Launch of website - Joachimthieren.be

Time for another service update: the last stage of completing my 'online presence' has been completed for a while now, but I haven't really gotten around to posting a message about this.

Joachimthieren.be offers a gateway to all locations (both professional as recreational) which until now had been scattered around the net and thus difficult to find. The website only features a simple splashpage at the moment, with buttoned links to LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and this Blog.

In the future, I plan on creating a more elaborate site with personal and contact information, integrating some of the information currently found on the other sites. However, this version should do for a while and I'm glad it's up and running. Hope you like it!

Beleggerscompetitie 2010 - Trackers

Editie 2010 van de Beleggerscompetitie mag dan al een tijdje bezig zijn, het vormt desalniettemin een interessant onderwerp voor mijn eerste Nederlandstalige post op deze blog. Het zal menig deelnemer al opgevallen zijn dat de samenstelling van je portefeuille zich ook dit jaar niet beperkt tot enkel aandelen. Nee, ook de zogenaamde "Trackers" kunnen naar hartelust virtueel worden verhandeld. Maar wat zijn die Trackers nu precies?

Trackers of ETF's (Exchange Traded Funds) zijn letterlijk "volgers", wat zoveel betekent als dat je door middel van één beleggingsinstrument een volledige markt, sector of andere index kunt volgen. Als je bijvoorbeeld graag in ieder onderdeel van de Bel-20 zou willen beleggen via aandelen, zou dat al gauw een serieuze slok op de borrel kosten. Via de Bel-20 Master Unit (verhandeld op Euronext Brussel) kun je echter een representatief (maar klein) stukje van de Bel-20 kopen. Minder transactiekosten en relatief makkelijke verhandeling zijn eveneens pluspunten.

Het wordt meteen duidelijk dat deze instrumenten talloze perspectieven openen; zo kun je er ook voor kiezen om een bepaalde sector in het buitenland te volgen via een Tracker. Gespreid beleggen in de chemie- of de grondstoffensector wordt zo wel heel eenvoudig.

Voorts zijn er Trackers in geuren en kleuren, voor elk wat wils. De benamingen zijn echter niet altijd even duidelijk, zodat wat opzoekwerk vaak nodig zal zijn. Hiervoor kun je altijd terecht op de site van NYSE Euronext. Voor wie nog graag wat meer leest over Trackers, raad ik volgende PDF aan "Trackers - Direct beleggen in een index".

(This post deals with a Belgian Investing Competition and is therefore internationally irrelevant)

The Credit Crisis Visualized

You've all heard the terms being thrown around before: NINJA loans, CDO's, Credit Default Swaps, Sub-prime Mortgages... But there's a good chance you're still not 100% familiar with the ins and outs of the Credit Crisis, whose effects are still abundantly influencing our lives at this point, and possibly for quite a while to come. If that's the case, you should check out the following clip by Jonathan Jarvis.

Up to now, I haven't encountered any article, column or news reel which explained the mechanisms behind the crisis in such a simple, short yet inclusive and easy to grasp manner.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

MIBEM Semester 1 - Macroeconomics

Taught by Mr. Ivan Van De Cloot, 'Macroeconomics for International Business' was an interesting, but surely not one of the easiest subjects we had during the first semester.

The course was guided by the book 'Macroeconomics', written by Olivier Blanchard (Professor of Economics at MIT), which covered topics such as the equilibrium of the goods, financial and labor markets in the short, medium and long run (supported by different models such as IS-LM / AD-AS), expectations, the open economy and pathologies.

Discovering how the equilibrium in a market is established, and how everything really affects everything  else (interest rates, output, labor, investments, taxes, etc.) was quite the eye-opener. I'm not going to go into detail regarding the content of these classes however, because this is not a macroeconomics blog. What I ám going to do though, is post a video which I encountered on Youtube while studying this subject and which I thought was quite interesting. You can read more about it in the following post.

(* Mr. Ivan Van De Cloot is the Former Chief Economist of ING Belgium, now Chief Economist at the Itinera Institute think tank)

Complete Blog Overhaul

Time for a little service update: I decided to do a complete overhaul on the design of my blog, before continuing with further posts. Sure, the Blogger-templates are quite good, but to be honest I couldn't stand the idea of having the exact same blog as thousands of other people on the web.

So I let creativity do its thing and dove into Google to learn some basic HTML to help me adapt the appearance of this place. For those of you interested, there are tons of useful sites out there which can help you customize the look of your blog, so go for it. We're all unique, so make sure your blog is too.

The update is now finished, so I'll finally move on to some real posting. 
I hope you like it!