Group of 20 finance ministers need to find ways to boost productivity growth or risk seeing the world economy to slip into an extended period of low growth, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.
The widespread drop in productivity may “presage the beginning of a new low-growth era,” OECD Chief Economist Pier Carlo Padoan said in a report. “The global economy’s momentum remains sluggish” and these concerns “now encompass emerging-market economies” as well as developed ones, he said.
Greek debt tracker As the government in Athens haggles with its lenders over economic reforms,Greece is running out of money. Here is what it owes in the upcoming months. http://www.ft.com/ig/sites/2015/greek-debt-monitor/
Publicis CEO Maurice Levy's last-ditch offer to let Omnicom chief John Wren be CEO couldn't save the $35 billion deal to create the world's largest advertising company. http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/
This is a story about ARM Holdings (ARMH), the mobile technology company. But before it gets going, here are a few things you need to know: 1. ARM is a company made up mostly of chip engineers. They design parts of chips—such as graphics and communication bits—and they design entire…
Currency traders are having their worst start to a year since 2010 as a dearth of trends in major foreign-exchange markets crushes their investment strategies.
Deutsche Bank AG’s Currency Returns Index has dropped 0.3 percent since Dec. 31, dragged down by momentum trading, where investors looks for consistent moves in one direction. The gauge, which is also based on techniques including carry and valuation, rose in 2013 by the most in four years.
Software AG today unveiled the latest addition to its Apama market surveillance solution with alerts to identify FX (foreign exchange) market manipulation and benchmark fixing. Developed in partnership with tier one banks, these new alerts provide compliance and market monitoring personnel with in-depth monitoring of FX trading, to identify benchmark…
In less than three weeks, the most important election of the year will take place in Switzerland, and you haven’t heard of it. While the U.S. focuses on the recent Republican victory, the financial markets are facing an earth-shaking event on November 30th. This Swiss election seeks to challenge the…
Citigroup's head of European spot foreign exchange trading, Rohan Ramchandani, has left the global bank, a spokesperson told Reuters on Friday. "He is no longer with Citi," bank spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos told Reuters. Asked if Ramchandani, who has been based in London, had been fired amid a global investigation into…
With the Federal Reserve printing trillions upon trillions of dollars to keep the economic system afloat, many investors and financial pundits have surmised that the fundamental economic problems facing the United States during the crash of 2008 have been resolved. Stocks are, after all, at historic highs. But the…
He’s become a successful CEO and a generous person, but ten years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used to have something of an attitude.
For example, he used to carry a business card that read, “I’m CEO…Bitch.”
Once, back then, Zuckerberg played a pretty nasty prank on top venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
Publicis CEO Maurice Levy's last-ditch offer to let Omnicom chief John Wren be CEO couldn't save the $35 billion deal to create the world's largest advertising company. http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/
This is a story about ARM Holdings (ARMH), the mobile technology company. But before it gets going, here are a few things you need to know: 1. ARM is a company made up mostly of chip engineers. They design parts of chips—such as graphics and communication bits—and they design entire…
Greek debt tracker As the government in Athens haggles with its lenders over economic reforms,Greece is running out of money. Here is what it owes in the upcoming months. http://www.ft.com/ig/sites/2015/greek-debt-monitor/
The $19 billion deal to sell WhatsApp Inc. to Facebook Inc. (FB) started at Yahoo! Inc. more than five years ago, when Jan Koum became disillusioned at the way Internet companies were fixated on advertising.
He left Yahoo in 2007 with one of the company’s other engineers, Brian Acton, and started a company by 2009 that shuns advertising altogether. The strategy allowed them to concentrate on creating an easy-to-use messaging product instead of developing new ways to glean customer information for their marketing pitches, Koum said in a 2012 blog post.
“No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they’ll see tomorrow,” Koum said in the post. A hand-written note on the his desk reads: “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!”
Earlier today, Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion. It’s a spectacular milestone for the company’s co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and their remarkable team. From the moment they opened the doors of WhatsApp, Jan and Brian wanted a different kind of company. While others sought attention, Jan and…
Facebook has bought messaging app WhatsApp in a deal worth a total of $19bn (£11.4bn) in cash and shares. It is the social networking giant's biggest acquisition to date. WhatsApp has over 450 million monthly users and is popular with people looking to avoid text messaging charges. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26266689
Facebook Inc. (FB)’s $19 billion purchase of mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp Inc. is a stark reminder of how much money phone carriers are losing out on as competitors let users text and chat at no charge. Free social-messaging applications like WhatsApp cost phone providers around the world -- from Vodafone Group…
With its proposed deal to buy Viber Media, Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten is stepping into a war zone. The world of smartphone communications apps is fiercely competitive with many powerful players, and Viber’s success isn’t guaranteed. So why is Rakuten paying $900 million to get into this market? http://blogs.wsj.com/
Earlier today, Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion. It’s a spectacular milestone for the company’s co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and their remarkable team.
From the moment they opened the doors of WhatsApp, Jan and Brian wanted a different kind of company. While others sought attention, Jan and Brian shunned the spotlight, refusing even to hang a sign outside the WhatsApp offices in Mountain View. As competitors promoted games and rushed to build platforms, Jan and Brian remained devoted to a clean, lightning fast communications service that works flawlessly.
Facebook has bought messaging app WhatsApp in a deal worth a total of $19bn (£11.4bn) in cash and shares. It is the social networking giant's biggest acquisition to date. WhatsApp has over 450 million monthly users and is popular with people looking to avoid text messaging charges. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26266689
The $19 billion deal to sell WhatsApp Inc. to Facebook Inc. (FB) started at Yahoo! Inc. more than five years ago, when Jan Koum became disillusioned at the way Internet companies were fixated on advertising. He left Yahoo in 2007 with one of the company’s other engineers, Brian Acton, and…
Facebook Inc. (FB)’s $19 billion purchase of mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp Inc. is a stark reminder of how much money phone carriers are losing out on as competitors let users text and chat at no charge. Free social-messaging applications like WhatsApp cost phone providers around the world -- from Vodafone Group…
He's become a successful CEO and a generous person, but ten years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used to have something of an attitude. For example, he used to carry a business card that read, "I'm CEO…Bitch." Once, back then, Zuckerberg played a pretty nasty prank on top venture capital…
It is often a sign of a bubble when analysts and commentators rush to explain away each new upward step in valuations – and then come up with expansive arguments to justify why prices should be even higher. Two events in the tech world in recent days seem to fit…
Earlier today, Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion. It’s a spectacular milestone for the company’s co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and their remarkable team. From the moment they opened the doors of WhatsApp, Jan and Brian wanted a different kind of company. While others sought attention, Jan and…
Facebook Inc. (FB)’s $19 billion purchase of mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp Inc. is a stark reminder of how much money phone carriers are losing out on as competitors let users text and chat at no charge. Free social-messaging applications like WhatsApp cost phone providers around the world -- from Vodafone Group…
The $19 billion deal to sell WhatsApp Inc. to Facebook Inc. (FB) started at Yahoo! Inc. more than five years ago, when Jan Koum became disillusioned at the way Internet companies were fixated on advertising. He left Yahoo in 2007 with one of the company’s other engineers, Brian Acton, and…
With its proposed deal to buy Viber Media, Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten is stepping into a war zone. The world of smartphone communications apps is fiercely competitive with many powerful players, and Viber’s success isn’t guaranteed. So why is Rakuten paying $900 million to get into this market? http://blogs.wsj.com/
The following are the expectations for the minutes of the January FOMC meeting by the economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital, and other leading banks.
Several Fed Officials Said Forecasts Overstated Rate Rise Meeting minutes revealed that in March, Fed Reserve policy makers discussed that a rise in their median projection for the main interest rate exaggerated the likely speed of tightening. Treasury yields rose last month after policy makers predicted that the benchmark interest…
Tags: fed, economy, january, bank, meeting, minutes, usa
The FOMC meeting is the week's highlight even though policy outcome seems a foregone conclusion. It will continue with the tapering course that Bernanke put on the Fed on before he left. However, there are more moving parts than usual, and it is worth reviewing. Essentially, there are four elements of…
America has allowed its oil companies to export oil as announced in private letters to oil companies. This will, for sure, cause a stir in the global oil markets and lead to lower prices. Global oil prices previously soared due to the fall in the supply of oil- stoppage of oil exports…
On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen promised the House Financial Services Committee "a great deal of continuity" in monetary policy as she fills the shoes of Ben Bernanke. However, Yellen is not Bernanke. And depending on her read on the economy, she will use her powers to influence…
When President Obama took office in 2009 at the height of the recession, the annual budget deficit came in at 10.1 percent of gross domestic product -- a level not seen since the end of World War II. In the five years since, the budget deficit has been sliced more…
I try to learn from the best. Ray Dalio is one of them. He founded Bridgewater Associates, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. Many retail investors have not heard of him, probably because his funds are open only to big institutions. It’s a terrible mistake to limit yourself to listening only to the musings of mutual fund managers. Doing so means that you will ignore many of the best investors.
Take a look at "How The Economic Machine Works," an introduction to the economic system by Ray Dalio, founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. In the video, the Bridgewater Associates founder stresses three rules of thumb he'd like you to remember: 1) Don't have debt rise faster…
George Soros' Quantum Endowment fund has been named the world's most successful hedge fund, after it gained $5.5 billion in 2013, bringing the total gains since inception to $39.6 billion. Quantum overtook Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Pure Alpha in a study by LCH Investments which ranked the top 20 hedge…
Tags: fund, hedge, world's, bridgewater, managers, dalio, ray
Ray Dalio, the sixty-one-year-old founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund, is tall and somewhat gaunt, with an expressive, lined face, gray-blue eyes, and longish gray hair that he parts on the left side. When I met him earlier this year at his office, on the outskirts of Westport,…
The following conversation took place at Harvard University. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers invited Ray Dalio, founder and chairman of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, to discuss Dalio’s unique views on economics. The conversation is based off of Dalio’s 30-minute animated video entitled “How the Economic Machine…
Last week, Forbes released its annual score card of top-earning hedge fund managers. The usual gang was there: Soros, Tepper, Cohen, Paulson, Icahn, Simons, Dalio, Griffin, et. al. That clickbait scorecard -- it worked on me -- and led to a strident column from Gawker, bizarrely titled "Fund Managers Are…
One of the things I love about the culture at Buffer is the emphasis on working smarter, not harder. Our team is all about getting plenty of sleep, exercise and recreation time so that our time spent working is as productive as it can be.
Working harder can be an easy habit to slip into, though. Sometimes it’s hard to switch off at the end of the day, or to take time out on the weekend and stop thinking about work. With a startup of my own to run, I find this even harder to manage lately. Whenever I’m not working on Buffer, I’m working on Exist, and it’s easy to fall into a pattern of “always working,” rather than working smart and fitting in time to look after myself as well.
Right now–as I type–I have a timer ticking down. The clock shows approximately 14 minutes before I’ll take my next break. I live and die by this clock.
You may have guessed it, but the clock is a Pomodoro timer. For the last year, I’ve been religiously using the Pomodoro technique to not only stay on task, but to plan out my days and weeks.
If you aren’t familiar with the Pomodoro technique, the concept is remarkably simple. So simple, that I first dismissed it as ridiculous. But, thanks to my good friend Josh Earl’s success with it, I decided to give it another try.
When I graduated University with a business degree last May, I received two incredible full-time job offers, both of which I declined because I had a plan. For exactly one year, from May 1, 2013, through May 1, 2014, I would devour everything I could get my hands on about…
Graduation speeches are the last opportunity for a high school or college to educate its students. It's unsurprising, then, that these institutions often pull in some of the world's most powerful people to leave an equally powerful impression on their students. Here are the best of those speeches and some…
50+ productivity blogs (Updated October 2013) Over 50 great productivity blogs: Dumb Little Man (http://www.dumblittleman.com/) Zen Habits (http://zenhabits.net/) Life Hack (http://lifehack.org) Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com) Penelope Trunk (http://www.penelopetrunk.com) Extremely well written blog. Something I can only dream about. Not only about productivity, but all things in life. 99u (http://99u.com/) How to make ideas happen. Time management ninja (http://www.timemanagementninja.com/) Nerd…
Delighted to see so many people sharing my top 10 tips article on the BBC. One of the most rewarding parts of success is being able to share what you have learned to try to help others. Like many people, I learn better through experience than theory. Also, if presented with huge…