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from Global Investing:

What’s on your reading list?

If anyone needed a reminder that Christmas and NewYear holidays are almost here, Societe Generale has provided it. Analyst Dylan Grice has picked up the mantle of the departed James Montier to offer a seasonal reading list for those with a fixation about investment and economics.

True, some people might prefer to immerse themselves in a rollicking sea tale from Patrick O'Brian or a good old  Sookie Stackhouse vampire mystery. But we know that Reuters blogs' readers are a discriminating lot with a keen understanding of and passion for finance. So here is Dylan's list of six must-reads:

1. Manias, Panics and Crashes, by Charles P. Kindleberger; 2. The Essays of Warren Buffet, edited by Richard Cunningham; 3. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefevre; 4. Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Taleb; 5. The Case against the Fed, by Murray Rothbard; 6. Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, eds Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky.

So what is your reading list? Tell us what you would include  and why.

from Global Investing:

Time to kick Russia out of the BRICs?

It may end up sounding like a famous ball-point pen maker, but an argument is being made that Goldman Sach's famous marketing device, the BRICs, should really be the BICs. Does Russia really deserve to be a BRIC, asks Anders Åslund, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in an article for Foreign Policy.

Åslund, who is also co-author with Andrew Kuchins of "The Russian Balance Sheet", reckons the Russia of Putin and Medvedev is just not worthy of inclusion alongside Brazil, India and China  in the list of blue-chip economic powerhouses. He writes:

The country's economic performance has plummeted to such a dismal level that one must ask whether it is entitled to have any say at all on the global economy, compared with the other, more functional members of its cohort.

I have just returned from Moscow, which is always dreary around this season. But this year, the mood among the capital's eloquent liberal economists has hit a new low. For the last seven years, Russia has undertaken no significant economic reforms. Instead, the state has been living off oil and gas, like a lucky but undeserving rentier."

Economically, Åslund has the numbers on his side. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the Russian economic will contract by 6.7 percent this year, while China will grow 8.5 percent and India 5.4 percent. There is less of a case for Brazil, with a contraction of 0.7 percent projected, but it is still doing far better than Russia.

But the BRICs concept is not just about economics. As mentioned, it is a marketing device to urge investors to focus on the big emerging players. From an investment standpoint, it could be argued that Russia is leading the BRICs. Its stock market is up 128 percent this year versus around 80 percent for the other three.

At very least, however, Russia's economic underperformance and stock market outperformance does suggest it is the outlier of the group.

from Global Investing:

Is it time for a Scottish wealth fund?

Oxford SWF Project, a university think tank on sovereign wealth funds, is looking at reports that the latest entry in the field could be Scotland. The project has a new post about the Scottish government floating the idea of an oil stabilisation fund to use oil and gas revenues.  It cites Scottish cabinet secretary for finance John Swinney looking abroad gleefully:

“We want to harness the benefit of oil revenues now for future years. An oil fund can provide greater stability, protect our economy and support the transition to a low carbon economy. Norway’s oil fund is worth over £200 billion – despite the first instalment being made as recently as the mid 1990s – and Alaska’s oil fund even gives money back to its citizens every year.”

The SWF project reckons the idea is a good one, but wonders if something other than meets the eye is at play. It had two questions.

First, it wonders whether the plan might just be a political rebuke for the UK government from the ruling (and separatist) Scottish National Party over a perceived lack of savings over the years.  Second, it notes that the UK government floated the idea of a strategic investments fund back in April and questions whether "the Scottish SWF reflects a ‘whatever they have, we should have’ mentality".

Here's a third question. Is it not a bit late for an oil fund? UK oil and gas output, most of which is in Scottish waters, has more than halved since 1999.

from Global Investing:

Dead cat bounce?

New year can get in the way of understanding what is happening on financial markets. Just because humans measure the year in 12 month tranches, it does not necessarily follow that markets do. Consider world stocks, for example. MSCI's all-country world stock index is often cited as having fallen 43.5 percent in 2008. In fact, long-term investors' losses were a lot worse. From an all-time high on November 1, 2007, to a low on November 28, 2008, the index fell 56.2 percent.

Something similar is happening at the moment. Investors might be focusing on year-to-date losses of around 5.7 percent for the index, but they are doing better than that. The index has gained 14.5 percent from that November 28 low last year.

What is your interpretation? 1) The credit crunch crash lasted for 12 months, hit bottom on November 28 and stocks are now recovering or 2) We have just had a dead cat bounce.

Are you postponing your retirement?

Have you decided to postpone retirement because of investment losses? How much longer will you have to work to afford retirement? Is the concept of retirement a thing of the past?