Shaw Capital Management Financial News

10April  2012 - Shaw Capital Management Financial News: Stocks: Market Edges Lower on Worries about China, Greece – NEW YORK — Two signs of trouble elsewhere in the world pushed U.S. stocks lower: slowing economic growth in China and a possible hitch in a deal to get Greece its bailout money.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed the day down 14.76 points to 12,962.81, or down 0.1 percent. The Dow closed above 13,000 last week for the first time since May 2008.

Monday was the 45th consecutive trading day without a loss of 100 points or more for the Dow. The last streak longer than that was 93 trading days from July 17 to Nov. 24, 2006.

Much of the pessimism in the market stemmed from China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, lowering China’s target rate for economic growth to 7.5 percent from 8 percent, where it has stood for years. That’s a negative sign because growth in China has been a key factor shoring up the global economy since the financial crisis of 2008.

The news sent steel company stocks sharply lower. Half of the world’s steel is consumed in China. AK Steel Holding Corp. lost 6 percent, while US Steel fell 4.7 percent.

The lower projection for Chinese growth also hurt stocks of U.S. materials companies that depend on China for profits. Caterpillar, which makes heavy equipment, fell 2.1 percent. Alcoa, the aluminum maker, fell 3.6 percent.

The Dow fell as much as 93 points in the morning before recouping some of that loss in the afternoon. Some market strategists said it was an overreaction to read too much into China’s projection.

“China is still a driver of global growth, even at its slightly reduced pace,” said Richard Cripps, chief market strategist at Stifel Nicolaus. “The growth rate is still far better than the U.S. and Europe.”

The Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 5.30 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,364.33.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 25.71 points, or 0.9 percent, to 2,950.48. The technology-heavy Nasdaq index fell slightly more than the other indexes as its star stocks Apple fell 2.2 percent and Google fell close to 1.1 percent.

Also weighing on the market were worries that not enough private investors will participate in a bond swap in Greece and accept bonds of lower face value and lower returns.

Trying to reassure world markets, a group representing a dozen banks, insurers and investment funds that hold Greek government bonds said they will participate in the swap by the Thursday night deadline.

Greece needs private investors to sign on before it gets a second international bailout worth $172 billion. Without the bailout, it could default on its debt later this month, an event many fear could shock the world financial system.

The stock market’s losses were limited by some positive news from the U.S. economy. Service companies expanded in February at the fastest pace in a year, helped by a rise in orders and job growth.

The Institute for Supply Management said Monday that its index of non-manufacturing activity rose to 57.3, up from 56.8 in January and the third straight increase. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion.

In recent months, markets have been lifted by signs of improvement in the U.S. economy. U.S. stock indexes have been trading at their highest levels since before the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008.

Among other stocks making big moves:

— Alpha Natural Resources, a coal producer, fell 6 percent after the price of natural gas fell close to 5 percent due to weak demand for gas in a mild winter.

— Archipelago Learning stock soared 22.7 percent after the online education company agreed to be bought by Plato Learning for $291 million in cash, helping boost the number of customers.

— US Airways Group fell 8.4 percent after the airline said passenger revenue growth slowed in February, indicating it is having a tough time raising fares and fees to offset climbing oil prices.

— American International Group rose close to 2 percent. AIG will raise $6 billion by selling part of its stake in an Asian insurance company and pay down some of its debt to the U.S. government from a bailout during the financial crisis. AIG owed $50 billion at the end of 2011.

Company Overview of Cochrane Shaw Capital Management Pty Ltd.

Company Overview

Cochrane Shaw Capital Management Pty Ltd. provides investment and securities advisory services to individuals, corporations, accounting firms, and legal practices in Australia. The company offers advice on shares, debentures, superannuation, life insurance, unit trusts, and master fund products, as well as ongoing review on their investment portfolio. Its services include financial planning and investment strategies, superannuation planning, retirement and pension planning, risk insurance management, estate planning, and taxation planning. Cochrane Shaw Capital Management Pty Ltd. was incorporated in 1969 and is based in Melbourne, Australia. As of December 24, 2010,

Detailed Description

Suite 2

41 Railway Rd, Blackburn

Mebourne, VIC 3130

Australia

Founded in 1969

Phone 61 3 9894

                3788

Fax 61 3 9898 1015

http://www.cochraneshaw.com.au/

World Headlines: Shaw Capital Management

10April 2012 - Shaw Capital Management News: NASA Study Shows Health, Food Security Benefits From Climate Change Measures - A new study led by a NASA scientist features 14 key air pollution control measures that, if implemented, could sluggish the pace of global warming, improve health and increased agricultural production.

The research, led by Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, found out that focusing on these measures could slow mean global warming 0.9 ºF (0.5ºC) by 2050, boost global crop yields by up to 135 million metric tons per season and could stop hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each in every year. While all regions of the world would benefit, countries in Asia and the Middle East would see the biggest health and agricultural gains from emissions reductions.

“We’ve shown that implementing specific practical emissions reductions chosen to maximize climate benefits also would have important ‘win-win’ benefits for human health and agriculture,” said Shindell. Shindell together with the international team considered about 400 control measures based on technologies assessed by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. According to Shaw Capital Management News, the new study centers on 14 measures with the utmost climate benefit. All 14 would restrain the release of either black carbon or methane, pollutants that exacerbate climate change and human or plant health, either directly or by leading to ozone structure.

Methane, a colorless and flammable substance that is a major constituent of natural gas, is both a potent greenhouse gas and an important precursor to ground-level ozone. Ozone, a key component of smog and also a greenhouse gas, damages crops and human health.

While carbon dioxide is the primary driver of global warming over the long term, limiting black carbon and methane are complementary actions that would have a more immediate impact because these two pollutants circulate out of the atmosphere more quickly.

Black carbon, a product of burning fossil fuels or biomass such as wood or dung, can deteriorate a large number of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The small particles also absorb radiation from the sun causing the atmosphere to warm and rainfall patterns to shift. In addition, they darken ice and snow, reducing their reflectivity and hastening global warming.

Shindell and his team concluded that these control measures would provide the greatest protection against global warming to Russia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, countries with large areas of snow or ice cover. Iran, Pakistan and Jordan would encounter the most improvement in agricultural production. Southern Asia and the Sahel region of Africa would see the most beneficial changes to precipitation patterns.

The south Asian countries of India, Bangladesh and Nepal would see the largest reductions in premature deaths. The study estimates that globally between 700,000 and 4.7 million premature deaths could be prevented each year.

Black carbon and methane have many sources. As being mentioned on Shaw Capital Management News, Plummeting emissions would have needed of that societies make multiple infrastructure upgrades. For methane, the key strategies the scientists considered were capturing gas escaping from coal mines and oil and natural gas facilities, as well as dipping leakage from long-distance pipelines, preventing emissions from city landfills, upgrading wastewater treatment plants, aerating rice paddies more, and controlling emissions from manure on farms.

For black carbon, the strategies analyzed include putting up filters in diesel vehicles, keeping high-emitting vehicles off the road, upgrading cooking stoves and boilers to cleaner burning types, installing more efficient kilns for brick production, upgrading coke ovens and banning agricultural burning.

The scientists used computer models developed at GISS and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, to represent the impact of emissions reductions. The models showed extensive benefits from the methane reduction for the reason that it is evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere. Based from the Shaw Capital Management News, Black carbon falls out of the atmosphere after a few days so the benefits are stronger in certain regions, especially ones with large amounts of snow and ice.

“Protecting public health and food supplies may take precedence over avoiding climate change in most countries, but knowing that these measures also mitigate climate change may help motivate policies to put them into practice,” Shindell said. The new study builds on a United Nations Environment Program/World Meteorological Organization report, also led by Shindell, published last year.

“The scientific case for fast action on these so-called ‘short-lived climate forcers’ has been steadily built over more than a decade, and this study provides further focused and compelling analysis of the likely benefits at the national and regional level,” said United Nations Environment Program Executive Director Achim Steiner.

Shaw Capital Management Online-Blog

Japanese shares dropped for the first time in the span of three days while the French and German heads announced they will not increase a budget to help Europe’s debt crisis. Meanwhile, housing starts in US fell, renewing the concern that profits of exporters will be cut back as Shaw Capital management fears.

Sony Corporation, Japan’s largest exporter of consumer electronics, slumped 1.9% following talks in Paris yesterday between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest carmaker, Toyota Motor Corporation, dropped 1.4%. Japan’s top energy exploration company, Inpex Corporation, fell 2.3% due to reduced crude prices.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped 0.8% to 9,039 as of 9:31 am. While the wider Topix index fell 0.5% to 774 with 3 shares losing for every 2 that climbs up.

An equities manager at SMBC Nikko Securities, Inc, Hiroichi Nishi, said that the meeting in Paris proved debt matters can’t be resolved in such a short time.

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 0.4% today. Yesterday, as the French and German leaders did not approved of selling euro bonds and increasing the 440-billion euro ($633 billion) rescue fund, the New York index dropped 1% to 1,1,92. Both leaders also proposed submitting another financial-transaction tax that was previously rejected in 2010.

European Union’s statistics office announced yesterday in Luxembourg that the 17-nation Euro area, Gross Domestic Product grew 0.2% in the second quarter compared to previous months when the economy increased 0.8%. In a Bloomberg News Survey, this has been the weakest expansion since the euro zone emerged from a downturn in late 2009 and was less than the 0.3% average estimate of 34 economists.

The Commerce Department detailed that housing starts in the US dropped 1.5% in July from June, and the alternative for future construction also suffered a setback, Shaw Capital management observed.

Nishi added, “The housing numbers of US were not really strong, which triggers a persistent delay in their economy.”

Exporters decreased following reports of economic development in Europe and the opposite happening in the US, which hurt the position for earnings abroad. Sony dropped 1.9% to 1,668 yen, Toyota fell 1.4% to 2,860 yen and Japan’s third biggest carmaker, Honda, lost 2.3% to 2,556 yen.

On the other hand, mining companies reduced prices of oil products. Inpex lost 2.3% to 514,000 yen. The second biggest oil driller, Japan Petroleum Exploration Company, fell 0.8% to 3,330 yen.

Yesterday, crude oil for September delivery decreased 1.4% to stay at 86.65 dollars per barrel in New York. Prices of 6 industrial metals, including aluminum and copper, fell 0.5% in the London Metal Exchange Index.

Shaw Capital Management Factoring: Online, Is Dream Date a Scam?

I worked up the nerve to write him and was thrilled when he replied, saying he was flattered to receive my email. He told me he is a great cook (perfect), loves the beach (ditto) and tries to work out but isn’t always consistent (Hello, soul mate!). He said he hoped to hear from me again soon.

Imagine my heartbreak when I discovered he doesn’t exist.

I know many people on dating websites tell little white lies—putting a positive spin on their age, weight, income or the reason their last relationship broke up. But I’ve been surprised to discover that some profiles are fakes, created by scammers looking to defraud individuals. In many cases they are able to take in sophisticated victims, people who would never fall for one of those emails from Nigeria telling you how to claim your inheritance.

Dan Picasso

Take Keith Samuels. After breaking up with his long-time girlfriend last year, the Washington, D.C.-based senior manager at an import-export company says he decided to try his chances on dating site eHarmony. Before long, he connected with a woman he says looked like a model. She said she was 28 and worked for a British travel company. “I was very flattered that a younger, attractive woman started paying me attention,” recalls Mr. Samuels, 45.

For two months, Mr. Samuels and the woman chatted on email and occasionally on the phone or Skype, discussing their families, jobs and interests. They never met in person. Then one day, she wrote and said her mother was very sick and she was trying to raise money to pay the hospital bill. She asked for $5,000. Mr. Samuels wired it to her. “I thought I was being the protector,” he says.

Almost immediately, the woman’s profile disappeared from the site. Mr. Samuels couldn’t reach her when he tried to write or call. “I was an idiot, and I got scammed,” he says. He didn’t hear from her again. EHarmony spokesman Paul Breton says the company tries to educate members about safety, and a full-time team reviews profiles using technology and their instincts.

How can smart people get fooled so easily? Psychologists blame what they call the “halo effect.” It’s what happens when we notice something we like about a person—often it’s physical beauty—and then start imagining other positive qualities. It’s the reason good-looking people often are paid more than average-looking people, and it happens all the time in online dating. We see an attractive person, or read an interesting profile, and soon we are projecting onto that person who we are looking for, letting our guard down, ignoring red flags. Online scammers love the halo effect.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it gets thousands of complaints a year from people who have been fleeced by people they met on dating sites. The online dating industry says scammers represent a small fraction of all profiles. “But scammers are aggressive,” says Mark Brooks, an industry consultant who has worked with Cupid and PlentyofFish.

A lawsuit filed in December seeking class-action status in U.S. District Court in Dallas alleges that more than half the profiles on Match.com are “inactive, fake or fraudulent.” Responding to questions about the lawsuit, Match.com president Mandy Ginsberg said the site has 1.9 million paid subscribers, fraud happens to very few of them and a full-time fraud-prevention team works to identify and block fake profiles.

At the FBI, one Cyber Division section chief, Tim Gallagher, says most scammers operate from abroad, especially West Africa and the former Soviet republics. In a typical scenario, the scammer creates a fake profile using photos of an attractive individual, in many cases lifted off social-networking sites. Often, the written part of the profile is copied verbatim from a real profile or a recycled template. Almost always, it is designed to tug at the heartstrings, the FBI says.

Scammers want to make an emotional connection. At first, they flatter and fawn. Once you are hooked, they hit you with some variation of several well-worn sob stories, Mr. Gallagher says. Sometimes they say they live abroad and desperately want to visit you, but their country’s banking system is broken. Or they’re at the airport and their credit card has been declined. Some scammers even pretend to be U.S. military service members trying to get back home and low on cash. Their stories all end in same place: Please wire money, and they will pay you back.

“They present themselves as being vulnerable, but they are really looking for someone who is more vulnerable,” Mr. Gallagher says.

Online-dating sites use three lines of defense against scammers. There’s technology: Typically, an automated system will track how many messages a profile sends per hour, or searches for words like “wire.” A security team may scan suspicious profiles. Most reputable sites encourage users to flag inappropriate behavior, including money requests.

Now, some online-dating sites are adding more exclusivity and security. At IvyDate.com and DateHarvardsq.com, which launched in the past year, a membership committee reviews every profile and photo submitted to check for grammar, spelling and other inconsistencies suggesting the works of an overseas scammer unfamiliar with English. “You have to create the right environment,” says Beri Meric, co-founder of the sites. “Just like in the off-line world, people are looking to go to the right neighborhood to meet the right people.”

Global Personals, the British owner of U.S. sites including Texasdating.com and Theseniordatingagency.com, says it has a person—not a computer—check every photo, profile and message. The company says it gets 8,000 new members a day of which about a dozen are scammers whose profiles it pulls down immediately. On Iloveyouraccent.com, members can opt to pay for a background check of anyone on the site.

Match.com, on its website, identifies some other common red flags: Proceed with caution with anyone who claims to be recently widowed or an American working overseas, or who quickly asks to communicate on an outside email or messaging system. In April, after it was named in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by a woman alleging she was sexually assaulted by a man she met through the site, Match.com said it will start checking existing and new members against a national sex offenders registry—a measure it says it has been evaluating for years. “While these checks may help in certain instances, they remain highly flawed, and it is critical that this effort does not provide a false sense of security to our members,” the company said in a statement.

And of course, screening for sex offenders won’t do much to weed out scammers. Where does that leave you?

Rule No. 1: Trust your gut. That’s what I did when bits of Mr. I-Love-to-Shop’s story weren’t adding up, such as this, from one of his emails: “I can’t stop starring at you and i don’t think any man with his right sense can stop too. You astonish.” And this: “I am a cleaning nut!! On my days off work I crank up the music, forget about everything else, and make my house smell and look prettyful.”

When I searched for him on the Internet, I found he wasn’t on Facebook. He wasn’t a licensed veterinarian in the city where he said he worked. I copied much of one of his long email messages into Google. Voilà! The entire email came up on several websites detailing “romance scams.” So much for Mr. Right. Delete.

Shaw Capital Management Factoring: IMF Hack A Warning For Others To Invest In Staff Training

Staff training about simple email threats may have helped the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in New York from being hacked by a targeted malware attack, according to one analyst.
According to Bloomberg, the hack’s perpetrators obtained a “large quantity of data,” including e-mail and other documents during the intrusion.
Ovum’s UK based IT security analyst, Graham Titterington, said in a statement that many security mistakes occur within banks and other financial institutions because staff have not received sufficient training on threats.
[ With the increasing threat of cyber crimes, protect yourself and stay informed on the latest news with Computerworld's Security newsletter ]
“People are people and have innate vulnerabilities with respect to trusting the wrong people, accepting inducements, or simply having more pressing concerns at the time they are approached [via email],” he said.
While there was “no magic bullet” to prevent a cyber attack, the IMF could have also put more security measures in place.
“Most information theft attacks are launched through an Internet facing application in the corporate gateway, attacking vulnerabilities in applications using relatively predictable strategies such as SQL injection or scripting attacks,” Titterington said.
“So improving the coding standards of applications is a major step, or alternatively protecting applications by screening them with an application layer firewall.” According to Titterington, access control to systems was another area where controls were frequently circumvented, as attackers steal the credentials of legitimate users through a number of types of attack.
“Spyware is often inserted into the target organisation well before the main attack takes place to acquire this information. Monitoring data movements, data encryption, and data loss prevention systems can also reduce the loss of information directly from electronic systems, particularly with regard to high volume theft,” he said.
In the case of the IMF, data monitoring did flag the data breach, but not soon enough to prevent the hack taking place. “However, security technologies themselves are not universal panaceas, even when the vulnerabilities have been dealt with,” said Titerington.
“Data loss prevention is cumbersome and can obstruct legitimate business if it is not perfectly tuned while encryption is only as good as key management and brings the risk of losing all access to your data if you lose the key.”
Got a security tip-off? Contact Hamish Barwick at hamish_barwick at idg.com.au

Shaw Capital Working Management Tips:Building on passion

There might be some truth to the stereotypical view of Indians being more emotional and passionate, at least as far as businesses are concerned. Discussing the “Indian way of entrepreneurship”, Rajiv Deep Bajaj, vice-chairman and managing director of Bajaj Capital, and communications chairman of the Delhi chapter of the US-based Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), says training entrepreneurs is essential in India. He believes that drawing from Western models won’t help much given the differences. EO is a global network of more than 7,500 business owners from 40-odd countries, which provides learning opportunities across countries and enables entrepreneurs to solve business challenges, learn in different ways, network locally or globally, and much more. Edited excerpts from a phone interview:

What do you mean by the Indian way of entrepreneurship? How would you say it compares with the West?

There is a difference. While our business objectives are the same, which is add value to society and create profit-making ventures in turn, our way of doing it is different because of our cultural differences from the world. The West is an “I” society, they are more individualistic. We are a “we” society; we live for the family; in rural India, we live for the community. Most entrepreneurial ventures in India are family run and not professionally run as in the West; in the West, they segregate ownership from management whereas here there’s a strong alignment between the two. Given the vast difference in both styles, our attitude and way of working is different and has to be different—if we simply copy Western entrepreneurial models, it simply won’t work.

How do the diverse backgrounds of entrepreneurs make them different? For instance, how would a first-generation entrepreneur be different from a fourth-generation one?

Your background plays a huge role in business: The mindset that you bring to your business is essentially a product of your background. If you are a first-generation entrepreneur, for instance, studies and general observation tell us that they will be more hands-on. On the other hand, a fourth-generation entrepreneur has been brought up in such an environment that he would be acclimatized to play a supporting role, and leave the day-to-day running to the professional staff.

Do you feel that India lacks training facilities for its entrepreneurs?

I absolutely agree. Our strength is also our weakness. The fact that we’re so high on emotions in our management is ultimately the reason we ignore processes. We do not go into details of understanding the process of management, and hence we make mistakes in our respective ventures. There are few platforms where entrepreneurs can learn from each other and share experience, and our organization, EO, attempts to change that.

Can anyone be groomed into becoming an entrepreneur, or do you need some inherent qualities?

You need the attitude of an entrepreneur, which is the mindset of risk; you need to understand the risk-reward equation, and that for high risk there is high reward. If you belong to a conservative school of thought, and are used to a fixed-return mode, then an entrepreneurial venture is perhaps not for you.

What is the kind of training EO can equip budding entrepreneurs with?

Training is essentially making someone aware of the issues an entrepreneur should be aware of while running a business, such as HR, tech, operations, processes, marketing, sales, areas that are part of any business. As an entrepreneur, another essential aspect—that they miss out on—is peer-to-peer learning, which is the real learning for entrepreneurs as opposed to classroom learning. They need to share their experiences because whether they have a Rs1 crore business or a Rs1,000 crore business, the generic management issues and challenges are the same.

Research shows that people learn best from experience sharing. The registration and application of that learning is much better. At EO, we provide such platforms for students. EO Delhi has 100 members, and this breaks up in sub-groups called forums, which then meet periodically and meet the informal board of directors to get feedback about their business. This board consists of experts in every field: HR, finance, marketing, and so on.