World Markets Simplified

Oracle Spends $300 Million Buying Vitrue, A Social Marketing Firm
TechCrunch reports that Oracle has just spent $300 million buying Vitrue, a smallish firm that's an expert in social media-based marketing--though the news has been confirmed by press release, the price remains officially undisclosed. Vitrue was said to be on course for revenues near $100 million this year, and is seen as a go-to name for big firms keen to attract Facebook fans and leverage platforms like Facebook or Twitter to spread news. Oracle, of course, is one of the older big names associated with IT and the Net.

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Petrol prices have been increased by Rs 7.50 a litre from midnight. The increase was on the cards with the rupee continuing its free fall against the US dollar. The rupee fell to a record life low of 56 per dollar on Wednesday.

Oil companies had already told the government that wanted to hike petrol price by at least Rs 4 per litre.

Earlier on Tuesday, Petroleum Minister S Jaipal Reddy had said that there was an immediate need to raise fuel prices, but refused to say when the hike would actually take place.


The government had decontrolled petrol price in June 2010 but rates were last increased on November 4 last year. This despite oil price rising by 14 per cent and 7 per cent fall in value of rupee against the US dollar.

Price of diesel, kerosene and cooking gas were raised in June 2011.

State-owned oil firms, who had in the fiscal ending March 31, 2012 lost Rs 4,860 crore on petrol sales, are currently losing Rs 6.28 per litre on petrol.

Scandal Brewing Over Facebook's Actions At IPO

According to Reuters, a scandal is brewing over Facebook's actions in the hours before its IPO last Friday. Attention is focused on why underwriters revised their revenue forecasts down during the Facebook IPO roadshow, because this is a highly unusual move that casts a very negative light on Facebook. Other reports at Business Insider suggest that three underwriters who downgraded their revenue projections did so at the behest of a Facebook executive who'd had knowledge of weaker than expected Q2 performance. This information was then conveyed to selected institutional investors, in order that they may protect their income, but not broadcast to the entire investment community. Details are not forthcoming, and BI notes all parties have declined to comment. At the least this news is an uncomfortable PR matter at a critical moment, and at worst the SEC and FINRA may find Facebook guilty of financial misconduct.

Indian Rupee has shown a steep slide against dollar and tumbled to 56 mark. it has put a lot of pressure on Government and RBI regarding how to curb its downside and save currency.

As a part of its implications, government has to raise a fuel prices although the crude price has cooled off from $125 a barrel to $107 a barrel. Currency barrier is preventing India to benefit from low price crude oil. In march, UPA government was resisting to hike petrol prices, due to political turmoil and inflation pressure. India's deficit was at record due to the fuel subsidies and government wasn't able to accord in Parliament regarding fuel price hike.

Now, crude has come down to $107 but unfortunately, deficit burden won't be reduced as currency devaluation. India can't take advantage of falling crude price and the direct impact would be rising inflation. RBI was helpless to spur growth as rising inflation hinders any loosening monetary policies.

Gold as a safe heaven, it has tumbled in global markets but rupee valuation keep it rising and haven't even moved down a little. Due to currency devaluation, USD traded commodities are rising and putting pressure on inflation.

The game is being complicated now, as government is already struggling to keep an accord amongst their alliances and prevent early Lok Sabha polls. Stock markets were tumbling as analysts foresee early polls. Fuel subsidy expand deficit, means can't meet the budget goal. Loosing faith in foreign investors. Inflation to rise if Fuel prices will be hiked. Slowdown will hit manufacturing sector. Small industries won't survive. Banks' NPA will rise or they might tighten credit to the consumer. Its a vicious cycle, which might lead India for hard landing. For Investment purpose, It will be difficult to gain returns in coming years as markets will loose ground and investor confident. Alternative to equity investment, FDs will beat the equities in coming years. Its a research note released by our team.

What RBI can do?

It is time for RBI to take the "ultimate weapon" by announcing sovereign bond issuance to the tune of not less than USD 20 billion; keep selling dollars in the market to take out excessive "long dollar" positions in the market and announce Rs 1 trillion of OMO bond purchases to absorb resultant rupee liquidity squeeze in the system.

What's the impact on the market?

Germany attracted healthy demand from investors wanting to lend to the country on Wednesday despite offering no interest payments at a two-year bond sale, as worries about a Greek euro exit heightened demand for safe-haven assets.

The lack of coupon failed to deter buyers worried that a new Greek government will reject the terms of the country's bailout, possibly forcing it to ditch the euro. Contagion from a so-called Grexit could pile pressure on other euro zone strugglers.

Germany sold 4.56 billion euros ($5.8 billion) of the new two-year bonds, which carry a zero percent coupon, and with an average yield of just 0.07 percent, it was almost free money for the country.

"(It) was a strong auction, with some overbidding which is not always the case in German auctions, so clearly there were some investors who see value in the Schatz at a near-zero yield," said Credit Agricole rate strategist Peter Chatwell.

The ultra-low borrowing cost is in stark contrast to rising borrowing costs in countries engulfed in the euro zone debt crisis.

For example, yields on benchmark two-year Spanish and Italian bonds, which reflect borrowing costs, are 4.12 percent and 3.58 percent respectively, while France paid investors a yield of 0.74 percent at a two-year bond sale last week.

Moreover, with German government bond yields falling over the last year to record lows and with euro zone inflation at an annual rate of 2.6 percent last month, investors are losing money in real terms.

Bids at the sale were worth 1.7 times the amount on offer, in line with the average at similar auctions this year.

A Brazilian airline says one of its female pilots tossed a passenger off a flight because he was making sexist comments about women flying planes.

Trip Airlines said in a statement on Tuesday that the pilot rejected the man before takeoff as he made loud, sexist comments upon learning the pilot was a woman. The jet continued on to the state of Goias after a one-hour delay.

The passenger involved in Friday's incident has not been identified. He was met by police at the plane and escorted out of the Belo Horizonte airport. Police at the airport have not responded to calls and it isn't known if the man has been charged with anything.

Trip says it won't tolerate disparaging remarks made about any of the 1,400 women working for the airline.

Finnish Mobile Game developer, Rovio Mobile is set to release new Angry Birds Heikki game on June 18 this year. The new Angry Birds Heikki is teased at the landing page at - http://heikki.angrybirds.com and no details have been mentioned on the page.

From the images placed on the landing page, it is quite evidential that Rovio might introduce Angry Birds Heikki game in order to support and honour the Finnish Formula One Driver - Heikki Kovalainen.

Rovio had recently announced Angry Birds game that was centred on Space. Following that, Rovio is already ready to release Angry Birds Heikki which might be Formula One Themed game. The strategy based Puzzle Game by the Finnish Developers certainly has seen number of variations already.

Starting off with the Angry Birds Season, Rovio later released Angry Birds Rio and finally the Angry Birds Space. Now the company plans to release Angry Birds Heikki which might be limited just to the web browsers. On clicking one of the Social Network sharing buttons, the link automatically generates an image of a helmet.

So the Angry Birds Heikki will be the quest for the birds to hunt and rescue the Heikki Kovalainen's helmet from the snarky pigs. As of there are no details about the platforms on which this game would be released.

Top 10 Search Engine beyond Google, Bing & Yahoo


Guruji.com: From its appearance Guruji.com seems to be a Google-like full-fledged search engine, but its strength lies elsewhere. It is said to be the first crawler based search engine developed completely in India and designed to make search simple for Indian users.

isoHunt.com (Torrent search): Traffic driven by torrents hog a huge amount of bandwidth on the Internet and one of the best BitTorrent search engines around is isoHunt. isoHunt tracks the major BitTorrent websites to keep its index updated

Answers.com: One of the most reliable Q&A websites around, Answers.com has been answering questions since 2005. Available in a number of languages Answers.com is also one of the most popular websites in the world

Wolfram|Alpha (Answer engine): Wolfram|Alpha long-term goal is "to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone." The website is doing a good job of what it has set out to do, provide instantaneous answers.

Pipl (People search): If you are looking for people, Google is not always the best option. Pipl does it better, it only searches for people. You can get more focused on your ego surfing trip with Pipl.com.

Yummly (Food search): One thing that people who love to cook search for the most is recipes and Yummly is a site focuses on recipe search. That's not all, you can also search within 424,000 recipes by their calorie and nutritional count, tastes, courses and more.

Scour.com: Founded in 2007, Scour was originally named Aftervote.com, which aims to deliver the most relevant results as efficiently as possible. By providing a platform for the user to vote and comment on relevancy, searchers connect with one another creating a true social search community.

DogPile.com: Powered by Metasearch technology, Dogpile fetches all the best results from leading search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Goby.com: Goby is a search engine that lets you explore new things to do with your free time, from a weekend adventure to the vacation of a lifetime.

Everystockphoto.com: Launched in April 2006, it is a license-specific photo search engine. It search millions of freely licensed photos, from many sources, and present in an integrated search.

My Last Wish

A social network for the dying - called "My Last Wish" - has been created to help dying people meet others who have similar hopes and ambitions which they wish to achieve before they die.

The free app, created by a software company called White Lotus Corporation, is available in Apple's App Store, the Telegraph reported.

"A social networking application to make friendship with those unknown people from corners of the world with different ethnicity, culture, traditions, value systems, life style and much more - but having only one thing in common and that is the 'Last Wish'," the website says about itself.

"By this application, we have tried to unite the community on the 'Wish Wall' to share their last wish with the world and find out those people with similar wishes before they die, get connected to them and be friends forever."

Users of the app - "fellow wishers" - are asked to post their final wish on to the "Wish Wall" and can choose to attach their email address or phone number so other users who want to do the same thing, can get in touch.

"Fellow wishers" can tap on a user's name and their contacts will be instantly added to their phonebook.

One user named Eve Lynn said her last wish was to: "Drive out to the desert and watch the stars with the man I love."

Kirtan Thaker, co-founder of the White Lotus Corporation, said: "I believed in the possibility that there can be two persons in this world with same hopes, dreams and wishes. I was confident that if we create an app where this possibility can be turned into reality, people will love this concept and they will get a chance to make friends who are unknown but having just one thing in common which is the last wish."