Bernard Hickey talks with Marcus Lush on Radio Live at 6.50 am about Ben Bernanke's disappointing speech, SkyTV's monopoly profit growth and a Trade Me float

Every weekday morning just after 6.50 am I talk with Marcus Lush on Radio Live about the latest news in business, markets, economics and personal finance.

I usually send through suggestions the night before or earlier in the morning. Sometimes we veer off into other areas or pick up on things that happen overnight.

But here's my suggestions as of 6.15 am this morning. I'll update later today with a link to the audio.

Marcus,

1. US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke didn't deliver on Saturday morning. Some were hoping for an announcement of a third round of quantitative easing or money printing. But all they got was a pledge to have a two day meeting next month instead of a one day meeting and one of the biggest flick passes in history.

He said it was now up to Barack Obama to do something about the economy.Stock markets initially fell, but ended up as stock investors convinced themselves that Bernanke would come up with his own 'put' for the stock market in the longer September meeting. See more here at Bloomberg.

The New Zealand dollar rose over 84 USc as some took hope from Bernanke's inaction that the global economy wasn't as bad as some feared. See more here at Bloomberg.

2. Fairfax Media announced on Friday it planned to float 30-35% of Trade Me on the NZX. Analysts say it could be worth around NZ$1.4 billion, which means Fairfax could raise up to NZ$500 million, which would make it the biggest float since Vector in 2005 and a real shot in the arm for the NZX. See our earlier article here.

3. It pays to own a monopoly. Most of our biggest companies on the NZX now are either privately built monopolies or former state owned monopolies. One of the former, SkyTV, reported a strong result on Friday. It now has 829,421 customers or more than half of all households. Profits rose 17% to NZ$120 million and revenue rose 7.4% to 796.9 million. Average revenue per user was up 4.7% to NZ$70.45. Interestingly, 35% of all subscribers now have MySky and it delivered NZ$280 million in revenue for the year. See more here at Scoop.

cheers

Bernard

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Updated now with link to audio after the event.