Mid-Life MBA: The Art of Business

Somebody’s Buying Getty

Posted in Finance, Markets by Eric Back on June 13th, 2006.

Barrons reported that James Bailey, an insider at Getty Images, a visual content producer, has doubled his holdings.  He has purchased 10,000 shares at $65.48 each for a total investment of $654,800.00.  The stock had hit an all time high of $95.43 on November 22nd 2005 but had recently been at a 52 week low of $58.50.

Debtor Nation

Posted in Finance by Eric Back on June 8th, 2006.

Rising interest rates had inclined economists to expect that borrowing would decline but this has clearly not been the case in the 1st quarter of 2006.

The big surprise to me is that households are still leveraging up,” said Bob Mellman, an economist at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. “I had thought that higher interest rates, fewer home sales and less house-price appreciation might convince households to curtail borrowing. But borrowing is as strong as ever.”

In fact, it’s slightly up.  Household debt grew by 11.6% in the 1st quarter of 2006, up from 11.1% in the 4th quarter of 2005.