Finance Geek

Dividend investing has rarely looked better for those seeking steady income. As the economy regains its footing, corporate balance sheets are brimming with cash.

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The personal computer pioneer appears on an MSN Money list of recommended stocks. Here are StockScouter’s best investment ideas.

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This whole debate about government stimulus versus austerity, and the impact of these policies on economic growth, misses a key point: It is business, not government, that creates jobs.
The economic power of business is the missing link in the faux debate that is now raging over spending and deficit policies. A brief look at the recent jobs report for June tells this story. After spending more than $1 trillion through so-called government stimulus, we are at best experiencing a grinding and anemic jobs recovery. Private payrolls are growing slowly. The workweek is again shrinking. And average…

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The recent housing data suggests the real estate market is still fragile and possibly headed for an even deeper downturn.

But enough of that depressing talk. There are still plenty of properties people would love to own, especially in and around New

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As a class-action lawsuit about the iPhone 4’s reception woes gathers steam, Apple issued a statement Friday morning that there is no actual problem with the device’s antenna. Instead, Cupertino claims, the issues stem from a faulty formula in software that indicates the iPhone’s signal strength, which has been present in every iPhone from the first-generation model to the latest iPhone 4.

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The FT reports today on a Screen Digest projection that Apple is storming forward fast in the video on demand market:

Apple is on course to become the second-largest provider of paid on-demand movies in the US by the end of 2010, leapfrogging Time Warner Cable and setting itself up as viable competitor to the cable TV industry.

These movies are of course bought via iTunes and then either watched on a laptop or on a living room television, maybe via an Apple TV box, or maybe via another link between PC and TV.  This is known as over the top video where the subscriber gets their content via their broadband connection and doesn’t need to have a subscription to a cable or satellite service.

I think this is the way of the future.  Right now there is too much content that is only legally available via satellite or cable packages, but as shown by the Screen Digest projection that situation is changing fast.  Anecdotally you can see it too – I have just come back from a week in San Francisco/The Bay Area and two UK friends who have relatively recently moved to the US haven’t taken out cable, relying instead on a Netflix subscription and what they can get over the web.

If I’m right then some very large industries will undergo some very rapid change in the not too distant future.  Cable and satellite companies like Sky and Comcast will need to re-invent themselves and the TV advertising business will shift to the web bringing profound changes in ad formats, targeting, interactivity and measurability.

Apple are all over this opportunity too, with rumours swirling that Apple TV is in for a major relaunch.

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Friday’s anemic and disappointing jobs report has done nothing to change the gnawing perception that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction. As a result, the stock market is likely to continue its recent retreat, according to Richard Suttmeier

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The U.S. job market remains anemic.  Employers cut 1250,00 jobs in June, more than expected.  The job cuts came as the government let go 225,000 temporary census workers, as expected. Meanwhile, the private sector gained 83,000 jobs, the sixth-c

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The housing market continues to deteriorate. Thursday’s report on May pending home sales was down 30% from the prior month and nearly 16% vs. a year ago.  The market weakness spans the country. Sales in the Northeast, Midwest and South fell more than

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From the IMF to the G20, from bloggers to Nobel prize-winning economists, there have been calls for the major developed countries to reduce deficits and stabilize debt-to-GDP ratios. The idea is that if this is done properly it need not retard growth and the markets will reward countries with lower interest rates, thus reducing the risk premium.
This is an important hypothesis, but so far the evidence is not compelling. In fact, aside from the U.K., those countries that are more aggressively addressing their fiscal excesses are seeing the largest increases in interest rates. And those…

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