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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

By Nikolaj Gammeltoft
April 13 (Bloomberg) -- For the ultimate in liquid investments, try top-quality wine, which has outperformed one benchmark U.S. stock index for 13 years and withstood two recessions.

That’s the conclusion of Philippe Masset and Jean-Philippe Weisskopf, two Switzerland-based economists who compared wine prices with the Russell 3000 Index between January 1996 and January 2009. The researchers studied more than 400,000 prices on regularly traded wines from the 13-year period, which covers two bull markets and two bear markets for stocks, to construct a general wine index and a gauge of top vintages.

“My wine cellars have probably appreciated better than any other investment I have made personally,” said Drew Nieporent, owner of Corton, Nobu and Tribeca Grill in New York. The third restaurant holds a 2009 Grand Award from Wine Spectator magazine. “Great wines are scarce,” he said. “You can’t get them everywhere.”

Demand for alternative investments such as wine and artwork has grown in recent decades as investors seek refuge from inflation, and look for asset classes in which to store wealth beyond traditional methods such as stocks, bonds and gold, according to Peter Boockvar, an equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York

“It’s the demand for hard assets, and it’s the same reason why gold and oil are rallying,” Boockvar said. Gold futures are advancing for a 10th straight year, and crude trades for about $84 a barrel in New York, a level never exceeded before 2007.

Boosting Returns
Masset and Weisskopf took prices from 144 auctions with a combined value of $237 million to construct the index. They used vintages from 1981 to 2005.

“Our findings show that the inclusion of wine in a portfolio and, especially, more prestigious wines, increases the portfolio’s returns while reducing its risk, particularly during the financial crisis,” wrote Masset, a professor at the Lausanne Hotel School, and Weisskopf, a researcher at the University of Fribourg, in their study, “Raise Your Glass: Wine Investment and the Financial Crisis.”

The general wine index beat the Russell 3000 over the period, largely because it held value over the most recent market downturn -- and did so with lower volatility than equities. Since mid-2008, the wine measure fell 17 percent, while the stocks gauge declined 47 percent.

The index of highest-quality wines, “first growth wines of top vintages only,” in particular from 2005 onward, “hugely outperforms” the other two indexes, the authors said. The elite gauge has a more than fivefold return, while the regular wine index has more than doubled. The Russell 3000 gained about 50 percent.

Drinking More
The increase in prices coincided with an increase in consumption of the beverage. Americans drank a record 304 million cases in 2009 following a 3.2 percent average annual rise since 1996, according to the last year’s edition of “The Global Drinks Market: Impact Databank Review & Forecast. (There are nine liters of wine in a case.) Global consumption has grown 0.6 percent a year on average to 2.65 billion cases during the same period.

The monthly Liv-ex 100 Fine Wine Index tracks the price movements of 100 of the most sought-after wines offered in the resale market. The index rose 11.7 percent during the first three months of 2010 and jumped 27.6 percent from a year earlier as of March 31, according to data compiled by Liv-ex.com.

Proper Storage
Wine isn’t an investment for the unprepared, said Peter Meltzer, auction correspondent for Wine Spectator magazine. The market is thinly traded compared with stocks. Bottles need to be handled carefully and stored properly to avoid breakage or spoiling. Collectors who aren’t familiar with vintages, varietals and appellations could find themselves saddled with a product that’s much less desirable than they’d expected.

Because wine doesn’t generate dividends or interest like stocks or bonds often do, the only way to calculate its value is to guess how much people will be willing to pay for it in the future, making it a speculative instrument, said Glenn Tongue, a partner at T2 Partners LLC in New York.

‘‘We get no cash from wine and we have no idea what we can sell it for down the road, so we’re not going to invest in it,” said Tongue, whose Tilson Focus Fund has almost doubled investors’ money in the past year, beating 99 percent of peers.
“It’s speculation when you’re buying wine or art. It’s not an investment.”

More Than $400
Top wine vintages have been the best performers since 1996 with wines costing more than $200 a bottle -- and particularly collectible bottles above $400 -- as much as quadrupling their value. That compares with a 170 percent increase in the price of wines selling below $100 and a 120 percent return for those between $100 and $199.

The Internet has made the market for collector’s items more organized and transparent because it improves the distribution of information and lowers transaction costs, according to Jim Halperin, co-founder of Heritage Auction Galleries, the third- largest art and memorabilia auctioneer after New York-based Sotheby’s and Christie’s International Plc in London.

While wine has done better than assets such as stocks, real estate and gold, modern art was the most attractive investment, outperforming credit, equity and commodities between 1994 and 2008, according to data compiled by Birinyi Associates Inc., an investment research firm in Westport, Connecticut.

Not All Equal
Not all wines appreciate equally and while lesser-quality wines may increase in value, they will rarely show the same performance as choice Bordeaux like Châteaux Pétrus, Ausone, and Cheval Blanc, or Burgundies from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Henri Jayer, said Meltzer of Wine Spectator.

“Collectibles have become a viable and serious tool for investment diversification,” said Dallas-based Halperin. “I’m investing my own money in art and collectibles, right alongside public stocks, private equity, business loans and real estate.”

Low interest rates and government stimulus measures have helped boost demand for wine, said Miller Tabak’s Boockvar. The Federal Reserve cut its interest-rate benchmark to a record low near zero in December 2008 and has said it will keep it there for an “extended period.” The U.S. government spent, lent or guaranteed more than $8 trillion to end the worst contraction since the Great Depression.

“In a world where interest rates are zero and money is being printed around the world, there’s a demand for hard assets
-- whether it is wine, comic books or baseball cards -- because they can protect the investor from that environment,” Boockvar said.


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Saw this on THE PRAGMATIC CAPITALIST today. That's really an excellent job. You can see many 2010 outlook from various investment bank, hedge funds, ...

Please see the orginal post for more detail.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO 2010 INVESTMENT PREDICTIONS AND OUTLOOKS

Wall Street Banks

Goldman Sachs 2010 Investment Outlook
Deutsche Bank 2010 Outlook
Credit Suisse Is Cautious
Morgan Stanley's 2010 Outlook
UBS 2010 Outlook
RBC's 2010 Outlook
Saxo Bank's Coming Black Swans
2010 Outlook From Northern Trust
Bank Of America/Merrill Lynch Is Bullish On 2010
Prudential's 2010 Investment Outlook
PIMCO's 2010 Outlook
PFG Best's Look Back And Ahead
Wall Street Is Very Bullish About 2010


Hedge Funds & Investment Gurus

Marc Faber's 2010 Investment Outlook
Jim Rogers Is Still Skeptical
Hussman: 80% Chance Of A Market Plunge
Boeckh Investments
Sprott Asset Management: The Rally Is Fake
ECRI: The Recovery Will Continue In 2010
Comstock Is Still Bearish
Jeff Saut Debates Todd Harrison
TCW's 2010 Outlook
Cumberland Advisors 2010 Outlook
Biriyni's 2010 Outlook
Sam Stovall Is Cautiously Optimistic
Steve Keen's 2010 Investment Predictions
Leuthold Turns More Cautious On 2010
Robert Prechter: Stocks Will Fall In 2010
David Tepper's 2010 Outlook
Richard Bernstein's 10 for 2010
20 for 2010 By Doug Kass
2010 Outlook From ISI Group

Actionable Ideas, Alternative Assets & Potential Potholes

RBC's top trades for 2010
How To Prep For An Uncertain 2010
Goldman's Top Trades For 2010
Morgan Stanley's Favorite Stocks
JP Morgan's Top Trades For 2010
More Cost Cuts Could Help These 8 Firms
10 Stocks For 2010
Will 2010 Be 2004 All Over Again?
Where To Invest In 2010
What Does History Tell Us?
The 5 biggest risks to 2010
10 Themes For 2010
The 10 Best ETF's For 2010
Gold Will “Super Spike” In 2010
Gold Is In A Bubble And Could Crash
The Housing Market Is Still In Trouble
The Lumber Market Is Picking Up
The U.S. Remains A Low Beta Investment
Dividends Could Play A More Important Role In 2010
Goldman's 2010 Commodity Outlook

The Outlook Abroad

JP Morgan Expects Emerging Markets To Rise 30%
Nomura On China's Positive Outlook
Morgan Stanley Says Chinese Stocks Are Poised To Rally 30%
Bank Of Canada Says Stocks Are Overvalued
Ignore Brazil At Your Own Peril
The 4 Reasons Emerging Markets Will Outperform

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WHY AMERICA 'S ECONOMY FELL OFF THE CLIFF

John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock(MADE IN JAPAN) for 6 am.

While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG)

He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRILANKA),designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE)and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA)

After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet(MADE IN INDIA) he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO) to see how much he could spend today.

After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the radio (MADE IN INDIA) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) filled it with GAS (from Saudi Arabia ) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.

At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his Computer (made in MALAYSIA ),John decided to relax for a while.

He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL),poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in AMERICA

AND NOW HE'S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM A PRESIDENT MADE IN KENYA


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Saw this on Wine Spectator website today. It should be good for wine lover.

Only at a Wine Experience can you sit down and taste the world's best wines guided by the estates' owners and winemakers. You'll enjoy outstanding vintages, rare wines from the producers' cellars and top-scoring wines from around the world.

We have planned a weekend program that will engage all of your senses while adding to your wine knowledge. Our goal is always to offer a program that will be educational to both the novice and wine expert.

See original link for more detaol.

October 22-24
New York Marriott Marquis

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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

Commentary by Amity Shlaes

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The pay gap between women and men is again in the news. Run the numbers from a July 1 report of White House salaries and you’ll find that the average female staffer in the White House earns $9,168 less than a male.

This gap is a tad embarrassing for President Barack Obama and his progressive Democratic Party, which tends to argue it is nurture, and not nature, that causes such disparities. After all, Obama campaigned on a promise to help women by doing all that is politically possible to make their status equal to that of men. Hiring should be the easy part.

The West Wing gap suggests that cultural prejudices are so deeply ingrained that even the Obama team can’t suppress them. Isn’t it always that the hottest jobs -- White House or hedge fund -- go to men even when the women deserve them?

But maybe the White House didn’t fail. Or maybe it should have done its personnel selection differently, with a ruler to measure the fourth digit of job candidates’ hands.

That at least would be the conclusion to draw from a study published this week by Paola Sapienza of Northwestern University and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago. Attentive readers will note I’ve cited this pair before. To me they are doing the most interesting work in academic economics.

Their latest finding: high-testosterone job candidates tend to seek out riskier, higher return work, while those with lower levels gravitate toward stabler, lower profile, lower-return employment.


Volvos, Race-Cars

To arrive at this determination Sapienza and Zingales noted holders of Masters in Business Administration degrees take jobs with a range of risk. There are Volvo jobs -- stable, reliable, but unsexy. And there are race-car jobs -- jobs in finance, which pay 2.8 times more.

These race-car jobs can also wipe out and deliver distinctly poor pay. The standard deviation in salaries in the finance field is two times as large as in the other positions.

Then Sapienza and Zingales asked 500 MBA students to play games that reveal their willingness to take risks. Next, they sought to capture students’ lifetime exposure to testosterone, a hormone that appears in both sexes, although normally in greater concentration in men. The professors determined subjects’hormone levels through saliva tests and by measures that indicated the rate of exposure to testosterone that the subject experienced in utero.

These included the now-famous digit measure in which the fourth finger of both males and females exposed to more testosterone in the womb tends to be longer than the second, or index finger. Finally, after the students graduated, the professors rated their jobs for riskiness.

Hunger for Risk

Some of the Sapienza-Zingales findings weren’t surprising, especially given other such work in the past. The higher testosterone subjects were less risk averse on tests and also landed the riskier jobs. Such data are what motivate Democrats to endorse anti-pay gap legislation.

What was interesting though was that it wasn’t the subjects’ gender, per se, that was relevant. It was testosterone.

In men, variations in levels of testosterone mattered, but less than in women. AND what we might call High-Test women, or females whose testosterone exposure was elevated relative to other females, were as likely as males to go for, and get, those race-car finance jobs.

When it came to determining whether a female student would go into the finance field, it appeared to matter more whether a woman was being exposed to testosterone now (the saliva test) than whether she had been exposed to testosterone in utero (the finger test).

Nurture Matters

This suggests a couple things. The first is that nurture may indeed matter, just as Democrats argue. The fact that men’s choices seemed less sensitive to testosterone exposure suggests that their identity as males, which their cultural and personal experience helps to shape, may have been a factor.

The second is that nature matters too and the finding that the timing of testosterone exposure, in addition to the level, can influence career choices.

Some might argue that comparing MBA jobs with White House jobs is a stretch. But the positions are similar in the scale of their rewards. MBA jobs pay maximum in dollar currency. The words “White House” on the resume are worth millions in another currency, the currency of politics, which is eventually redeemable in old-fashioned dollars.

Former President Bill Clinton, whose second and fourth fingers look to the casual eye to be about the same length, has demonstrated that through speaking fees.

Boosting Pay

What’s the takeaway? There are the flippant ones: Women who long for high-test jobs might do better to go herbal and hunt for supplements that allege to increase endogenous testosterone. They might start popping Estratest pills, a hormone therapy that includes testosterone, than making a donation in support of the Democrat-backed Employee Free Choice Act, union-sponsored legislation that the AFL-CIO promotes with the promise that it will boost pay for women.

There are also more general points: personal experience (nurture, legislation) seems to matter for males. But political efforts to narrow the pay gap may sometimes be futile for females if the chemicals aren’t calibrated. It all suggests a high- est review of assumptions about gender is in order.

(Amity Shlaes, author of “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

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