Zimbabwe as an Investment Destination

A few random items today.

First up is this article titled Could You Be Saving Too Much? I'll save you some time: no, you could not be saving too much. The premise has to do with having too much left over at the end such that you would have deprived yourself from doing other things earlier in life.

Certainly there is a balance to be struck but, to paraphrase Woody Allen, there is no problem where having more money made it worse.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a post about Zimbabwe as an investment destination. Stock market volume is now booming. Apparently US dollars are used as the currency now, which eliminates a few problems. There was one stock mentioned: Mwana Africa, a Zimbabwean mining company traded in London. It looks as though it also trades on the US pinksheets with ticker MWNAF but the volume is woeful. The London volume is much larger for anyone interested in this sort of thing with an account at brokerage offering direct access.

To be clear, I am not buying this stock and am not suggesting anyone else do so. But it is interesting that there is a stock available for a destination like this. It would seem that if a country has something to offer, then capital will find its way in one way or another at some point.

While I've never thought of Zimbabwe as an investment destination there are other countries that for now are not easily accessible with plenty to offer that I believe one day will be.

Schwab sent out notification that the Options Clearing Corporation is changing the symbol format for options. You can read about it from Schwab here. This stands to cause a lot of mistakes, trade errors or busted trades as this rolls out.

This article from Jason Zweig called "ETFs Causing an Emerging Markets Bubble?" is making the rounds. Zweig seems to be asking the question but concluding that the answer is no. I agree. Not everything that goes up a lot or might be overvalued is in a bubble.

Comments

[Ricard:]

Scottrade doesn't use the option symbols - they go by underlying ticker, strike price, and expiration. I only wish more firms would do the same.

Nov 10 04:06 PM

[Plant the s...:]

Given Mugabe's track record, that is one country that I would stay away without much thinking.

Nov 19 11:28 AM