Treasury Secretary Timothy Geith ner unveiled plans to reinvigorate the banking industry from an aptly named place: the department’s “Cash Room.”
The room opened in 1869, and the designer hoped it would resemble a roofed version of a traditional Italian palazzo bank, according to the Treasury Department.
At its start, the room really held cash, with horse-drawn vans delivering gold, silver and paper currency to supply area banks. Sometimes, bags stuffed with bills, coins or bullion would reach the ceiling. The room, though, stopped operating as a “banker’s bank” in 1976 when the cost to maintain its staff and security got too high.
Thanks a lot.
Here’s another thing you can blame on the banks — the poor performance of foreign stocks. Most international markets have done worse than the United States so far this year, and a big reason why is because of their big exposure to the financial industry.
Financials make up about 21 percent of foreign markets, according to Standard & Poor’s, roughly double their share of the U.S. market. So, as financial stocks continue to tank, it hurts foreign stocks even more than the U.S. S&P 500 index.
Well, my IQ is 100.
How financially sophisticated are you? A new index can measure it exactly.
A group of researchers looked at some of the most common mistakes individuals make in investing, such as not having a diverse-enough portfolio or selling winning stocks while holding losing stocks. The formula is complicated. In the end, the research team found high scores tend to correlate with people who are rich — big shock — and those from households of larger sizes. Education, in the end, mattered to a lesser degree.
Earnings buzz.
See a lot of people buying a stock before the company it announces its earnings? That may be a good sign, according to new research. Intense buying by individuals before announcements often leads to significant gains in the stock in the following three months.
Why? There may be a few reasons, say the researchers from Duke, San Francisco State and Cornell universities and the University of Texas. Some of it may be that big institutional investors want to have more cash around earning announcements, because they’re feeling uncertain. When individual investors step in to buy the shares, the ensuing stock rise may be their compensation for providing liquidity to the market.
Or, the researchers say, individual investors may also just have skill in picking stocks.
The Associated Press
