intouch april 7 2014

8/12/2019 Intouch April 7 2014

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2014, ELGIN GROUP LLC. WWW.ELGINGROUP.COM

Asian stocks fellfor the first time in nine days, snapping

the longest winning streakon the regional gauge this

year, with telecommunication and technology shares

leading declines.

German industrial output rosefor a fourth consecutive

month in February in a sign that growth in Europes largest

economy continued to accelerate. Production

(GRIPIMOM), adjusted for seasonal swings, climbed 0.4%

from January, when it gained a revised0.7%, the Federal

Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. Economists

predicted an increase of 0.3%.

Gold held the biggest one-day advance in more than

three weeks as US jobs data that trailed analysts estimates

damped speculation that the Federal Reserve will step up

the pace of stimulus reduction. Gold is up 8.4% this year,

rallying from the worst annual decline since 1981, as

Russias takeover of Crimea boosted haven demand.

US Treasuriesclimbed from last place among the worlds

bond markets as investors bet employment growth is

slow enoughto keep the Federal Reserve from raising

interest rates this year.

Total cash reserves held by American companiesgrew

by 12%to $1.6 trillionlast year, according to Moodys

Investor Services. Around $947 billion of that was placed

overseas to escape the clutches of the taxman. Apple,

Microsoft, Google, Verizon and Pfizeraccounted for

25% of the total; Apple alone held $159 billion, or 9.7%.

But alongside the rising mountains of cash, capital

spending and dividends hit seven-year highs in 2013.

TheIMFreported on the implicit government subsidies that

are still afforded to banks deemed too big to fail. Banks

benefit through cheaper loan rates, for example, as

markets assume that they will be bailed out in a crisis. The

IMF calculated that in 2012 these implicit subsidies were

worth up to $300 billionin the euro zone, up to $110

billion in bothBritain andJapan and up to$70 billion in

theUS, and blamed them for encouraging excessive risk-

taking.

Weekly Notables

Major Stock Markets at a glanceSwitzerland SMI UK FTSE 100 USA S&P 500

MSCI World Index Euro Stoxx 50 MSCI Asia Pacific

VOLUME 11 ISSUE 14 APRIL 7, 2014

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ajor Stock Markets at a glance

11 I UE 14


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MARKET 28/3 04/4 1-Week 90-Day YTD

Swiss SMI 8373.23 8503 1.55% 2.81% 3.66%

Euro Stoxx 50 3172.43 3230.33 1.83% 5.07% 3.90%

Dow Jones 16323.1 16412.7 0.55% -0.35% -0.99%

Nasdaq 4155.76 4127.73 -0 .6 7% - 0.1 0% - 1.1 7%

S&P 500 1857.62 1865.09 0.40% 1.84% 0.91%

Canada TS300 14260.7 14393.1 0.93% 6.23% 5.66%

FTSE 100 6615.58 6695.55 1.21% -0.52% -0.79%

DAX 9587.19 9695.77 1.13% 2.76% 1.50%

CAC 40 4411.26 4484.55 1.66% 5.58% 4.39%

Nikkei 225 14696 15063.8 2.50% -7.53% -7.53%

Hong Kong HSI 22065.5 22510.1 2.01% -1.35% -3.42%

Shanghai Comp. 2041.71 2058.83 0.84% -1.17% -2.70%

Australia AS30 5376.76 5428.58 0.96% 1.43% 1.41%

Em. Markets 984.91 1002.04 1 .74 % 2 .30 % -0.06%

MSCI World 407.95 411.86 0.96% 1.89% 0.81%

MSCI Asia/Pac. 136.68 139.27 1.89% -0.74% -1.47%

THOUGHT PROVOKING

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh,otherwise they'll kill you.

$ A$ C$ CHF

$ 1 0.7297 0.60 103.330 1 .0769 1.0986 0.8916

1.3705 1 0.83 141.62 1.4759 1 .5057 1.2220

1.6578 1.2097 1 171.30 1.7853 1.8213 1.4781

0.0097 0.0071 0.01 1 0.0104 0.0001 0.0086

A$ 0.9286 0.6776 0.56 95.952 1 1.0202 0.8279

C$ 0.9102 0.6644 0.55 94.055 0.9802 1 0.8116

CHF 1.1213 0.8183 0.68 115.892 1.2076 1.2320 1

28/3 04/4 1-Week 90-Day YTD

Index 305.21 304.84 -0.12% 10.24% 8.81%

Gold 1295.3 1303.6 0.65% 5.39% 8.13%

WTI Crude 101.67 101.14 -0.52% 7 .88 % 2. 76%

Silver 19.83 19.964 0.68% -0.96% 2.55%

Platinum 1411.1 1450.3 2.77% 2.64% 5.90%

Aluminium 76.48 82.27 7.57% 4.11% 2.58%

28/3 04/4 CHG

US 10-Yr 2.72 2.72 0.00

UK 10-Yr 2.72 2.69 -0.03

EU 10-Yr 1.55 1.55 0.00

SWI 10-Yr 0.94 0.91 -0.03

JPN 10-Yr 0.63 0.65 0.02

US 5-Yr 1.75 1.70 -0.05

UK 5-Yr 1.96 1.90 -0.06

EU 5-Yr 0.61 0.60 -0.01

SWI 5-Yr 0.19 0.15 -0.04

JPN 5-Yr 0.20 0.20 0.00

US 3-M 0.04 0.02 -0.02

UK 3-M 0.40 0.40 0.00

EU 3-M 0.18 0.20 0.02

SWI 3-M 0.02 0.02 0.00

JPN 3-M 0.03 0.04 0.01

Selected Currencies - April 4, 2014

Benchmark Bonds Yields

Selected Commodities

28/3 04/4 CHG

US 0.25 0.25 0.00

UK 0.50 0.50 0.00

EU 0.25 0.25 0.00

SWI 0.00 0.00 0.00

JPN 0.10 0.10 0.00

Central Bank Rates

At a glance..

Oscar Wilde(1854 - 1900)


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Little has been heard fromSatya Nadella since hesucceeded Steve Ballmeras M ic roso f t s ch ie fexecutive last month. OnMarch 27th he made up forit. In a shift long trailedand, many would say, longoverdueMicrosoft madeits Office suite of software,which includes word-processor, spreadsheet

and sl ide-presentationprograms, available onA p p l e s i P a d . T h ecompany also announcedcloud products to make lifeeasier for beleagueredcorporate information-technology departmentstrying to keep up with staffusing their own mobile devices rather than being chained to desktop computers. Mr Nadella promised moreannouncements in the next few weeks.

Mr Nadella repeated the mantra of his first day in the job: that Microsoft must serve a mobile-first, cloud-

first world. Office for iPad is in effect Office 365, the cloud-based version of the suite (existing subscriberswith an iPad will get a free upgrade). The idea is to give people access to all their stuff, stored on MicrosoftsOneDrive cloud service, on any device. There is no Office for Android tablets yet, but Mr Nadella dropped astrong hint that this was on the way.

Why hasnt this happened sooner? Sales of personal computers (PCs) have been dropping at double-digitrates: Gartner, a research firm, estimates that they will fall by another 6.6% this year. Microsofts sales ofOffice licences for consumers PCs were 24% lower in the three months to December than a year earlier.Two-thirds of that decline was offset by sales of Office 365, but that still leaves a deep dent.

So Microsoft is trying to make up for lost time, by putting Office onto Apples hugely successful platform.Until now, it has doubtless been held back by devotion to its Windows operating system, which dominatedthe PC age. It hoped that Windows tablets would sell well, allowing it to scoop the revenue from both theapplication and the operating system as it did in with desktops and laptops.

Some hope. Gartner reckons that about 4m Windows tablets in total were sold in the whole of 2013. Appleflogged 26m iPads in the last quarter alone. Microsofts own tablet, the Surface, has been little help. Itappeared two years after the iPad, in the autumn of 2012, and has sold miserably, even though Microsoftboasts that sales doubled in the December quarter. But a small number doubled is still small. Microsoft didntsay how many it had shiftedbut was only too keen to brag of selling 7.4m Xbox entertainment consoles.

The bind is that Office for iPad, if it is as successful as Microsoft hopes, makes Apples devices moreattractive too. Mr Nadella denied there was any trade-offand he is right, in way: the time for beingprecious about Windows is long past. When Mr Ballmer declared in an opaque memo last year thatMicrosoft would henceforth be a devices and services company, his meaning wasnt entirely clear. MrNadella has added some definition: if we cant sell the devices, at least sell the services.

Source: Economist Newspaper

Microsoft: Once-forbidden fruit

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Chart of the week

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has used what she called her dashboard of jobs data to justify

the Feds easy money policies and to argue that theres still considerable slack in the labor market

almost five years after the recessions end. Only two of the monthly indicators that she flagged are

back to where they were in the four years leading up to the last economic downturn.

Source: Bloomberg


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Disclaimer

The contents of this publication are for information purposes only and shouldneither be regarded as an offer nor a solicitation to buy, sell or otherwise deal

with any investment referred to herein.

As a general rule, the value of any investment may rise or fall. Past

performance is not indicative of future results. Do not take unnecessary risk

and always request advice from an investment professional before undertakingany investment.

intouch april 7 2014

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