Stocks slid while oil prices shot up on Monday, after Russia bloodlessly seized a part of Ukraine, escalating tensions between Russia and the West to a level not seen since the end of the Cold War. U.S. stock futures fell 0.7 percent from a record high hit on Friday while Japan’s Nikkei average tumbled 1.3 percent. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.6 percent. […]
The rupee is trading lower at 61.88/89 versus Friday’s close of 61.75/76. It fell to 61.95 in early trades. Global risk aversion on geopolitical tensions in Ukraine weighing on most Asian currencies. China manufacturing PMI hits a seven-month low, further hurting risk currency sentiment. India’s December GDP came in at a below expected 4.7 percent, data released after market hours on Friday showed. The Japanese yen rose […]
Gold gained more than 1 percent on Monday on escalating geopolitical tensions as Ukraine mobilised for war after Russia bloodlessly seized Crimea, an isolated Black Sea peninsula where Moscow has a naval base. The Group of Seven major industrialised nations condemned Russia’s intrusion into Ukraine and cancelled preparations for the G8 summit, that includes Russia, scheduled for Sochi in June, the White House said. Cash and U.S. […]
In a rude jolt to growing virtual currency frenzy in India, bitcoins worth hundreds of millions of rupees held by some Indians have vanished with collapse of Japan-based Mt Gox, which was the world’s largest bitcoin exchange so far. Having filed for bankruptcy, Mt Gox has admitted to have lost 7.5 million bitcoins of its customers and 100,000 of its own, which together are estimated to be […]
|By Ole Sloth Hansen |February was a strong month for commodities, with the broad-based DJ-UBS Commodity index returning more than 5 percent. This was more than the S&P 500 Index, which reached even a new record high thereby moving in the opposite direction of bond yields and the macro data. Some of the major themes and factors behind this performance were: • Adverse weather in Brazil and […]
China’s credit-market gauges are triggering alarm bells, as banks grow cautious in lending to each other while investors prefer the safest government bonds. The spread between the two-year sovereign yield and the similar-maturity interest-rate swap, a gauge of financial stress, reached 121 basis points on Feb. 19, the widest in Bloomberg data going back to 2007. Two days later, the cost to lock in the three-month Shanghai […]
China’s yuan surpassed the Swiss franc to become the seventh most-used world payments currency in January, global transaction services organization SWIFT said on Thursday. With a market share of 1.39 percent, the yuan remained one of the top 10 most-used currencies for payments worldwide for the third consecutive month. It ranked eighth in December. Yuan payments increased by 30.6 percent while the growth for all payment currencies […]
Gold fell 1 percent on Wednesday, retreating from a four-month high, as a dollar rally and surging U.S. new home sales dented bullion’s safe-haven appeal. The precious metal accelerated losses after the Commerce Department said that sales of new U.S. single-family homes jumped nearly 10 percent to a 5-1/2-year high in January. Prior to Wednesday, gold had posted a four-day winning streak with prices up more than […]
The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange plans to list four currency futures contracts this year to help investors hedge their financial risk in China, Russia, South Korea and South Africa. These will include renminbi, ruble, won and rand futures in the next three to six months, Gary Anderson, chief executive officer of the exchange, said in an interview to Bloomberg. The DGCX already offers contracts in gold, […]
The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) and Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) announced the simultaneous launch of their respective polypropylene futures contracts. The concurrent launch of both the Exchanges’ contracts is designed to raise substantial liquidity for global trading of the products. The contracts will go live on February 28, 2014. DGCX and DCE have been working closely to develop plastics contracts following the signing of a […]
Mt. Gox, once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, abruptly stopped trading on Tuesday and its chief executive said the business was at “a turning point” but gave no details. Several other digital currency exchanges, including Bitstamp and BTC-E, issued statements attempting to reassure investors of both bitcoin’s viability and their own security protocols. The website of Mt. Gox suddenly went dark on Tuesday with no explanation, and […]
|By Ole Hansen| Commodities showing strong gains for a third week with positive performances seen across all sectors, not least agriculture where coffee and sugar were strong performers followed by precious metals. Growth-dependent commodities such as energy and industrial metals also showed a positive return but were held back by another decline to a seven-month low in Chinese manufacturing confidence. Adverse weather across the Americas continues to […]
Technology will cause disruption and create opportunity at an accelerating pace, placing unprecedented pressure on ‘society’, China will move towards a half-way house of democracy, USA will become the Disunited States of America while India will be burdened with 150 billion people below the poverty line by 2050, according to the conclusions of a think-tank. The report is produced by Tangent Link, investment analysts and fund managers with a focus […]
For years, Abu Dhabi’s real estate market has paled next to its more dynamic, glamorous rival in neighbouring Dubai. But that may be changing as Abu Dhabi engineers a market recovery that could attract billions of dollars of fresh foreign investment. Real estate prices in Dubai jumped over 20 percent last year, analysts estimate, as the emirate rebounded from a crash in 2008-2010 which slashed prices by […]
Global stocks erased their losses for the year as growing confidence in the U.S. economy and a rally in emerging markets restored $3 trillion of value. The MSCI All-Country World Index advanced for a ninth straight day yesterday, lifting the value of world equities to $62.1 trillion from this year’s low of about $59 trillion on Feb. 4, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The gauge of developed […]
The two most-accurate gold forecasters are holding to their bearish forecasts for 2014 even after the metal posted its best start to a year since 1983. Futures rose 9.7 percent in 2014 through Feb. 14, rebounding from the biggest annual drop in three decades, and reached a three-month high. Holdings in exchange-traded products backed by bullion increased by 3.2 metric tons last week, the most since December […]
|By Steen Jakobsen|The negative start to this year came as a surprise to most investors as we came into the new year with the usual euphoria and expectations of a stock market ending 2014 up 10-15% and a Europe and US in continued recovery but January soon became all about a potential EM crisis which ended up hurting even developed markets return in this year first month. […]
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the world’s most profitable lender, said it will consider acquisitions in the Middle East as part of plans to boost earnings from the region by 50 percent this year. “We’re looking to see if there are acquisition opportunities,” Zhou Xiaodong, chief executive officer for the Middle East, said in an interview from the lender’s Dubai offices. “It’s a good strategy. […]
A previously unknown flaw in a recent version of Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer web browser is being used to attack Internet users, including some visitors to a major site for U.S. military veterans, researchers said Thursday. Security firm FireEye Inc discovered the attacks against IE 10 this week, saying that hundreds or thousands of machines have been infected. It said the culprits broke into the website of […]
Indian mobile phone market leaders Bharti Airtel and Vodafone bought airwaves worth about $3 billion each in a hotly contested auction that raised nearly $10 billion, far exceeding the government’s target. No.1 Bharti and second-ranked Vodafone said they had won airwaves in the premium 900 megahertz band that was available in three key cities — Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Conglomerate Reliance Industries, a new entrant in telecoms that is seen […]
|By Arjuna Mahendran|The GCC stock and bond markets remain a safe haven to investors, underpinned by solid fundamentals. The Expo 2020, MSCI inclusion of the UAE and Qatari markets in the emerging market (EM) category, infrastructure spending across countries – the GCC Railway project to mention one – the revival of trade, tourism and real estate – as tensions in Egypt, Syria and Iran subside somewhat – […]
Asian stocks dropped after the regional benchmark index climbed for a sixth day yesterday to cap its longest run of advances this year. Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. slid 4.5 percent in Tokyo after Japan’s second-largest beermaker’s net-income forecast missed estimates. Tokyo Tatemono Co. plunged 8.3 percent after the developer predicted full-year operating profit below analyst expectations. Qantas Airways Ltd. jumped 6.3 percent after the Sydney Morning Herald […]
Gold retreated from the highest level since November as a five-day advance damped physical demand and U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen pledged to continue with a gradual tapering of stimulus. Bullion for immediate delivery lost as much as 0.6 percent to $1,284.15 an ounce, and was at $1,286.78 at 3:12 p.m. in Singapore. Prices climbed to $1,293.93 yesterday, the highest level since Nov. 14, capping a […]
Asian stocks climbed, Australia’s dollar strengthened to its highest in a month and commodities rallied after Chinese trade data exceeded estimates. European equity futures increased while the U.S. currency weakened and gold halted a five-day gain. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 1.1 percent as of 4:12 p.m. in Tokyo as a measure of Chinese shares in Hong Kong headed toward the biggest two-day gain since November. […]
