Last night after the market closed, Yahoo (a large holding of mine), released their earnings report from the 1st quarter and beat analysts expectations. While they said they were still facing stiff competition from the likes of Google and Bing, they still saw an increase in advertising revenue, as well as continued strong business and internet traffic out of their Asian search engines. As I've written till I'm blue in the face, I believe that Yahoo will ultimately be acquired by a larger technology company or buy a private equity firm, not only because their internet business here in the States (which is somewhat struggling), but more importantly for the Asian assets they own.
In geopolitical news, the French political race, between the current President Sarkozy and his opponent Hollande appears to be extremely close..why does this matter? Because if Sarkozy is defeated, then the European debt deal that was agreed upon and that is ultimately trying to keep the European financial crisis from worsening could be derailed. And in the Middle East, the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu was just quoted as saying that Iran's nuclear program posses an immediate threat to Israel, as well as the Middle East as well. I've mentioned before that one of my concerns is the instability that we are seeing around the world, whether that be in North Korea, Europe, or in the Middle East. Also of concern, overnight the new Argentinian government came in and took over the operations of the largest Spanish energy company that was doing work in the country. Nationalization, which is where a country can come in and take over ownership of a foreign country, is a concern to investors in certain parts of the world because overnight a person can lose every dime invested if a rogue country decides to take over a foreign company....
All of the geopolitical issues I mentioned above are reasons why investors should closely research and monitor any investments they have in overseas companies, as well as certain areas in the world that they work in. Other than that, did I mention Yahoo beat their earnings estimates!
