I use Google Alerts extensively to keep track of my investments, especially small companies the media sometimes ignores completely.

One of my alerts sends me articles on record highs and lows as I have always found such occurrences worthwhile to investigate further.

Here is a few interesting alerts I have received recently along with my comments:

The International Energy Agency (IEA) today said that world oil demand to hit a record high this year

The inventory of gold held by exchange traded funds has reached a record high of 1140 tons. What will happen to the gold price when they start to sell?

Profit warnings by UK companies have fallen to a record low in the first three months of the year according to Ernst & Young.

The first quarter 2010 brought only 54 profit warnings, down more than 50% compared to the level of 117 in the corresponding period last year but also sharply below typical levels even when the economy was growing in the past.

Savings levels of UK households hit a record low of 1.7% in 2008 the lowest level in 38 years.

Meanwhile…

Spanish Household Savings Hit Record High of 24.7% in the last quarter of 2009. This is 1.4% higher than a year ago, and the highest level recorded since the inception of the series in 2000. Well with 20% unemployment in Spain it’s probably to be expected.

But why are the British not saving, do they think the recession will be over soon or already? The difference may be that the UK number relates to 2008.

Mexican stocks rose to a second consecutive record-high last week of 33,801 points. It may be a good time to take some money off the table in the highest valued companies.

Venezuela’s Bolivar Falls to Record Low on Demand for Dollars. Time to invest there?

The length of long-term Unemployment in the US has reached a record high of 31.2 weeks, the longest average jobless period since the government began collecting such data in 1948.

In March, 44% of unemployed Americans had been without a job for at least 27 weeks. A year ago that figure was less than 25%.

Tim du Toit is the editor of Eurosharelab. Kindly note that this blog is published for information purposes and is not investment advice. Please refer to our disclaimer.

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