Greek crisis

On December 2009, the world's three main credit ratings agencies, Fitch, Standard & Poor's and Moody's, downgrade Greece's debt.

Later on Greece admitted the size of its debt – nearly 13 percent of its annual gross domestic product, or four times the amount EU budget rules allow

Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met her Greek counterpart George Papandreou to discuss Greece’s financial crisis, as tensions rise over whether Germany will provide crucial support to an EU bailout for the heavily indebted Mediterranean country.

The chinese .com share

Baidu  It is something like the Chinese Google, and at the moment it is the most successful Chinese Internet Company. Growing fast: Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy):111%, Qtrly Earnings Growth (yoy):400%.

Baidu.com has the same business model of Google, and it is actually gaining Chinese market share from Google. China daily: “market share of Baidu rose from 51 percent in August 2005 to 62 percent in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the three largest cities in China, while that of Google fell to 24 percent from 33 percent “

Baidu has still great room to grow revenues. It has very small revenue (108.04M) for the main search engine of the second largest Internet market in the world (. This revenue can grow very much as Chinese advertisers start investing more to gain Chinese customers who are become more affluent.

Camper

Camper is one of the most  international companies based in Mallorca. Lorenzo Fluxa founded the company in 1975 after inheriting a shoe factory from his father, Antonio Fluxa, a mallorcan shoemaker. Nowadays, Camper operates 52 company-owned stores around North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, as well as distributing to thousands of independently-owned multi-brand retailers. The company motto is "imagination walks",  the company's philosophy of "the luxury of  simplicity".

The sun share

Right now First Solar is the hottest alternative energy company in the world and according to an article by Steve Gelsi of MarketWatch, First Solar is getting close to the point of providing an alternate source of electricity at the same cost as conventional electricity without the use of governmental subsidies. This is due to their proprietary thin film semiconductor technology that enables First Solar to attain the lowest manufacturing costs in the industry. In 2006 First Solar engaged in an initial public offering raising $302.7 million in net proceeds. Those who were fortunate to invest in the initial public offering have been “sunkissed” as their investment has skyrocketed from $20 to over $200: a more than tenfold increase.

Ibex 35

The IBEX 35 (a contraction of Iberia Index) is the benchmark stock market index of the Bolsa de Madrid, Spain's principal stock exchange.

the index is administered and calculated by Sociedad de Bolsas, a subsidiary of Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME), the company which runs Spain's securities markets (including the Bolsa de Madrid).

 It is a market capitalization weighted index comprising of the 35 most liquid Spanish stocks traded in the Madrid Stock Exchange General Index, which are reviewed twice annually.

The fashion shares

Inditex, one of the world’s largest fashion distributors, has more than 4,780 stores in 77 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. In addition to Zara, the largest of its retail chains, Inditex has other commercial formats: Pull and Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and Uterqüe. The Group also includes more than a hundred companies associated with the different activities in the business of textile and fashion design, manufacture and distribution.

Inditex has been listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange since 23 May 2001, after an IPO that aroused a great deal of interest among investors worldwide, with its shares being oversubscribed some 26 times over. Its shares are quoted on the main Spanish and international share indexes.

Inditex has grown dramatically in recent years, achieving a consolidated turnover in 2009 of 11,084 million euros, with a net profit of 1,314 million euros.

What are stocks?

Shares, equity, or stock, it all means the same thing; Stock represents a claim on the company's assets and earnings.

Holding a company's stock means that you are one of the many owners (shareholders) of a company and, as such, you have a claim (albeit usually very small) to everything the company owns. Yes, this means that technically you own a tiny sliver of every piece of furniture, every trademark, and every contract of the company. As an owner, you are entitled to your share of the company's earnings as well as any voting rights attached to the stock.

As you acquire more stock, your ownership stake in the company becomes greater.

But with the advantage that a stock hat  limited liability, which means that, as an owner of a stock, you are not personally liable if the company is not able to pay its debts,  but you are entitled to a portion of the company’s profits, and have a claim on assets.

Some companies pay out dividends, but many others do not.

Without dividends, an investor can make money on a stock only through its appreciation in the open market, that means that  you buy a stok and wait in the hope its  value will increase over the time with the risk of depreciation, which means that the value decrease over the time.