Top University Funds

Here is a list of the top universities with the most grants and funds in billions as of last year.

Harvard University 36B
Yale University 22B
Stanford University 17B
Princeton University 16B
University of Texas System 16B
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 10B
University of Michigan 7B
Northwestern University 7B
Columbia University 7B

When will the misery end?

Percentage of Jobs lost (as a percent of the employment at the beginning of the recession) and the recessions years a given below.
1.2% in 1980
1.4% in 1990
2.8% in 1974
5.2% in 1948
4.4% in 1958
3.4% in 1953
2.0% in 2001


3.1% have so far lost since in 2007 which is 4.4 million jobs of the total 142 million jobs at the start of recession in Dec 2007.

At the minimum 1.75 million (or 3 million in worst case) jobs are still to be lost before we can say that things are better.

Assuming .5 million jobs are lost in a month, that is around 6 months of job losses yet to come till Sep 2009.

That is when we will see some uptick in the market

Mr. Market is always right....

Let us say...your friend Joe, gets a paycheck each month and after he pays his mortgage and grocery bills he has some dollars left in the bank. In effect, he is increasing surplus of disposable income to do something with every month. This money can then be used by him to purchase any additional assets.

On the other hand, if Joe is careless his bank account will be running out of money before he is done paying the bills every month. This leaves him in a net deficit and over time could require Joe to start selling some of his other assets in order to keep up with the bills.

The stock market is similar in a way. There is something known as "Liquidity levels", and that is similar to Joe's disposable income.

The more Liquidity that moves into the market(Expansion), the more money there is available for trading up the value of stocks on new purchases. In such cases, excessive "discretionary" money can be used to enhance a process of buying more and more ... and that drives up the stock market.

The downside is that the opposite happens when Liquidity is outflowing, and when Liquidity goes into Contraction. Essentially more money is going out than coming in.


Liquidity levels can thus help you know the market trend. And as is said often the trend is your friend.

Fed up!!!

Bernanke was particularly peeved that AIG "exploited a huge gap in regulatory oversight" to essentially operate a hedge fund on top of its core insurance business. As a result, he said an AIG failure would be a "disaster," affecting both the insurance industry and Wall Street firms that are counterparties on derivatives trades with AIG.

"It's a terrible situation, but we're not doing this to bail out AIG or their shareholders," Bernanke declared. "We're doing this to protect our financial system and to avoid a much more severe crisis in our global economy."

Are we there yet?

In October last year we were expecting the market to correct back to 2002 levels. Well....now we have not only gotten back to 2002 but actually well below that level.

So what we advise our clients right now is to keep an eye on the market and this is a crucial level now.

We are expecting to find a support around 665-670 on S&P towards this and the whole of next month.

Then the report cards season begins and may be we will take off or sink further depending on that.

So sit on the fence and watch the game unfold!!!