Bill Gates is worth more than the GDP of countries like Slovakia, Qatar, Libya, Luxembourg, Sri Lanka, and many more.
If Bill Gates was a country, its GDP would rank close to 60th out of 180 countries in the world.
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Interest rate cut of 0.5% keeps the markets humming
The Federal Reserve cut both, fed funds rate and discount rate by half percentage point on January 30th to 3.0% and 3.5% respectively.The Federal Reserve Bank’s 0.50% cut in the interest rate this week, came eight days after the biggest rate cut of 0.75% on January 22nd. Markets responded positively on the Feds rate cut news.The S&P500 gained 65 points or +4.9%, the Dow gained 537 points or +4.4% and the NASDAQ gained 89 points or +3.8% week ending February 1st, 2008.
The Fed’s interest rate cut was based on its view that the banking loan problem and the credit crisis issues are continuing to get worse.So far, the bad home loan problem has caused banks to lose almost $150 billion and experts believe that this number could continue to rise, if the housing market decline does not stop.It seems, for now, investors seems to like what the Feds have done.What does the interest rate cut mean for you (click here)?
Microsoft (Ticker MSFT)offered to buy Yahoo (Ticker Yhoo) for $45 billion or $31 per share. This is the biggest offer ever made to an internet company.Investors liked this news, sending Yahoo stock to jump by $6.8 per share or a whopping 32% in a week, ending February 1, 2008.
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Microsoft has been struggling in a highly profitable internet search market for a long time.By acquiring Yahoo, Microsoft expects to increase its internet search business from distant third to second, after Google.Just to do that, Microsoft has offered a large premium (in other words extra or additional) of over 60% on Yahoo’s stock of $19 per share on Jan 31, 2008.Yahoo shareholders like this offer.
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What will you do if you own a Yahoo stock worth $19 a share, and someone comes along to pay you $31 per share?Right, you will sell it and gain a nice $12 per share or over 60% profit!Let us see if that is what other Yahoo investors do this coming week.
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Google is the king of internet search market with six out of ten worldwide internet searches done by Google.The second largest is Yahoo with two out of ten and Microsoft a distant third with just one out of ten searches world-wide.By buying Yahoo, Microsoft triples its internet business from 10% to 30% of the total world-wide searches.
World-wide internet searches
offers to buy
for
$45 billion!
Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Yahoo founder Jerry Yang
In the next issue - What is acquisition, take-over, and merger?
Learn more about...
What is Credit History? Why is it important to have a good credit history? Volume 12.
What is Economy, Business, Workers, Goods, Services, Stock, DOW, S&P500, and NASDAQ in Volume 16.
What is Currency and Foreign Currency Exchange rate? Volume 14. What is stronger or weaker currency? Volume 20. What does the dollar slide mean? Volume 32.
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