This information is based on the data related by the national housing board of India.

Real estate price variation - Data statistics as per the national housing board (India). {{Click on the image to enlarge}}

Biggest gainers in 2012 (Q2): Pune
Biggest losers: Kochi

A small amount of inflation is actually necessary for economic growth. At zero inflation, money sitting in an account can be more valuable than taking an economic risk.

It is even worse if there is deflation. Deflation is a viscious cycle, where money is even more valuable in the future than now. The deflationary spiral goes like this:   Increased value of future money --> save more ---> less investment ---> less capital ---> fewer jobs ---> lesser salaries ---> increased value of money --> ....

Two main reasons:

Till now I was of the opinion that owning the physical commodity of something like Gold was best achieved by owning an ETF that buys and manages physical gold (GLD, SGOL).

The amount of gold represented by the Shares will continue to be reduced during the life of the Trust due to the sales of gold necessary to pay the Trust’s expenses irrespective of whether the trading price of the Shares rises or falls in response to changes in the price of gold.
Each outstanding Share represents a fractional, undivided interest in the gold held by the Trust. The Trust does not generate any income and regularly sells gold to pay for its ongoing expenses. Therefore, the amount of gold represented by each Share has gradually declined over time. This is also true with respect to Shares that are issued in exchange for additional deposits of gold into the Trust, as the amount of gold required to create Shares proportionately reflects the amount of gold represented by the Shares outstanding at the time of creation. Assuming a constant gold price, the trading price of the Shares is expected to gradually decline relative to the price of gold as the amount of gold represented by the Shares gradually declines. Investors should be aware that the gradual decline in the amount of gold represented by the Shares will occur regardless of whether the trading price of the Shares rises or falls in response to changes in the price of gold. The estimated ordinary operating expenses of the Trust, which accrue daily commencing after the first day of trading of the Shares, are described in the Trust’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, incorporated herein by reference.

According to a recent projection by one of the analyst, Apple (aapl) is slated to have $200B in savings pretty soon.

Apple projected and historical cash per share

During the recent patent wars, these giants have had to give out their numbers here

Smarphone sales comparison - apple (aapl) and samsung USA

Comparison of tablet sale performance - aaple and samsung in the US.

.As can be seen from the numbers in the US markets, Samsung sales numbers are not even close. Hence if Andriod is really doing well in the US, it should be selling a lot more of HTC and other manufacturers than Samsung.

The simplest reason could be that for any amount of money invested, these countries typically growing economies like India and China have a high rate of equity dilution resulting in a decrease in the EPS (and hence a reduction in growth seen per share brought).

This item was originally discussed here.

This is also clearly seen from the plot below by an analyst at Morgan Stanley:
(click on fig to enlarge)

Country-wise comparison of the average earnings growth with the annual dilution  - highest for high growth countries.

Correlation of markets across the world (24 countries)

Historical HPI (housing price index) - trends show an improvement.

As seen from this graph generated from yahoo finance, the housing prices have been improving steadily indicating a healthy overall recovery for the housing market.

Nations with the largest total GDP as measured from 2010.

Nations with the highest per capita GDP - translating into few of the countries with the best human development index (HDI)

Brilliant post on US news.

A recent article on NPR featured a discussion on the usage of different forms of money for purchases. The article was actually talking about the single factory which prints all the paper required for bills, but what was really interesting was the distribution of how the current money (bills) are spent and if they will be used as much in the future:

Different forms of money and their current and projected usage.  Comparison debit, credit cards, and checks with cash.

Recently Gallup ran an article on the 4 year emotional  health of the american population. The main result from the article was:

Emotional health index of the american population over 4 years. I could not help but notice this correlation with the performance of the market marked by the S & P over the past 4 yrs:

Performance of the S&P index over a 5 year period.

It can be seen by the comparison above that money or financial health does have a correlation  with the overall emotional well being of the population.

THE FORBES FAST TECH 25

		SALES
COMPANY	BUSINESS	LATEST 12 MONTHS ($MIL)	LATEST 12 MONTHS GROWTH	3-YEAR AVERAGE GROWTH	EST EPS GROWTH*
LINKEDIN	SOCIAL NETWORKING	$522	115%	89%	60%
APPLE	COMPUTER HARDWARE/SOFTWARE	142,360	63	43	18
QLIK TECHNOLOGIES	BUSINESS ANALYTICS SOFTWARE	337	37	40	37
ATHENAHEALTH	CLOUD-BASED HEALTH CARE SERVICES	351	34	33	30
EQUINIX	DATA CENTER SERVICES	1,696	27	32	23
EBIX	SOFTWARE/E-COMMERCE SERVICES	169	28	32	20
ARUBA NETWORKS	WIRELESS EQUIPMENT	465	44	31	25
RIVERBED TECHNOLOGY	NETWORKING EQUIPMENT	745	24	31	20
COGNIZANT TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS	COMPUTER PROGRAMMING SERVICES	6,121	33	31	20
SHUTTERFLY	ONLINE DIGITAL PHOTO SERVICES	473	54	30	19
SOURCEFIRE	SECURITY SYSTEMS SERVICES	166	27	29	20
SOLARWINDS	IT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE	215	34	29	20
SERVICESOURCE INTERNATIONAL	REVENUE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE	206	34	28	25
SYNCHRONOSS TECHNOLOGIES	TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS	229	38	27	23
ANCESTRY.COM	ONLINE GENEALOGY SERVICES	417	27	27	15
FORTINET	SECURITY SYSTEMS SERVICES	458	31	27	20
PEGASYSTEMS	BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE	417	24	26	24
RACKSPACE HOSTING	INTERNET SOFTWARE/SERVICES	1,025	31	24	39
QUALITY SYSTEMS	HEALTH CARE SOFTWARE	418	25	23	20
NIC	INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES	181	12	22	25
RED HAT	OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE	1,133	25	20	20
GLOBAL PAYMENTS	ELECTRONIC PAYMENT SERVICES	2,127	20	17	13
COMMVAULT SYSTEMS	SYSTEMS SOFTWARE	382	28	17	20
CACI INTERNATIONAL	GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY SERVICES	3,774	13	14	13
VERISIGN	INTERNET SOFTWARE/SERVICES	796	14	11	12

Revenue growth before IPO - comparison FB, GOOG, LNKD, ZNGA

Historical unemployment rates - from NPR blog

From Thomson Reuters Datastream chart guru Scott Barber, here's a quick look at how the world's major financial asset classes performed in April:

Click to zoom and save. Here's a chart from Scott Barber and Thomson Reuters showing youth unemployment in the eurozone:

Unemployment of youth across the world.

So maybe getting lower trade deficit numbers is not good news after all. Historically, it does not show increased quarter GDP.

Comparison - higher trade deficit, surprisingly higher GDP