While there is a perception among many investors that electing a Republican president will translate into greater stock market returns, history shows the opposite to be true, according to data released yesterday by Savant Capital Management.
Rockford, Ill-based Savant’s analysis of returns for the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index dating back to the early 1950s show that in the first year of a new president’s term, the market has performed better under Democratic presidents than Republicans.
The Federal Reserve today announced plans to supply credit to the central banks in Brazil, Mexico, Korea and Singapore to help those four “large and systemically important economies” deal with the global liquidity crisis.
Under the plan, the Fed will provide up to $30 billion to the Banco Central do Brasil, the Banco de Mexico, the Bank of Korea, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, in the latest series of “swap” arrangements in which it provides dollars in exchange for reserves of the other nations' currencies.
Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. has been accused of discriminating against African American and female brokers, a claim based on the retention bonus package that was announced to the firm’s brokers last Friday.
In a lawsuit filed the same day in federal court in Chicago, a group of brokers allege that Merrill Lynch of New York and Charlotte, N.C.- based Bank of America Inc. play favorites.
The two firms allegedly “identified and selected for higher compensation the [reps] it would try hardest to retain via the retention bonuses and knew that they were offering more generous retention packages to white men than to African Americans and women,” according to the suit, which was submitted on behalf of plaintiffs by the law firm Stowell & Friedman Ltd. of Chicago.
