Five Highest Overpaid CEOs

The Top Five Highest Over Paid CEOs

Who are the highest overpaid CEOs on the planet? And how much do they earn? Well in a recent study the Corporate Library research firm reviewed companies’ regulatory filings to figure out who were the 5 worst CEOs. To be awarded this prestigious title a CEO had to earn at least $30 million in total and his company share price had to have underperformed rivals and the S&P 500 over the last 5 years.

So, without further ado the top 5 highest overpaid CEOs are

1 Michael Jeffries – Abercrombie and Fitch – $71.8 million last year including a “stay bonus” of $6 million so he won’t leave (perish the thought).

2 James Stewart – BJ Services (what’s a BJ?) – $34.6 million – $30 million of which came from stock options.

3 Brian Roberts – Comcast Corp. – $40.8 million in 2008 ($2.7 million salary + over $22 million in earnings related to stock options). – Comcast’s stock has performed well recently but the company has lagged the industry over the years.

4 John Faraci – International Paper – $38.2 million, which included $21 million in pension payments – its Shares fell 63% last year, the S&P 500 fell 38%. International Paper says Faraci’s compensation was $13 million and the Corporate Library “mistakenly included” the pension payments.
5 Eugene Isenberg, – Nabors Industries – $79.3 million, In 2008, shares in Nabors slumped 51%, .

Isenberg’s pay includes a $58.7 million bonus.

So you wanna be rich don’t bother with stock trading just be a CEO and pay yourself whatever you like.

Chinese Bet on Solar Energy

Chinese bet on solar energy.

Hong Kong power company GCL-Poly Energy Holdings yesterday it will pay HK$26 billion ($3.4 billion) for Jiangsu Zhongneng PV Technology Development, who supply polysilicon used in solar panels.

The stock went up 15.2%, to HK$2.88. But even before this boost, the share price had already performed well: more than quadrupling recently.

GCL-Poly is a major operator of cogeneration power plants in China. Cogeneration plants siphon the heat emitted in the creation of electricity and use it for domestic and industrial heating, rather than putting it back into the environment as a waste product.

Warren Buffett is also know to be investing in Chinese power companies having recently purchased a stake in a Chinese battery maker. So this could be a good moment to take a closer look at Chinese power shares.

FSA Says Bonuses are Good

The FSA the stock market supervisory body in the UK paid its wonderful staff £20 million in bonuses last year – despite overseeing the near collapse of capitalism, with its blind eye firmly fixed on its expenses claims.

The FSA is the Financial Services Authority in the UK, widely known for being useless,very much in the same way as bankers and politicians. That hasn’t stopped them helping theselves to £20 million in bonuses of course, so clearly not so useless when it comes to the things that really matter.

Figures released by the Liberal Democrats that bastion of probity and inventive expenses show that 174 employees received of over £100,000 last year, and bonuses averaged almost £22,500 around 15 per cent of salaries for a job well done. .

The FSA which is charged with supervising such weighty stuff as stocks and shares transaction providers and other financial institutions, has admitted that it made mistakes re. the collapse of just about every bank in the country but insists the bonuses are necessary.

A spokeswoman said: “We need to attract and retain very high calibre staff with the right level and mix of skills that we need to do the work that we have to do.” Ha ha – you couldn’t make it up. They are useless ! Let them all sod off to the dole queue – nobody woudl miss them !

“Clearly there are a lot of challenges ahead, we have been working extremely hard changing how we do our work and we have been bringing in more experts in particular areas where we think we needed it.” Blah blah blah.

The Liberal Democrat mouthpiece said: “We all accept the need to attract top-quality workers to the public sector but in some cases it appears these bonuses have been paid out despite serious failings.

“The size of some of these payouts would be hard to justify at the best of times, but it looks especially bad in the current economic climate.

“Regulators must now follow the lead of those in the rest of the public sector who have promised to freeze executive pay.”

It makes you want to turn to crime but personally I’ll stick to stock trading !

Technical Analysis Candlesticks

Technical Analysis

If you are at all interested in investing online then at some point you will need to get grips with at least the basics of technical analysis. For free information and videos about stock market charts including free online information the you ough tto check out this guy Oscar Carboni – his information is very easy to understand and also pretty accurate and free ! So you can watch him for as long as you like before you decide to follow his advice or not.

One thing Oscar doesn’t deal with is candlesticks – candlestick charting is one of the main ways traders use to decide which way markets are going and have been around for a couple of centuries after having been invented in Japan to help in rice trading.

You can also check out youtube and your trading coach for some excellent videos about technical analysis in general and candlestick charts in particular.

The markets at the moment seem a bit soggy and imho are likely to move back down to test the lows we saw back in March as the top seems to be rounding out ahead of a move back down.

Once we get somewhere close to the lows – maybe around 700 on the S&P500 I will be looking to get back in to this market – I just hope I havn’t missed the short-term boat as I am a pretty short-term trader.

At the momen the DOW is down 35 and the S&P is down 2 – pretty small stuff – I need the DOW back down around 6700 !

IF I had any money to risk I would also be betting on Susan Boyle winning the talent show Britain’s Got Talent – but the odds are so short that it probaby isn’t worth it – but it might be worth investing in Sony as they are rumoured to be sigining a recording contract with her.

Bank Bosses to be Probed

Internet Stock Trading

Britain’s bank bosses are about to be probed the City regulator, and about time too, with a red hot poker preferably.

The FSA has begun taking a look at the “Big Four” accounting firms to help them with the investigation, which should begin in the next few weeks.

The inquiry will cover risk management, financial controls and the flow of information between bank executives and members of the board.

Directors and former directors of RBS, Lloyds TSB, HBOS and Bradford & Bingley are all expected to be included in the inquiry.

The investigation will concentrate on aspects of the decisions made just before the original £37 bn bank bailout in October, and further cash injections this year.

Senior partners from Deloitte, KPMG Ernst & Young, and PWC have all been approached to tender to run the investigation. Two firms at least will be appointed, to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

- Barclays, is considering inviting offers for the rest of its asset management empire after selling iShares.

The bank is looking for interest in Barclays Global Investors, which is worth about £8 bn, but no formal talks have been started yet.

Where is Warren Buffett when you need him ?

Stock Markets Rally Again

Markets Rally Again

Stock markets hit a bottom back in march at around 6500 on the DOW and 666 on the S&P and since then seem determined to rally. Many people re not convinced that this is the real thing and most believe that at some point the marlets will have to reverse and re-test recent lows.

One day trader who is generally pretty accurate is Oscar Carboni he has said in recent videos (published before the event) that he believes we are at a cricical junction and may be seeing a fundamental shift in the stock markets from a downtrend to an uptrend, in other words this could be the start of a new bull market.

This is significant because Oscar has been bearish on the markets since around October 2007 when the markets peaked out. The change in stance would mean that instead of selling rallies it would be necesssary to buy any dips.

We are now at crucial levels, in particular around 805 on the S&P500 and around 3940 on the FTSe if the markets stay above them then that will be significatn as it will represent a turning point and would mean that we have in fact seen THE bottom back in March as opposed to just one more bottom in a continuing downtrend.

Currency exchange rates are important and the Euro has been rallying too of late which could continue.

For more information on stock charts and charting check out stock markets for beginners .

If this bull market is for real then there are some incredibly cheap stocks around and so it is quite possible that people will start feeling good about themselves and their financial situation again, which could lead to a rise in stock for some of the luxury retailers such as Radley Bags, Louis Vuitton and Coach and who knows maybe people will even start buying cars again ! Although any upturn will probably come too late to save General Motors.

FED Boosts the Markets

Stock Market Investing

Well the markets have rallied yet again, after the FED announced it will be buying bonds – thereby ‘goosing’ the price so they can sell them at the top and get a pile more cash to fund all the bail-out plans.

If you have a lot of foreign currency or are interested in forex trading you may be interested in using this online currency converter – it’s free !

So now where are the markets headed ? I am still of the belief that this rally must cracj – possibly at around these current levels of 790 – 800 on the S&P as that was the resistance shown on the charts. The level at the close of play will be important, I suspect that it will fall back before the close after surging on the news from the FED.
Jim Cramer just said Ben Bernanke is good. His mortgage deal is the real deal – people should be renegotiating their mortgages down.

People are now very bullish about the markets – I wait to be convinced – but it is a possibility. It could be that the mess is finally starting to be cleared up.

Stock Markets Rally Again

Stock Market Rally and Retirement Investing

The stock markets have proved remarkably resilient recently moving up almost constinuously for the last week from a low on the DOW around 6600. People are expecting some profit taking and for the markets to fall back, but so far it ain’t happening.

It is March 17 now and at the moment the DOW is up another 90 odd points, although there is still a few hours to go before chucking out time, so we will see.

One expectation is for the S&P to get as high as the 790-800 range before turning round and finally go back down again. That is where the resistance is as the S&P has been bouncing around in a trading range for the last couple of weeks.

So, if the markets do stay in positive terrotory today then it may well be because we need to get up to aroun d790 to test the resistance before we head back down again. A lot of people ar econfident that the S&P will go back to its old lows and then on down through themto somehwere closer to 550 – so that would be around 20% down from where we are at the moment.

For some strange reason though there seems to be a lot of bullish sentiment around, but personally I think it will soon dissipate once the markets start dropping again.

On another note if you are retiring or are thinking about your retirement then you may be wondering what to do about your retirement investing two pieces of advice – diversifcation is the name of the game – stocks, bonds and high quality corporate and municipal debt. The second piece of advice is check out tips – treasury inflation protected securities

So watch the markets to see if the S&P gets up tou 790 – 800 before falling back.

Tigger Virus Targets Traders

Virus Attacks Online Stock Traders

Onine traders have been under attack apparently from the Tigger virus, which has been infecting PCs and then sniffing around for keystrokes to allow it to get access to online trading accounts – more information here – online stock trades

Bernie Madoff was an offline virus – costing many people many millions of pounds- he has now been sent to jail after pleading guilty to multiple criminal counts – it is unlikely that he will ever be let out

The DOW was up another 300 points today which is the first time it has been up 3 days in a row since January. A three day rally in a bear market is a rare phenomenon usually stock swill only rally 2 days so perhaps this rally has legs. Most people however are still expecting the markets to break down again and for the DOW to slump below 6000, some expect the DOW to get as low as 4000.

The Forbes rich list is out and the billionaires have all lost a few billion. Bill Gates is now the righest man in the world again but he only has $39 billion compared to the $60 billionhe had a year ago.

Second richest is Warren Buffett who has had a hard time and has lost even more than Bill Gates, but he is a long-term investor so by the time he is 110 no doubt he will be top of the pile again.

Stock Market Bear Trend Continues

Stocks Still in Downtrend

Stock prices rebounded nearly 400 points on Tuesday but were flat on Wednesday and at the moment the DOW is at 6930 – better than it was when it was at 6550 but still not great. I am pretty confident the markets will fall again tomorrow, why is that ? because we have had 2 up days in a row which is about all you get in a bear market.

If stock prices continue moving up then it could be a sign that the bear market is coming to an end,but personally I won’t be holding my breath.

There are plenty of people predicting that the DOW will fall back to 4000 ! That’s quite a drop from where we are now. Eventhe more psoitive expect a 20 % drop from here which would take us back down to about 5500. For the S&p the figure would be somwhere beneath 600 – so we shall see tomorrow.

Tim Geithner and Barack Obama have not had much effect on the markets, except a negative one. Credibility is the issue and how can you expect much credibility when you pick for your Treasury secretary a guy who forgot to pay his taxes. If you want to have you rown vote on whether Tim Geithner should be Treasury Secretary visit Geithner Gate and cast your vote in the online poll.

For anyone into online stock trading all I can say is take care. These markets are highly treacherous – even Warren Buffett has lost money since October when he famously came out and said he was buying at these low prices, Since then he has said he made some mistakes, but being a billionaire he hardly noticed – he has lost about $20 billion recently according the Forbes’ rich list.