Europe may already have passed its biggest stress test. The euro has rallied 8 percent from a four-year low last month. Greece, Spain and Portugal have managed to sell 50 billion euros ($64 billion) of debt since May 10 when the need to save the single currency forced finance ministers to create a nearly $1 [...]

debt, Euro, greece, IMF, Risk Management, stress test Hide

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s $550 million settlement with U.S. regulators yesterday will benefit the firm by ending three months of uncertainty at an affordable price. Now the rest of Wall Street begins calculating the cost. Investors welcomed the deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying the company won key points: The cost was below [...]

goldman, investments, Risk Management, structured products, US Hide

The U.S. House of Representatives approved the financial-overhaul bill, moving a step closer to enacting the broadest rewrite of Wall Street rules since the Great Depression. The House voted 237-192 in favor of the bill. It also will have to be approved by the Senate, which delayed action until after the weeklong July 4 recess, [...]

credit, dollar, lending, Risk Management, US Hide

Higher returns equals higher risk. It’s a basic fact of investing, yet working out just how much of a gamble you are willing to take with your cash is far harder to pin down. The other side of the coin is when investors get so caught up chasing high returns that they ignore the risk [...]

earnings, investments, risk, Risk Management Hide

When stock markets rallied dramatically last year, soon after the financial crisis, it was mainly the bold and the brave who leapt right in. Many others were wary. Was this a false dawn, only to be followed by more market mayhem? They were reasonable fears, given the prognostications of so-called experts. But now that the [...]

earnings, housing, investments, retirement, Risk Management, Singapore Hide

Layers of money managers that don’t bear the brunt of losses but walk away with big payouts when things go well have turned the US economy to a type of “ersatz capitalism,” Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University professor and Nobel laureate, told CNBC Tuesday. “An awful lot of people are not managing their own money,” Stiglitz [...]

Bank failures, investment banks, Risk Management, structured products Hide

Can you think of a 4-letter word ending with k? Something that many people profess to do and yet evidently they are not doing enough of? Yes, the answer is R-I-S-K or more accurately, the ‘management of risk‘ as they go about their daily lives. At Smart Incubator, we passionately believe that teens and adults [...]

risk, Risk Management Hide

JUST as Santa checks his list twice to find out who has been naughty or nice, BT has gone through news from 2009′s financial torrent to sieve major events that have shaped the local market – for better or worse. The effects of rights issues, rule changes, accounting scandals and other events will linger. So [...]

housing, Interest rates, investments, Risk Management, stock market Hide

HOME buyers are being advised to pause a moment before leaping into the purchase of that dream apartment. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) yesterday cited two scenarios in which the resurgent private property sector may not stay quite so rosy. The central bank also flagged possible fresh measures to cool the sector, on top [...]

bubble, housing, investments, Risk Management, Singapore Hide

You could term 2009 the year the world did not end. Flash back 12 months and it looked like a financial Armageddon was about to descend on us all. Most experts were of like mind: Financial markets would continue to bleed, banks would keep failing, millions of jobs would be lost, profits would evaporate. Think [...]

investments, Risk Management, stock market Hide