A classic distinction in markets exists between bulls and bears, the snorting herd of enthusiasts and the pessimists who roar at them from caves, waiting for a panicked stampede. Yet a sign of the uncertain outlook, with the consequences of the incoming Trump administration unknown, elections due in Europe and Brexit still to begin, may be how those labels don’t fit quite as easily as before. For […]
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to take control of all levers of power and a mounting terrorist threat has begun to alarm investors, sending the Turkish lira down 4 per cent to an all-time low on Wednesday. The lira traded at 3.93 to the dollar, down 12 per cent since the beginning of January, clocking its worst performance since a failed coup in July which prompted […]
Turkey’s lira cemented its reputation as the most fragile of emerging market currencies on Wednesday, falling 4 per cent against the dollar to a fresh record low after the country’s current account deficit took a turn for the worse. Turkey’s currency has plunged 11.5 per cent so far this year and depreciated nearly 30 per cent in the last three months. The lira’s travails eclipse the South […]
Facebook on Wednesday announced a new program of training, products and tools aimed at further solidifying the social network’s relationship with publishers, which view the Silicon Valley giant as both a firehose of referral traffic and an at-times fearsome adversary. The program’s debut comes days after Facebook hired former TV journalist Campbell Brown to be its head of news partnerships. The initiative (which includes a partnership with […]
To an outsider, it looked preposterous. The archaeologists were cataloging and storing absolutely everything, treating this physical material as though it were digital information — JPEGs of itself. And yet they couldn’t afford not to: Everything a Neanderthal came into contact with was a valuable clue. (In 28 years of excavations here, archaeologists have yet to find a fossil of an actual Neanderthal.) “This is like putting […]
Saudi Arabia plans to follow its record breaking debut on global debt markets with an Islamic bond issue in a sale that could come as early as February. The sharia-compliant sukuk will form part of a pipeline of bond sales to finance the kingdom’s budget deficit and invest in economic diversification away from oil and is likely to appeal to regional investors in the Gulf. Last year, […]
Since the start of the 21st century the South American nation of Suriname, population 540,000, has been riding a commodity boom that yielded major benefits for a country rich in bauxite, gold, oil and bananas. From 2000 to 2014, annual per capita income more than quintupled to almost $10,000. Child mortality fell by a third. A child born there today can expect to live to 70, up […]
For more evidence that central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market is increasingly becoming an exercise in futility – look no further than Mexico. The peso briefly sank to a fresh all time low against the dollar on Tuesday, dropping by as much as 1.1 per cent to MXN 21.6227, as concerns continue to mount over incoming US president Donald Trump’s trade rhetoric towards Mexico, report […]
By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin | DUBAI DUBAI Tens of thousands of Iranians massed in central Tehran on Tuesday for the funeral of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a show of unity to honour the Islamic Republic’s polarising pragmatist. Rafsanjani, who died on Sunday aged 82, will be buried in the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the country’s Islamic revolution in 1979 and founded the country’s […]
Yep, it’s still falling. Turkey’s battered currency is taking no break from its recent woes at the start of European trading this morning and is down another 1.2 per cent against the dollar on the day. That takes its 2017 losses to an already whopping 7 per cent against the greenback at TRY3.7589 – another record low having suffered its worst daily blow since July just yesterday. […]
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute, “This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with […]
Bigger may not always be better when it comes to beverage companies. Goldman Sachs analysts, in a note on Monday, downgraded shares of Coca-Cola to “sell” while upgrading Dr Pepper Snapple to “neutral,” saying that the policy winds of 2017 may blow more favourably for US-centric companies than multinational players. A key headwind facing multinationals such as Coca-Cola in 2017 is the strong US dollar, which recently […]
The world’s main repository for data on credit derivatives deals will move its database on to the blockchain, in the first big test case for whether the emerging technology can be employed across the finance industry. The DTCC, a US post-trade services group that processes more than $1,500tn of securities a year, will use technology from IBM and US blockchain start-ups R3 and Axoni as the basis […]
An attendee walks past a message board celebrating 50 years of the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 8, 2017 Emerging technology is giving new hope for the handicapped, and harnessing brainwaves for the physically disabled and helping the visually impaired with “artificial vision” are just the start. Many systems showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas are aimed at improving quality […]
Last year was tough for global aviation and, like many in this sector, there’s not much I wouldn’t give for a crystal ball to see what 2017 has in store. Having said that, the consensus is that we can expect more of the same, with the wide range of macro challenges that beset the world in 2016 continuing. War and regional conflicts are ongoing and the ever-present […]
After one of the most tumultuous years in its modern history, Turkey is struggling to convince global investors to look beyond economic weakness and political risk. Fund houses willing to bet on countries such as South Africa, where a corruption scandal is consuming the ruling ANC party, and Brazil, where President Michel Temer is battling to save his administration from corruption investigations, say the headwinds facing Turkey […]
ABU DHABI // The Gulf has been left without the protection of a naval strike force after the United States Navy withdrew out its sole aircraft carrier last month. With the Dwight D Eisenhower returning to Norfolk, Virginia, at the end of December and its relief, the George H W Bush yet to leave port in the US, the gap of potentially two months is seen as […]
Along with most of his Wall Street peers, BofA’s Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett flipped his outlook on risk assets shortly after the election, turning from quietly bearish to vocally bullish and forecasting a substantial rise in US equities, and even more substantial bounce for Japanese, European and UK stocks as well as oil. So far, Hartnett has been correct, and according to recent fund flows, much […]
Our round-up of the week’s best comment and analysis from the Financial Times focuses on debunking misleading parallels between Reaganomics and Trumponomics and what changes the new US president’s policies will force in investor behaviour. The selection is taken from our Markets Insight and Smart Money columns, written by industry contributors and FT commentators. The world is too different from the 1980s for Donald Trump to achieve […]
How’s your weekend going? Redditor, Law School Graduate, and nimble navigator William Craddick (/u/PleadingtheYiff / brand new Twitter handle @williamcraddick) has made quite the name for himself on Reddit’s “The_Donald” forum. In just three short months, Craddick has managed to rack up over 153,000 “post karma” and 48k “comment karma,” which (if you’re not familiar) is impressive. The guy is an incredibly effective dot-connector, perhaps owing it to his legal training – often posting lengthy reads that […]
An expert panel has issued new guidelines on Thursday to reduce the likelihood of babies to develop potentially deadly food allergy. Peanut Allergy Peanut allergy affects about 2 percent of children in the U.S. Those who are allergic to peanuts need to avoid a wide range of peanut-containing food for risk of developing unwanted reactions. Although relatively common, peanut allergy can be potentially deadly. In 2014, a nursing […]
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: 5 January 2017 Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of news and information for professional markets and the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), will co-host the 11th MENA Regulatory Summit on February 5th & 6th in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Held under the patronage of the UAE Minister of Economy, H.E Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, the summit will debate key challenges that […]
Alexa made its debut as the heart of the Amazon Echo—a family of internet-connected speakers that answer questions, run apps, and let people get weather reports or order goods on Amazon Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa is emerging as one of the big winners at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, cropping up in TVs, cars, fridges—you name it—in what may signal a breakthrough moment for the smart technology. […]
Nobody likes to admit going along with the consensus. It sounds better to be contrarian, and in markets there is far more money to be made when you latch on to an unpopular notion that turns out to be correct. That is how you get to buy things cheap. But sometimes the herd gets it right, even if it gets overexcited and “overshoots” its target. On balance, […]
