all cleared away. With oil finally falling, and a slight hint of consumer spending with box-office hits, the skies look good for next month. Oil has been hovering around $124 a barrel this week, about $20 lower than previous prices. A major contributor to this is due to the fact that global demand for oil has finally dried up. Another concern is the amount of regulation in the field of derivatives. Tougher regulations in options and futures trading could prevent or lessen future economic blow-ups like these, especially with something so fragile as oil and energy. None-the-less, the month of August has lots of sunshine on the forecast, and global expectations are high. I can’t wait to see what August brings.

Signing out,

ZEZ

Hello fellow readers, I would like to apologize again for not keeping a consistent weekly newsletter for the last while. Quite a few interesting events happened last week, especially on Friday, relating to the financial markets, technology markets as well as my own internet market failure… thanks to Rogers Communications.

Moving on, so, in the financial markets, the two largest mortgage companies were slashed almost in half, on Friday. Fears of major losses in mortgages drove away investors by the flocks. Estimates of losses rose to nearly $30 billion for these each of these two mortgage companies. Together, FreddyMac and FannieMae hold about $5 trillions worth and guarantees of mortgages. If they collapse, then we would be in major economic turmoil….

Depression *gulp*

!930s *tears*

Well, everyone knew this was coming, ever since the fall of Bear Stearns. Yep, Buffett was right about that long and painful recession. The Fed is again stepping in and preparing a backup plan, a.k.a., a buy-out. Tax-payer dollars are at rick, yet again, and the role of government in market economies is at question. In Canada, this sounds all too similar, with auto-companies, and the application of band-aid packages. Also, recently, GM announced more slashed, this time, in marketing and engineering. Wow, the two backbones of survival are being cut-off, maybe its the executives that need to be slashed. Say goodbye to innovation and next-gen designs from GM forever. It looks like governments are always wasting tax-dollars to fund bad business decisions. I think Canada tried to avoid loss of jobs and excessive strains on unemployment insurance, so they kept GM afloat, but now, nothing can prevent them from leaving.

Derivatives, and speculation are also at blame and I believe the Fed is also trying to regulate the shorting of Fannie and Freddy, to prevent huge sell-offs in the future. Many say the process of shorting even played a role in 1929, so markets learn from their bruises. Lastly, in the tech sector, Apple is expecting a billion dollar weekend from the release of the iphone, RIM missed expectations while Intel shined from foreign streams of revenue. Speaking of the iphone, Ram actually got one, so hopefully he will be able to write a product review soon, but apparently, his plan has enormous costs. Thanks to Rogers yet again, high phone plans and faulty internet services.

Signing out,

ZEZ

These days, when I look South of the border, I feel really lucky for having such a strong Loonie.

Do you know why?

It is one of the main reasons our inflation is not exploding compared to other G8 nations. All of the others in the developed world, except Japan, have seen higher rates of inflation compared to Canada.

This week, inflation in commodities, a deflating housing market, rising costs of …. everything, and a diminishing purchasing power maintains the eye on the spotlight. The largest steel maker in China - Baosteel just announced the largest increase, some 96.5%, in iron-ore contracts with their Australian supplier, Rio Tinto.

However, while petroleum related products increase in price, other non-petroleum products will become cheaper. Consumers will have less money and therefore less demand for those products. Many things in the G8 countries are shooting through the roof, from milk and cereal to cosmetics. The credit crisis has still yet to run its last sprint to home base and many traders are really unsure of what to do.

Many stocks that were once safe havens, such as beta-favourable stocks, and large-cap tech stocks are taking big hits. RIM took a big dive on Thursday, and many are predicting Google will do the same. Some traders I know are keeping their funds strictly cash, cold, hard, c-a-s-h. Well, for the moment, to wait out the storms, where risk and reward are not in-line. The head of the Federal Reserve is taking a similar approach to the interest rate, sticking to the sidelines. Buffett, on the other hand, believes this inflation will cause a drastic, long-painful, recession. But he has been wrong before, and the Fed. is hoping he is wrong now. I think the cash reserve plot utilized by many traders right now is human nature, because they think opportunities will be cheaper tomorrow, but this recessionistic ideology will only add fuel to the fire.

I read a funny comment to a financial video I saw this week, it was a random unrelated comment about how diversifying money would be great right now to look for investing opportunities, half the funds in the cookie jar, and the other half under the mattress. LOL

Anyways, I really hope our governments can turn our economies around, increase consumer spending, and patch up post-credit wounds. With Bernake on board the ship, we will have to wait and see. Maybe we will see the bottom of the ocean, or a new America, but Canada is definitely dependent on the latter.

Signing out

Zan Zhang

Heres an update of what’s going on with b2logs!

After our launch, the website has been slowly picking-up with more and more visitors each day. The team is still marketing hard and we have had success.

A few days ago, I was interviewed by Miki Saxon of Leadership Turn. Miki Saxon runs a popular blog on leadership and it’s featured in the management section of b2logs. I had the honor of being interviewed by one of the most intelligent minds on leadership. During our conversation I learned many things on management, leadership, and communication. You can view the interview on her blog.

Here is a screenshot of that interview:

Edit: Since this post, the interview has also been translated into Spanish and featured on a popular student website: http://www.destudio.com.co/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=356

Thanks a ton to: Alejandro Moreno Azcárate

Moving on, recently I contacted Timothy Ferris (author of 4 hour work week). This is what I wrote:

Hey Tim,

I want to say I really enjoyed your book and I love your blog. I am a 16-year old high school student living in Canada. I have recently started my own company, KarmaDesignStudio.com. I have been working hard developing strategies for a successful and stress-free life.

I was so inspired by your work, I created a tool to help people with information overflow. My tool is b2logs.com a website for business professionals to get the latest news fast with a quick scan through the top 10 blogs in each category. Please check out my website: b2logs.com and let me know what you think.

Thank you so much for the 4 hour work week. Ram

And this was the response from Tim:

Hi Ram! I’m inspired that you’ve taken such a head start at 16! I like B2logs.com. Nice design. I might suggest only displaying the top 2-3 posts from each blog, though, with a “more posts” link below them. Just a thought to cut down on any visual overload. Keep it up! Pura vida Tim

Tim had a great response and I will test to see if I can implement his suggestion. This might not sound like a big deal, but it means so much from a person who I think of as a role-model.

In conclusion, the blog has been doing great and we have a few dedicated readers - check out the # of readers in the newsletter sign-up box - and the response to some of our articles have been awesome! The team has been making constant improvements to the website. Some of the things we are currently working are:

• Desktop version of b2logs.com
• Job listings website
• Added features to our website such as bookmarking of individual articles

Plus, I am planning on moving to a new server, I’m currently looking at media temple as a possible server provider.

So, thats about it, if there is anything else you would like to see on the website, let us know!

Stay Tuned,

Ram Sharma

What a fast moving 2 weeks in the markets. Auto industry news, more credit scares, energy prices still rising causing everything to be volatile. Today, on City 24, there was a live video feed from the Economic Club down in Ottawa and it features Mr. McCain from the USA Now for the elections down south, I am all for Obama, and I hope I will get to meet him one day. Well, back to McCain, he said many good things about Canada and keeping NAFTA in tact. It was very clear that he did his homework on our trade and energy policies. I assume that he also talked about tax cuts to battle the recent rise of inflation and the imploding housing industry. What I was watching, was an educated man, surprisingly from the same party as Mr. Bush. A few years back, Rick Mercer made a fool out of Bush when George agreed our Prime Minister “Poutine” was smart for siding Republican.

But, a few months ago, McCain started that gas tax fad along with Clinton. The way Obama shut them down, I wonder if Obama is the only one who has taken economics. Gas tax cuts would only create shortages, and unbelievable lines at gas stations. But I read in articles, that once Obama is elected, investing will decrease because he is a Democrat. However, I believe that he would be good for the economy through spending large funds on government programs. This money would circulate through the economy and increase consumerism. The other Rupublican solution of tax cuts, and declaring war does not seem to working all that well. Although, I bet Obama will use a mix of all three, increase spending, tax cuts, and declaring war on POVERTY :D, to turn the economy around. If you really think about it, a Democratic party would benefit the public the most, but down South, religion plays a huge part, and clouds judgement. Well, I hope Obama gets in, because its about Time for CHANGE!!!!!

Now, to recent news, negative pick-up truck numbers. Canada is still brewing over the GM shut-down of pick-up truck plants in Ontario. Until this year, the number one selling car in America surprisingly was the Ford F-150 pick-up truck, but now is being replaced by the classic Honda Civic. The fact that GM shut down the plant right after signing a union contract to freeze wage increases, and then numbers revealed that the Windsor plants were some of the more efficient GM plants in North America. I would not be surprised if GM is doing this to embuzzle more financing from our fed. I know we finance them to keep jobs in Canada, but their green strategy was the last to hit the market. From an economic viewpoint, we are financing bad business, because fewer and fewer people are buying GM gas-guzzlers. If GM leaves, I am sure our skilled, and efficient labour workforce will attract other car companies.

Crude looks to be stabilizing due to positive news from China, and the Saudis. Then again, credit scares destroyed all hope. Many more billions in financing, but in crisis, there is opportunity. Look at the numbers of JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, awesome numbers and almost undervalued. As an intelligent investor, I will be looking at some reports, apply some number crunching and in my next post I will take you along for a closer look at some investing possibilities.

In the meantime check out this video on Mayor Bloomberg’s disguised support for Obama!

Signing out,

ZEZ

Hello, this is your captain speaking, flight 101 appears to be having some technical difficulties, please do not panic, and SCREW everybody else over. Well, I am not really a captain, but with all the panic and fear in the markets this week, I really hope the public can keep their pants on. McDonalds salmonella scare, the sell-off of Lehman Bros, rising energy costs - rising unemployment - Maybe Buffett’s prediction is coming true ……

A long recession? At least 5 years, ughhh! Well, maybe when I graduate from university, it will be the next Golden Age, with the sun shining bright, and the birds chirping, (you get the picture). But for all the regular folks out there, why shouldn’t they worry. Well this recession, or market adjustment, provides many opportunities. I had the honor of meeting inspiring billionaire, - Mr. Micheal Lee-Chin, aka the ROM crystal man (he provided the capital for it), anyways I remember a quote he would always say, “In crisis, there is opportunity.” So don’t panic, do some math, and find some undervalued stocks. Over the next few weeks, I will be digging deep.

So do not panic, don’t go and sell everything and then hide that money under your mattress, that is not going to help. In a recession, even when prices are deflating, we need to buy! BUY! and BUY! IF our economy wants to stay afloat. So what would be an innovative way to improve our economy? In economics, I am currently learning about the money supply, aggregate demand and all that. The soaring of energy prices in the 70s and the salvation of the microprocessor. How does this all tie together to today?

Well, when energy prices go up, your aggregate supply curve shifts left, unemployment and inflation rise. To shift it outwards positively towards the holy grail of economics, you need either technological advancements, capital manipulation (interest rates), or new discoveries of resource supplies. These are the most common three. During the 70s, the microprocessor (new technology) increased efficiency, decreased labor time, and shifted aggregate supply right. In the graph, you can see that unemployment dropped, and inflation dropped as well. What we need today, is some new technology as well, because those interest rates are just not working. Maybe one day, we will have nuclear fusion. I think that will be the answer to all of today’s problems.

Well, back to the summary, the sell-off of Lehman Bros. should have been forseen. It was one of the highest shorted stocks on the markets. So down these banks tumble, unguided, and uncentralized. Good thing up here in Canada, everything is controlled. I always thought government intervention was horrible, until I learned of the numbers of bank bankruptcies, compared between USA and Canada. Quite staggering. Maybe Obama can change that. Maybe he can turn everything around. But for now, everyone can only hope, and try not to panic, and jump off the plane, because who knows…

Meanwhile, watch this quick video about some of the places where you can put your money.

Whew, this week, it seemed for a second that the crude oil bubble was finally going to drop, due to a recent falling to $125/barrel. Just last week, it was soaring above $135 a barrel, an all-time record. This drop in oil has caused a short economic bull surge. Stocks are starting to pick-up, but the question comes back, is this drop going to STAY? I heard that in these few months, the oil prices were fluctuating due to speculative investors, and now, they have all turned negative. However, Goldman Sachs thinks otherwise, they predicted prices to go above $150 due to a shortage of supplies, and rising external demands eg, China and India.

What does this all mean for the average consumer? Well, most likely, you are going to be cutting corners. Saving as much as you can here, there, everywhere. Unless, of course, you have deep pockets, like oil-well deep. Consumer spending on a whole is going to drop, and then we are all going to go into recession. And oil prices are going to go higher, and we are going to suffer even more. For the time being, oil is going to drop, and investors are all shorting, but wait until a crisis comes, and the word “cover” rings on every trading floor, then its going to bull fast, real fast.

As for the recession, many high profile investors think it is going to come hard, and stay for a very long time.

For the time being check out this great video on the ideas for the future and what fortunes or disasters it may bring.

Today is the day…actually it was supposed to be two days ago!

Why the delay?

Well, everyone had so many great comments and suggestions I just had to prolong the major event. There were a multitude of things to be done before we opened doors officially.
Heres a short list of the minor tasks which lead up to this day:

• Changes were made to META portion of the website for best search engine results
• All affiliates/partners were updated, please view them by visiting anyone of the pages on b2logs (other than blog)
• Changes were made to the Terms of Service to keep b2logs as safe as possible from a legal stand point
• A few features were added such as an article tracker to keep track of what you read
• This blog was SEO’d - which took more time than expected

Thank you to everyone who participated in the PreLaunch event, it was a tremendous success.

And the winner of the fabulous new Ipod Touch is (drum roll please!)…

Aaron Aldridge!

Thanks to everyone who commented about the website I would like to mention the following people for their more than helpful contributions:

• Miki Saxon - Leadership Turn
• Aran Donohue
• Wilson Shek
• Author of Best Ranking Sites
  
• Justin D.

What are the future plans for b2logs?

Our goal is to provide the best reliable business news, fast while being easily accessible. And to do this we must change constantly to remain at the top of the game.

Some of the ideas we have planned for b2logs are:

• Print option for each article
• Bookmarking tool to save each article
• Customized page for each category
• Introduction of new categories such as real estate, environmental sustainability, technology, and entrepreneurship
• A desktop version of b2logs.com

What are the future plans for b2 gurus?

Our team of expert business authors have been giving you just a taste of the information which they hold.

Some of the things we are planning to do with b2 gurus are:

• Weekly summaries of the financial news on the Canadian and American markets
• Scheduled video posts by major news networks such as the Wall Street Journal with reviews by the team
• Scheduled book reviews on the latest business novels
• Business Profiles! - A once a month review on an extra-ordinary new start-up.
• Occasional posts regarding general business news with a bit about technology

An update on the works of the b2 business network team

For the past year, my entire team has be thinking of new ideas to help the future. The projects which my team will be focusing on, aims to reduce complex problems with simple solutions - that is the essential goal for the b2 business network. The next step for the team is b2charity.com - a website dedicated to helping non-profits find sponsors!

And what a better way to finish off the launch than by watching a video dedicated to innovation and the future.

Whew, what a week. Sorry for not being able to post last weekend. It was Victoria day holiday and I have been scrambling to meet assignment due dates since then. Some interesting finance news this week relates to Mr. Icahn shoving his way towards a yahoo microsoft merger, but the good stuff was all in the commodities sector. Oil, the blackest of gold, has been soaring high. Airlines on the other hand have been cutting costs due to declining profits. The rise in oil prices has added billions of expenses to the airline industry, and related shares are dropping fast (even faster than my marks at school :O) Lastly, but not least, General Motors cut another 1000 jobs. UGH

Well, recently, I heard that McGuinty is going to talk to some Fiat execs and try to lure a new plant to Ontario. That would create a whole new lineup of jobs and help stop Ontario economy from its continuous decline. Good luck McGuinty, we are all counting on you

So back to oil, it is at a rediculous price, and speculating investors are pushing its futures up everyday. The markets are slumping because of this. I have even read an article wondering what would happen to the world if a barrel of oil hit $300. :O *GASP Well, many believe the world would be better if that were to happen. Just think about it, things could not be that bad. Many countries already have oil prices at rediculously taxed rates. Some major differences would be increased recycling, high efficency mini-cars, a better mass transit systems, and moving closer to your workplace. The oil sands over in Alberta would most definately also become ravaged. They say, the tarsands may contain approx. 1.5 trillion barrels of oil (WOW! That is a lot of money!), but I have seen environmental videos and I question if we will lose more if we increased drilling. One single barrel of oil causes over 75 kgs of greenhouse gasses to be released, and creates so much toxic water waste, it is mind exploding. Oil sands production also takes up approx. 10% of all natural gas consumption. and uses mutiples more water than the city of Calgary.

But hey, we all want to drive so who cares?

-Ahh! WHO CARES?

We should care, people are dying and developing cancer from all that oil contamination.

-HUMM, What about our DYING economy?…..

*What do you guys think?