Skip to main content

Dodd-Frank as economic stimulus?

Say what you will about the effectiveness of the Dodd-Frank legislation and all the new regulations the law ushers in. One thing is becoming clear: it's going to be a benefit to the IT and consulting industries just as Sarbanes-Oxley was.

According to the magazine Wall Street Technology, capital markets firms are expected to spend some $44 billion on IT in 2011 and a large part of this 6% increase over 2010 is due to Dodd-Frank.

These companies are looking to put systems in place to enforce compliance and implement controls. Even as interpretation of the regulations continues to evolve, the companies know they need to begin ramping up their IT efforts. Furthermore, many companies are more focused on risk management than they ever used to be as a result of having the fear of God, so to speak, instilled in them during the Great Financial Crisis.

So there are some IT professionals who will be hired as a result of this. But the greatest benefit will go to the consulting and audit companies. Accenture (ACN), KPMG, etc. should all do well. Given that the banks, patriotic as they are, have led the charge to outsourcing in India, you can assume that Wipro (WIT) and Infosys (INFY) should see a pick-up in business also.

So the lesson is that every cloud can have a silver lining for someone. And that's despite the howling of the banks and their lobbyists.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

Comments

Speedmaster said…
I like to refer to Sarbanes-Oxley as the "no accountant left behind" program. ;-)

Popular posts from this blog

Brazil - in a bubble or on a roll?

A couple of years ago, no one recognized the real estate bubble even though it was under everyone's nose. Now, analysts and bloggers are seeing bubbles everywhere they look. One of them, they say is in Brazil whose Bovespa stock market index has doubled in the last 12 months. Does the bubble accusation hold water? I don't think so and here are 7 reasons why Brazil is by no means a bubble economy: Exports have held up over the past year thanks to demand from China for Brazil's soya exports and iron ore. This was helped by the the Brazilian government's drive to improve trade links with Asia and Africa. Export diversification, spurred by a more active trade policy and increased focus on "south-south" trade under current president Lula, helped mitigate the decline in demand from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries A "sensible" economic framework has been in place since the 1990's. This has included inflation

Thursday Bounce: Trend Busters, Swing Signals and Trend Leaders for July 9, 2009

This is a quick post to announce that we have published Thursday's Trend Leaders, Swing Signals and Trend Busters at Alert HQ . All are based on daily data. Today we have the following: 72 Swing Signals -- A couple of days ago we had 35 signals, today we have twice as many. Happily, we now have 65 BUY signals, a mere 4 SELL Signals plus 3 Strong BUYs. Whoo-hoo! 56 Trend Leaders , all in strong up-trends according to Aroon, MACD and DMI. There are 18 new stocks that made today's list and 60 that fell off Tuesday's list. 48 Trend Busters of which 5 are BUY signals and 43 are SELL signals The view from Alert HQ -- Talk about mixed signals. If you look at our Swing Signals list you would think the market was in the middle of a big bounce. BUY signals are swamping the SELL signals and we even have a few Strong BUYs. Yes, there's a good sprinkling of tech stocks and tech ETFs but the distribution is pretty broad-based with a good number of different sectors represented, eve

Unlock Stock Market Profits - Key #1

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles where I discuss what I feel are keys to successful investing. It is based on a post that provides a summary of the ten keys that individual investors should use to identify profitable stock trades. ( Click here to read the original post ) There are two basic steps to investing. First, you need to find stocks that seem to have some potential. Then you have to determine whether these stocks are actually good investments. There are many stocks that at first glance look interesting, but further research reveals that there are too many negatives to warrant taking a position. This first post in the series starts at the beginning: getting good investment ideas. Key #1: If something special is happening to a stock, it will be reflected in some kind of unusual activity in the markets. As individual investors, we will never be the first to know; however, unusual activity can be an early sign that allows us to follow the Wall Street professional