First, stocks hit new highs on Friday. Gold lost $22 per ounce.

Most people in India are convinced that real estate is a great asset. More caution is in order. Real estate investment is not a guarantee of profit. It is hard to be diversified, and illiquidity hampers portfolio structuring. Most important, the outlook for supply over the medium term implies that there is no great upside.

Market signals about the relative value of available materials are paramount for widely dispersed people to make rational decisions. Such was the solution to the “knowledge problem” elaborated by F. A. Hayek. A topical example of Hayek’s theory in practice is the decade-long adjustment in the prices of oil and products refined from petroleum. Oil is generally considered to be a fungible global commodity, and one frequently hears reference to global oil prices as reflecting global supply and demand. But a combination of factors over the past decade has substantively reduced the fungibility of this once-standard product.

Is the gold rush over? Or is this just one last great buying opportunity?

The stock markets are shooting skyward and bond prices remain lofty. It’s enough to put investors in a cheery mood as we approach the summer holidays.

Fans of precious metals have been getting creamed lately. Thanks to declining volatility and a growing sense that real interest rates are on the rise, gold and silver have been getting taken to the woodshed.

With the possible exception of Warren Buffett, no investor today commands more respect than Baupost Group’s Seth Klarman. Since founding his investment partnership in 1983, Klarman has not only produced unrivaled returns (in excess of 20% per year), but he has also from time to time offered wise and timeless commentary on markets and the craft of investing.

Bill Gross did not see the S&P 500 going up 15% in 2013, never mind by the middle of May.

Every first quarter of the year, the Spanish firm Bestinver Asset Management holds its annual meeting with investors. This year, the meeting had to be postponed until 16 April (from 4 March) because of administrative problems with the venue where it was originally scheduled to be held. The event is a small-scale replica of the Berkshire Hathaway meeting, but it is large enough to fill a 3,000 seat theater in IFEMA, Madrid’s main convention center, and includes an unlimited Q&A section.

I met Josh the first time in 2006, at the value investment seminar I attend each year in Italy. In that year Josh was finishing up his MBA at Columbia University specialising in value investing.

Predicting the direction of the major indexes on a day-to-day basis is an impossible feat. Attempting to play the market’s movements by the hour or minute will cause you to go insane (and lose all of your money in the process).

Mason Hawkins and Staley Cates of Southeastern Asset Management [VII, August 31, 2012] in their latest fund quarterly report describe their approach to activism – on display recently with respect to Dell and Chesapeake Energy – and describe how their fund holdings have evolved as “stock prices increased faster than values” in recent months.

Warren Buffett in this Fortune essay explains why he believes women are key to America’s ongoing prosperity.

Do you see what’s happening here? This market is in overdrive. The melt-up has been relentless, with the broad market gaining more than 1% yesterday. Nearly 200 domestically traded stocks finished the day up 5% or more.

This month, an independent review panel is expected to release its findings regarding the World Bank’s Doing Business report. Speculation abounds that the panel might recommend outsourcing Doing Business, removing its rankings of countries for the ease of doing business in them, or even eliminating the report altogether.

The US is moving to broaden its 'blockade' efforts of Iran to the movement of pure gold into the Islamic Republic. The US-led embargo of Iranian crude succeeded in slowing the flow of petrodollars into the nation but as Foreign Affairs committee chairman Edward Cohen remarked, there is "no question that there is gold going from Turkey to Iran."

Professional and individual investors have long had a hard time beating the broader market. And, says Mark Hulbert, the rise of computer trading programs may be making it harder than ever.

The Value Investing Congress just concluded in Las Vegas where approximately 20 speakers gave their pitches for their favourite stocks. I always find this conference a useful source of ideas to take a further look at. Some of the speakers have incredible track records and their analysis is very robust. The one aspect, however, that really caught my eye was not a stock pick.

Nassim Taleb argues markets need ‘stressors’ to prevent catastrophic events

Tom Russo is a partner at Gardner Russo & Gardner and has managed to beat the S&P 500 index by 4.7 percentage points annually between 1984 and 2011.

Most people go though life not really getting any smarter. Why? They simply won’t do the work required.

It seems the S&P 500's recent strength is somehow comforted by the fact that the USD is riding high on its cleanest dirty shirt meme at 34 month highs but unfortunately for the Chinese (and their practical peg to the USD), things are a little less fun than in the old mercantilist manipulation days. The implicit benefit that dollar flows appear to be getting (via the wealth effect in the US stock market) is not there in China (lower equity ownership); in fact, the rising Yuan is drastically hurting them as despite export orders remaining in growth mode, the China Daily reports that "most exporters in the delta region have told us that the rising yuan value has led to a big profit decline."

Warren Buffett is a businessman and philanthropist. As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Mr. Buffett has invested in a broad range of companies from See's Candies to Fruit of the Loom.

When volatility prevails in the gold market, I love seeing so many different opinions because it promotes critical thinking and healthy markets. But because gold is unlike any other commodity, many perspectives can be extreme, such as “golden freudes” who take pleasure in gold bugs’ pain.

How many of us would like to walk into a shopping mall holding several grams of gold in the pocket to buy a packet of soap or other daily necessities? This is quite possible if paper currency loses its significance or value.

"Austrian economists have long known that what much of the economics profession calls "doing economics" is an exercise in silliness. What is worse, many economists actually believe that unless a mathematically perfect "equilibrium solution" is not reached in real life, then a horrible failure is occurring that can only be rectified by tapping into the powers of the state. If this contention were true, then all economic exchanges would end in failure, since it is impossible to quantify human action. Thus, the only way we could be sure that an "equilibrium solution" was being reached would be for the state to oversee the entire process, something the ancients once called socialism. This idea, of course, is preposterous. First, and most important, human action is not mathematically quantifiable. Humans do not act according to mathematical formulas, and it seems silly to use a complicated equation to describe something like an individual choosing to buy either a Coke or a hamburger. Second, such an idea assumes that those who work for government are omniscient--except when they are making exchanges as private citizens."

When we asked Bill Gates to curate a list of his favorite talks, his first response was, “There are too many to pick, really.” Here, he's whittled it down to 13 essentials.

It’s not a well-kept secret, either. Just a simple string of characters—maybe six of them if you’re careless, 16 if you’re cautious—that can reveal everything about you.

Microsoft aims to upgrade the software more frequently, about once a year, rather than every two or three years as it’s done in the past, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the product plans are private. The company plans to unveil the first of these updates in 2013, one of the people said.

For the first time, scientists have confirmed that the planet Mercury holds at least 100 billion tons of water ice as well as organic material in permanently shadowed craters at its north pole.

Ed Boyden, an engineer turned neuroscientist, makes tools for brain hackers. In his lab at MIT, he's built a robot that can capture individual neurons and uses light potentially to control major diseases -- all in his quest to 'solve the brain'.

In 1870, German chemist Erich von Wolf analyzed the iron content of green vegetables and accidentally misplaced a decimal point when transcribing data from his notebook.

The United Nations Environment Program warns that global emissions of greenhouse gases are opening up a widening gap between reality and climate change goals

Thanks to gravitational lensing by a cluster of galaxies, the light emitted by a small galaxy 13.3 billion years ago has reached Earth. John Matson reports

In energy matters, what goes around, comes around—but perhaps should go away

An ambitious plan to provide 15% of Europe's power needs from solar plants in North Africa has run into trouble. The Desertec initiative hoped to deliver electricity from a network of renewable energy sources to Europe via cables under the sea.

Bill Gates in His Own Words readers get a glimpse of the visionary Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist's philosophy on business, technology and life via some of his most memorable quotes

A pioneering European space telescope that discovered the first rocky extrasolar planet is on its last legs, Nature has learned.

A cascade of misfolded proteins may trigger Alzheimer's By Carrie Arnold Researchers have untangled some of the neurological events that may ultimately lead to Alzheimer's disease. Two new studies show that a protein implicated in this form of dementia can infect other neurons to spread disease across the brain. These problematic proteins clump together, which can lead to cognitive problems.

A species of giant tortoises from the Galapagos Islands could be brought back from extinction despite the death earlier this year of the famed "Lonesome George," a tourist magnet and conservation icon who was the last of his kind.

On the heels of a Russian drilling effort that reached Lake Vostok, British and American teams also aim to penetrate ancient subglacial lakes By Quirin Schiermeier and Nature magazine

The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

The system uses a NeuroSky MindWave Mobile EEG headset to record brainwave data, which is then sent to software on either a tablet/smartphone or on a specially designed pyramid-shaped base. The software converts the brainwave data to flight commands, which control the flight of the spherical helicopter,

In a rare direct photo of a world beyond Earth, astronomers have spotted a planet 13 times more massive than Jupiter, the largest planet in our own solar system.

Human Shares ove 90 % of their DNA with their primate cousins. The expression or activity patterns of genes differ across species in ways that help explain each species' distinct biolgy and behavior.

The random motion of a hydrogen molecule can drive the oscillation of a much larger structure By John Matson

Halloween is a time for sharing ghost stories and watching spooky movies. But have you ever thought about the science behind some of these uncanny experiences? Haunted houses, for example, take advantage of the way your brain uses sensory information.

Rising seas and severe storms are the most talked-about threats of climate change. But here's another: no more coffee. Because rising temperatures may cripple wild populations of Arabica coffee—the most cultivated species in the world.

The notoriously brittle building material may yet stretch instead of breaking

A specialized parasite fungus can control ants' behavior. But that fungus also faces its own deadly, specialized parasites

For every one unit of energy that is converted into electricity in power plants today, two units of energy are thrown away. This wasted energy is primarily in the form of heat – or thermal energy – and, there is technology available today that can turn this waste into a usable energy stream.

This is the first study to examine what factors are associated with an increased follower-count on Twitter over an extended period of time. Hutto et al. (2013) studied 507 Twitter users over 15 months and half-a-million tweets

“Stay glad. Keep hoping machine running. Love everybody. Make up your mind.”

Under Ravi Venkatesan's leadership from 2004 to 2011, Microsoft India's revenues grew fivefold and the country became one of the fastest growing geographies for the software firm.

Ties between the two men go way back. In May 1939, Churchill reviewed Drucker's first major book, The End of Economic Man, for The Times Literary Supplement, praising him as "one of those writers to whom almost anything can be forgiven because he not only has a mind of his own, but has a gift of starting other minds along a stimulating line of thought."

Most people know Peter Drucker through his books and articles. But Drucker was also a great speaker, especially in the classroom, where his students would sit rapt, listening as he pulled facts from his encyclopedic mind and shared insights on countless subjects. This side of the "father of modern management" is captured in The Drucker Lectures, (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Edited by Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute and a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Drucker Lectures features 33 of his most important talks. The earliest was delivered in 1943. The latest were given at Claremont Graduate University in 2003, two years before Drucker died. The excerpt below, on "The Future of the Corporation," comes from one of those final lectures.

It's a good time to be a corporate gadfly.

So many of the problems we face today result from poor decision-making by private corporations. Prominent examples include the Gulf oil spill and the seriously weakened financial sector, which is imperiling the rest of our economy. However, so many who describe themselves as liberals or progressives seek to address such problems with more government regulation and programs instead of by preventing the bad decisions at the source, which is likely to be more efficient from a resource utilization perspective.

This letter to Occidental Petroleum’s board of directors from Ralph Whitworth of Relational Investors (VII, September 30, 2009) and Anne Sheehan of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System outlines why the activist investors are seeking to replace at least four board members: “[T]he board, as currently composed, suffers from entrenchment and ossification, which renders each of its members incapable of functioning as vigorous and independent shareholder representatives.”

Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto, California, restaurant introduced me to his companions: three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I’ve lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.

Power in modern society is progressively being diffused, moving away from central government to interest groups, even to single individuals. Society and the body politic in democratic societies are becoming pluralist in new ways. This phenomenon was analysed by management guru and social science professor Peter Drucker in his book The New Age. A clear understanding of this development would help political and social leaders to cope with changing electoral aspirations.

The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management was recognized as an “Excellent Business School” by EDUNIVERSAL, an organization that helps students choose the best business schools worldwide. The Drucker school was honored to be among the 1,000 selected business schools in the world because of its strength in the US and international influence.

Peter Senge (born 1947) studied aerospace engineering at Stanford University before moving into the field of organisational behaviour and becoming director of the Centre for Organisational Learning at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He is credited with developing the idea of the learning organisation, based on his study of social systems and the relationship of the whole to its constituent parts. A learning organisation, he once said, “is continually expanding its capacity to create its future”.

We live in a world of euphemism. Undertakers have become "morticians," press agents are now "public relations counsellors" and janitors have all been transformed into "superintendents." In every walk of life, plain facts have been wrapped in cloudy camouflage.

The influence the CEO has on people--individually and collectively.

I've read about shamrock organisations, horizontal organisations and federal organisations. I've read about intelligent enterprises and spider-web organisations. The most-quoted management guru Peter Drucker said that managing an information-based organisation is more like conducting a symphony orchestra than running a business on traditional lines. Others have compared it to running a jazz combo, and then there are those who say it's like running a sports team.

The bestselling author answers our readers' questions about business, leadership - and mountain climbing.

Think of them as the "walking dead," a type of customer who currently maintains service with a particular company, but whose next action will most likely be to discontinue that relationship, according to a new study that examines how the customers of a telecommunications firm acquire and discard services over time. The paper -- "Modeling the Evolution of Customers' Service Portfolios," by Wharton marketing professors Peter Fader and Eric Bradlow and a former Wharton PhD student -- focuses in part on whether it is possible to predict future purchasing patterns by looking at past buying behavior.

How CEO George Buckley is managing the yin and yang of discipline and imagination

Some shoppers just can't help themselves and buy mostly on impulse without regard to price. Others are die-hard bargain hunters, who only open their wallets for a discount. Then there are the strategic consumers, who are willing to buy full-price sometimes, but at other times they will wait for a bargain. According to new research by Gérard P. Cachon, professor of operations and information management at Wharton, and doctoral student Robert Swinney, it's these customers that retailers need to focus on in order to reap the full benefits of lean retail inventory management and variable pricing.

Few have had as great an impact on the business world as Peter Drucker. So, it is more than fitting to have his work amplified on Branding Strategy Insider during this years Marketers For Charity effort.

Robert Bruner still remembers the first book he read as a manager. It was 1988, and Bruner, now the dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, was an up-and-coming professor, respected for his work in finance. But he'd never managed people before. And when he was charged with overseeing the first year of the school's M.B.A. program, Bruner began to struggle.Under fire, Bruner scrambled for guidance. He found it in Peter Drucker'sThe Effective Executive. In the book, published two decades earlier, the dean of management thinkers—known for his study of GM under Alfred Sloan—offered advice to managers burdened with exactly Bruner's problems.

If you own stock in a company that is ripe for takeover, you should hope the company is not acquired by a private equity firm.

Most people assume that good corporate governance benefits shareholders, and that corruption in a banking system should be rooted out. But just how much benefit does a company really get when it improves its accounting and puts a few outsiders on its board of directors? And when does an anti-corruption crusade start to backfire, causing a chilling effect that denies loans to credit-worthy borrowers? India offers a chance to study both questions, which were the subject of papers presented at a global conference on India's Financial System held in April at Wharton. The conference was organized by Wharton's Financial Institutions Center with the Centre for Analytical Finance at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and the Stockholm-based Swedish Institute for Financial Research.

While a number of Indian IT companies are expanding globally, several major U.S. IT firms are increasing their presence in India. Among them is Adobe Systems, which views India as an important development center and a growing market for its products. In the second of a two-part interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Adobe president and chief operating officer Shantanu Narayen discusses the company's strategy regarding India and global expansion. In the first part of the interview, published in Knowledge@Wharton, he talks about Adobe's product strategy for the emerging trend of rich Internet applications.

A key element of what has been called "web 2.0" -- along with ideas such as user-generated content and social networks -- is the concept of "rich Internet applications," which use the web as a platform for innovative types of online experiences. A new generation of Internet-connected applications is beginning to emerge led by such companies as Adobe Systems. Knowledge@Wharton recently interviewed Adobe president and COO Shantanu Narayen about the company's latest product introductions. In the second part of this interview, published in India Knowledge@Wharton, Narayen talks about the key role that India will play in the company's global growth strategy.

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Knowledge management systems and knowledge management software for business growth & communication

The website of James O’ Loughlin, author of "The Real Warren Buffett".

The General Center for Internet Services Inc. ( GCIS ) is one of Canada's oldest and largest Internet services provider and e-commerce application developer. Originators of the famous Pagina+ (tm) Search Engine Optimization service, GCIS is in business since 1996.