Financial News Headlines

If you’re hoping to pick up a housing bargain, a new report that ranks the best and worst markets for conservative residential real estate investors might interest you. Durham, N.C., Indianapolis and Huntsville, Ala., are some of the best locales currently, according to the first Investor Suitability Report by Local Market Monitor, a Cary, N.C., firm that analyzes real-estate trends for lenders, builders and investors. Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., are some of the riskiest.

The study, which The Wall Street Journal reports on, uses economic data through July 31 for 315 U.S. markets and focuses on single-family homes. Read more…

Economic Outlook

Investors remained cautious today, believing the current economic outlook isn’t very positive. Stocks fell for the second consecutive day today, after yesterdays report on jobs, Swiss Franc 1.0353 to U.S. Read more…

With most business owners looking to cut costs, I’m often surprised at how some forget one of the easiest ways to save – the OPEN Savings® program.  A built-in benefit of using your American Express Business Card, OPEN Savings allows you to save 3-10 percent on a broad range of business essentials through such partners as FedEx and Courtyard by Marriott®.  These savings are on top of any other discounts offered by these companies and are automatically credited to your monthly billing statement.

Still, we recognize that there is always room to innovate, and so we continue to look for ways to evolve and expand the program to further meet business owner’s needs.

• First, we’ve expanded the program to include new partners OfficeMax, HP Direct, and Firedog – leaders in the office supply, computers and IT services space.  These are expense categories our Cardmembers have asked about for years.  A complete list of partners and benefits can be found at open.com/opensavings.  And look for more partners to be added in the future.

• We heard from Cardmembers that they’d love to save more as they spend more.  This made perfect sense to us.  So we’re working with partners to develop tiered savings, like the one we just launched with Hertz^*.  Spend between $500 and $2,500 a year, and you save 5 percent.  Spend over $2,500 a year and save 10 percent.

• We’re also working to make the benefits more obvious.  We realize that how the program works could be made more clear:  It’s as easy as using your American Express Business Card when making a purchase with an OPEN Savings partner. OPEN Savings is simple, automa

Read more…

Everyone’s talking about record low mortgage rates. But how long can we expect the trend to continue?

Conventional wisdom says: when the economy is struggling, rates drop. Traditionally, a strong indicator of mortgage rates is the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds. When investors are skeptical about the economy, they flock to treasury bonds. As a result, 10-year Treasury yields fall, and so do mortgage rates. This is exactly the scenario we’ve been seeing in recent weeks.

But of course there are many factors to consider, and rates are more complicated than this simple rule would suggest. And while it’s difficult to make predictions, naturally people will try! In fact,

Read more…

A few weeks ago, my wife discovered a wonderful little curiosity shop in a town near us called Blumster’s. She and I have driven by the shop many times over the last few years, but frankly, had no idea what the business was at all.  My wife believed it was a florist shop and since she had no reason to buy flowers, she never stopped in.

In fact, she only happened to wander in the door because she was waiting in the area for another service and was strolling down the sidewalk by the shop.  She looked in the window, was intrigued, and discovered that Blumster’s was actually a charming little eclectic shop that sold soup and sandwiches. 

When she returned to the store a few weeks later to pick up a gift for a friend, the person working behind the counter told her that the shop was going out of business.  My wife was chagrined and asked why it was closing.  “Not enough business.”

“Well, that’s a shame.  I just discovered this shop and I really like it.  I’ve been driving by here for years and never knew what it was.”

The person behind the counter just smiled at her.  “You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard that exact same comment in the last six months.”

When I heard this story from my wife, my jaw dropped.  We live in the area that would be directly served by Blumster’s.  We drove by this wonderful little shop every day for years without knowing what it was. 

We weren’t alone in being unaware of this wonderful little business.  I asked my neighbors if they were familiar with the shop and none of them were even aware of it other than thinking that they’d heard the name before at some point.  Lots of people in the very community that Blumster’s was serving were unaware of the store’s existence or what they provided.

Here’s the real truth of the matter.  If you run a small business, it doesn’t matter how good your service is, you’re going to have business problems if large portions of the community you’re serving have no idea what kind of service you’re providing.

For some businesses, this isn’t a problem.  Franchises often have reputations that precede themselves.  Some businesses make it clear what they’re selling from the name alone.  But a wonderful, eclectic little shop like Blumster’s was so poorly presented that my wife actually believed it to be a florist.

There are so many simple little things that Blumster’s could have done to turn their business into a thriving one.  For $1,000, the shop could have produced a small flier describing what the shop is, what it sold, and provided a coupon to get people in the door, and had that flier dropped into every mailbox in the community and the surrounding community in late October or early November (to get those Christmas shoppers).  For far less than that, they could have put up a few fliers around the community talking about their shop.

Instead, they made the mistake of familiarity.  Their shop had been in business for a long time and they assumed the community knew about the shop. 

Never, ever assume that your community knows you unless you’ve got a mountain of business.  If your shop sits largely empty on a slow day, it might be simply a matter of awareness.  Do your potential customers even know who you are?  When was the last time you reminded them of the fact?  Is there an easy way you can get their attention again?

Are you sure that your community knows you?