Monthly Archives: July 2013

The HBCU Money™ Weekly Market Watch

Our Money Matters /\ July 12, 2013

A weekly snapshot of African American owned public companies and HBCU Money™ tracked African stock exchanges.

NAME TICKER PRICE (GAIN/LOSS %)

African American Publicly Traded Companies

Citizens Bancshares Georgia (CZBS) $6.00 (8.81% DN)

Radio One (ROIA) $2.22 (2.78% UP)

African Stock Exchanges

Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres (BRVM)  208.16 (0.12% DN)

Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE)  8 664.65 (0.14% DN)

Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE)  1 910.98 (59.29% UP)*

Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE)  121.39 (N/A)

Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) 40 734.89 (0.47% UP)

International Stock Exchanges

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) 9 471.23 (0.23% DN)

London Stock Exchange (LSE)  3 468.85 (0.08% UP)

Tokyo Stock Exchange (TOPIX)  1 201.99 (0.60% UP)

Commodities

Gold 1 279.50 (0.03% DN)

Oil 105.96 (1.00% UP)

*Ghana Stock Exchange shows current year to date movement. All others daily.

All quotes reported as of 5:00 PM Eastern Time Zone

HBCU Money™ B-School: How Is The Federal Reserve Board Selected?

usmap3

Editor’s Note: There are HBCUs located in 11 of the 12 Federal Reserve Districts with the Minneapolis Federal Reserve District territory being the lone exception. Also, it should be noted that 8 of the 12 cities that house the primary headquarters of the respective Federal Reserve District have HBCUs in them with Cleveland, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and San Francisco being the exceptions.

The members of the Board of Governors are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. By law, the appointments must yield a “fair representation of the financial, agricultural, industrial, and commercial interests and geographical divisions of the country,” and no two Governors may come from the same Federal Reserve District.

The full term of a Governor is 14 years; appointments are staggered so that one term expires on January 31 of each even-numbered year. A Governor who has served a full term may not be reappointed, but a Governor who was appointed to complete the balance of an unexpired term may be reappointed to a full 14-year term.

Once appointed, Governors may not be removed from office for their policy views. The lengthy terms and staggered appointments are intended to contribute to the insulation of the Board–and the Federal Reserve System as a whole–from day-to-day political pressures to which it might otherwise be subject.

In addition to serving as members of the Board, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Board serve terms of four years, and they may be reappointed to those roles and serve until their terms as Governors expire. The Chairman serves as public spokesperson and representative of the Board and manager of the Board’s staff. The Chairman also presides at Board meetings. Affirming the apolitical nature of the Board, recent Presidents of both major political parties have selected the same person as Board Chairman.

The Congress sets the salaries of the Board members. For 2012, the Chairman’s annual salary is $199,700. The annual salary of the other Board members (including the Vice Chairman) is $179,700.

Source: Federal Reserve

African America’s June Unemployment Report – 13.7%

jobs_pic

Overall Unemployment: 7.6% (7.6%)

African America Unemployment: 13.7% (13.5%)

Latino America Unemployment: 9.1% (9.1%)

European America Unemployment: 6.7% (6.7%)

Asian America Unemployment: 5.0% (4.3%)

Analysis: The unemployment rates overall remains unchanged. Two of the four diaspora groups remain unchanged while the other two saw upticks. Asian America saw a significant uptick but remains the group with the lowest unemployment. African America remains the only group with a double digit unemployment rate.

African American Male Unemployment: 13.0% (13.5%)

African American Female Unemployment: 12.0% (11.2%)

African American Teenage Unemployment: 43.6% (42.6%)

African American Male Participation: 67.1% (67.9%)

African American Female Participation: 62.3% (62.5%)

African American Teenage Participation: 28.1% (28.0%)

*Previous month in parentheses.

Analysis: African American women and teenagers saw significant upticks in their unemployment rate while the unemployment rate for men saw a moderate decrease. Participation rate for teenagers remain virtually unchanged while men and women both saw decreases. The men saw a substantial drop in their participation rate.

Conclusion: The overall economy added 195 000 jobs in the month of June. African America shows a loss of 112 000 jobs for the month of June. A significant loss after four straight months of positive job growth. The African American labor force shrunk by almost 100 000 and most disturbing is the participation rate as it dropped to its second lowest rate in the past five months. A sign that fatigue is setting in and the desire to find employment is waning. African American women’s participation rate has held steady over the past five months while the men have shown an alarming drop. The continued crisis of African American teenagers proves to be worsening as the group hit a new high again for its unemployment rate which still stands at the third highest in the developed world. It appears the sequester is setting in and unemployment fatigue is starting to take a turn for the negative in the African American community.

Source: Department of Labor

HBCU Money™ Business Book Feature – Financial Modeling

image001

Too often, finance courses stop short of making a connection between textbook finance and the problems of real-world business. Financial Modeling bridges this gap between theory and practice by providing a nuts-and-bolts guide to solving common financial models with spreadsheets. Simon Benninga takes the reader step by step through each model, showing how it can be solved using Microsoft Excel. The long-awaited third edition of this standard text maintains the “cookbook” features and Excel dependence that have made the first and second editions so popular. It also offers significant new material, with new chapters covering such topics as bank valuation, the Black-Litterman approach to portfolio optimization, Monte Carlo methods and their applications to option pricing, and using array functions and formulas. Other chapters, including those on basic financial calculations, portfolio models, calculating the variance-covariance matrix, and generating random numbers, have been revised, with many offering substantially new and improved material. Other areas covered include financial statement modeling, leasing, standard portfolio problems, value at risk (VaR), real options, duration and immunization, and term structure modeling. Technical chapters treat such topics as data tables, matrices, the Gauss-Seidel method, and tips for using Excel. The last section of the text covers the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) techniques needed for the book. The accompanying CD contains Excel worksheets and solutions to end-of-chapter exercises.

HBCU Money™ Dozen Links 7/1 – 7/5

???????????????????????????????????????

Did you miss HBCU Money™ Dozen via Twitter? No worry. We are now putting them on the site for you to visit at your leisure. We have made some changes here at HBCU Money™ Dozen. We are now solely focused on research and central bank articles from the previous week.

Research

Know a small business w/ technologies that address environmental issues? Apply for #EPAsbir funding! l US EPA 1.usa.gov/16Cmg5c

A new oyster invades Southern California l California Sea Grant wp.me/p37YOU-Ht

New scientific report says #sealevel along Maryland’s shorelines could rise 2 feet by 2050 l Maryland Sea Grant bit.ly/12FSjAW

Physics: Giving new meaning to the question, “Where’s the remote?” l SLAC Lab bit.ly/14NDsn0

How the nuclear age burst onto the scene from a squash court l Argonne cnet.co/1aCk5De

EPA scientist Ron Williams is using solar power to measure air quality l US EPA Research 1.usa.gov/17AHSU2

Federal Reserve, Central Banks, & Financial Departments

Life of a Loan: The foreclosure l Housing Wire hwi.re/3c6skH

How does a federal minimum #wage hike affect aggregate household spending? l Chicago Fed ow.ly/mE0Bk

Hagan demands Defense stop pay raises for Germans working on US bases l Floor Action bit.ly/17K6S7P

Better trained teachers & nutritious school meals have made #learning more effective for 2nd graders l World Bank ow.ly/mE1cH

A growing number of young farmers are renting land before taking on the cost of purchasing l Kansas City Fed ow.ly/mB2KC

Can America get more by taxing business less? l World Economic Forum ow.ly/mE1OE

Thank you as always for joining us on Saturday for HBCU Money™ Dozen. The 12 most important research and finance articles of the week.