Quick slideshow of where technology stands in the face of the looming recession from Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker.

RJMetrics has carried out some fantastic detective work to uncover the business model of a dating company that employs simple lawn signs to gross millions per year.

The article is also a great tutorial on how to reverse engineer an online business model. Read it all here.

In a surprise move the Bank of England cut interest rates a massive 150bps. The size of the move seems to indicate their belief that they have been too slow reducing rates.

The excellent blog at interest.co.nz have a daily briefing that covers today’s move.

If you compare it to oil.

While world stockmarkets have been retreating over the last two months, the US dollar has strengthed. So while US investors in the US stockmarket may be feeling poorer, their relative wealth to the rest of the world has not fared quite as badly. As a comparison I’ve graphed the DOW over the last two months price in Australian dollars (AUD) and Great Britain Pounds (GBP). As you can see priced in Australian dollars the DOW is actually up.

I may do a couple of extra graphs, using different commodities which I’m sure will show that priced in many of these the DOW is significantly up, over the last few months.

An article published by the Reserve Bank in 2007 commented on the rise of dairy prices as “very good news for the New Zealand economy”. Is it therefore fair to argue that the recent precipitous drop in dairy prices is “very bad news”.

The price drop will worsen New Zealand’s trade deficit, and suppress domestic demand, especially in the rural economy. Rural land prices look very inflated. There should be some benefit to inflation with reduction in prices of milk, cheese and butter.

Recent prices from Agridata.co.nz illustrate the new environment.

Two Jim the Realtor posts in a row, I’m a fan!

Real estate investment has been one of the worst performing asset classes over the last few years. Some brave people though are buying cheap foreclosed real estate, doing some quick, cheap remodelling and putting the house back on the market for a significant mark up, all in the hope of a large quick profit.

In this video Jim the Realtor walks us through one such property and with his commentary gives us a breakdown of his estimate of the costs and what the vendor is hoping for.

The origins of the recent financial crisis are traced back to real estate in places like California. I’ve read a lot about it, but these videos from Jim the Realtor provide some colour, plus his sarcastic comments are funny.

More here

Picking a bottom to the recent stockmarket travails is a risky move for professional money managers.  Barry Rithotlz from the excellent The Big Picture blog hasn’t done that, but he has presented pretty charts that may make you entertain the idea.

The above graph illustrates that only 4 times, 1929, 1973, 2002, and 2008 has relative strength dropped below 30.  Visit Barry to see the 9 other graphs.