News coming out of Wall Street, and reading it for that matter, can often be a maze of speedy acronym-lookup and general mass confusion as it relates to all things money jargon: fixed capital this, equity that, market cap this, depreciating that. It can get confusing.

Yesterday, Dealbreaker, a fairly prominent Wall Street blog, picked up an article written by the CEO of an investment company in Troy. The message? Detroit is the world’s best emerging market. For most, reading that is almost dumbfounding. Given the level of unemployment and grim outlooks you see captured in the media, how can this be possible?

In simple terms, the basic value of a conglomerate of representative stocks in the Detroit metropolitan region (mostly auto stocks) between March 9, 2009 and January 21, 2011 has gone up a whopping 1,566%. The closest market behind Detroit’s in terms of boasting a similar increase is Turkey, as an entire country, and it boasted growth of 294%. The market capitalization of the Detroit market– basically the total value of all outstanding stocks– has gone from $8.5 Billion to $142B in that same time period. The real estate market in the region, while still not even close to healthy, has recovered slightly (from -11% to -3%) and even unemployment has decreased (-.3%). So what does all this growth mean? Well, those stocks are essentially a re-circulation of funds (through dividends and 401(k)’s returning to better health) in to the hands of those that own them, and with more of that money in circulation, the general health of the local economy improves. That spells economic growth, and when this happens, paying wages and salaries of workers, hiring more workers and generally running small business locally gets a lot easier.

If Wall Street starts getting interested in Detroit as an emerging market, it could mean a lot of things– increased investing in the re-invention of a city which would mean more resources to fund all the good ideas on the ground in the city right now, or maybe an increased tax base from the inward migration given the attractiveness of the city which would allow us to properly address public safety and education issues that we have in the city.

One step at a time. How’s that for some hump day goodness? Come on now!

This one kind of blind-sided the morning: Roxbury Group announced potential renovation plans for the the David Whitney building, just across Woodward from the Broderick Tower (read last week’s news about the Broderick’s re-development) downtown. There is still room to be skeptical, as the announcement was just that a portion of the loan to purchase the building had been secured. Additionally, there was no stated use for the building once the project is completed other than “mixed use.” But still! There’s reason enough to celebrate in the potential investment and focus on the strip of Woodward near Foxtown and Campus Martius.

Completely unrelated but equally as momentous, the UCCA (University Cultural Association Center, the group that oversees development in Midtown) has chimed in with a new “Live Midtown” incentive package to encourage residential growth in Midtown. The Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Health System and Wayne State University are teaming up to offer their employees financial incentives to help them consider living closer to work. The Kresge Foundation is even stepping in with financial assistance to round out the first year’s worth of incentive money at $1.2 million. Between the three institutions there are 30,000 people employed, so we are talking about some decent potential here. Not bad. The incentives don’t suck at all either: up to $25,000 in forgivable loans if you are buying, or if you are renting, get $2,500 towards rent in year one and $1,000 in year two.

More details about both developments:

The Whitney Building development
“Live Midtown” inventive package