|By Matein Khalid| I confess, I fell in love with South Africa’s Cape Town, though not its Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). 2018 has been an annus horribilis for both the rand and South African equities, with 30% losses for a US dollar investor, the fifth worse in the emerging markets. The euphoria after President Cyril Ramaphosa replaced Jacob Zuma early this year did not last as South Africa […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Arab Strategy Forum has issued a report that estimates the total cost of Iran’s nuclear programme to have exceeded US$500 billion since 2002.Furthermore, the costs of developing and operating infrastructure and facilities for the programme have added some US$50 billion to the bill. Specifically, the report states that the construction of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant accounted for the majority of the nuclear […]
|By Matein Khalid| OPEC”s ministerial meeting on December 6 will have a seismic impact on the outlook for global oil markets. OPEC has been unnerved by a 30% fall in crude oil prices in the past two months on expectations of lower oil demand due to a Chinese economic slowdown, spectacular growth in US shale oil supply, King Dollar’s chilling impact on the commodities complex and long […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Emaar Malls, the shopping malls and retail business majority-owned by Emaar Properties, recorded a growth in net profit of 9 per cent during the first nine months (January to September) of the year to AED 1.639 billion (US$ 446 million), compared to the same period in 2017 at AED 1.507 billion (US$ 410 million). Revenue for the first nine months of the year was […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| New York: Demby Coin, the world’s biggest ICO, has debuted at an investor conference in New York, eliciting keen interest from investors looking for alternative investment opportunities. Demby Coin, which will power the world’s first ever all-inclusive marketplace with the combined effect of the likes of Amazone and Ebay, seeks to bring the much-needed liquidity into the crypto currency ecosystem, by enabling purchases […]
Etihad Airways has launched a new hand baggage only ‘Deal Fare’ across selected destinations, allowing travellers to purchase lower fares in Economy Class if no checked baggage is required. The ‘Deal Fare’ includes a complimentary carry-on baggage allowance of 7kg and is available on flights between Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Azerbaijan. Robin Kamark, Etihad Airways Chief Commercial Officer, said: “After […]
|By Matein Khalid| Crude oil prices plunged by 7% in two sessions as Saudi Arabia and Russia confirmed that they would release 1 million barrels a day in the wet barrel markets. Speculative froth in the oil futures markets vanished, to be replaced by a new trading calculus based on the realities of supply and demand – as well as the unknowable (and unquantifiable!) arc of […]
|By Matein Khalid| I had written an article titled “six reasons to be bullish Saudi equities in 2018, published in the KT on January 28. Yet I was surprised to see Saudi Arabian equities become the world’s second best performing stock market in 2018 after Egypt. The Saudi equity index fund (KSA) I recommended in my column is up 18% at a time when the MSCI emerging markets […]
By Matein Khalid A dismal legacy of civil war, sanctions, insurgency, foreign invasion and terrorism has had a catastrophic impact on the Iraqi economy. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told the assembled global elite at Davos 2018 that Iraq needed $100 billion in postwar construction. Yet money alone will not solve Iraq’s problems of systemic corruption, a society divided by sectarian cleavages, poverty, the displacement of 2 million […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The GCC’s first and the world’s only Shari’ah Compliant Spot Gold contract (DGSG), was listed on the DGCX on March 29th. The contract opened with world-record Exchange traded Shari’ah Compliant Gold volumes on the first day of trading. The product traded volume of 84 Kilograms worth USD 3.56 million, on its opening day. The contract’s launch follows months of planning and preparation for the […]
Heart Disease – An infographic by GeriatricNursing.org Every year over 1.2 million people suffer from a heart attack due to coronary heart disease. The probability that a person may die from heart attack is 40 out of 100. According to the latest estimations, more than 335,000 of these heart attack patients are estimated to die even before reaching the hospital or the emergency ward. In the […]
|By Matein Khalid| When I first started on a Treasury bond futures trading desk in New York fresh out of Wharton, a senior mentor once advised to keep track of the four heartbeats of gold finance in real time. The price of money (interest rates), the price of currency (the US dollar), the price of oil and the price of gold. The price of money can be […]
|By Matein Khalid| Dubai based Gulf Islamic Investments (GII) acquired a one million square foot Amazon logistics center in Dortmund, Germany for $144 million. This deal is a testament to the boutique global merchant bank created in Dubai by GII’s co-founder/CEO Pankaj Gupta, who I am honored to call a friend. I consciously model my own firm Asas Capial on the strategic path laid out by GII and […]
|By Matein Khalid|The rise in Brent crude to $60 a barrel and the trade volume ballast generated by the world’s first post Lehman synchronized economic recovery is hugely positive for UAE economic growth in 2018. After all, the UAE is unique because Abu Dhabi’s 100 billion barrels of proven oil reserves is complemented by Dubai’s role as the Gulf’s financial, logistics, aviation, shopping and services hub. The […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Gold prices were on track for their biggest weekly fall since May ahead of US employment data later that could influence the pace of US interest rate rises. The yellow metal broke below a recent trading range and tumbled through technical levels to its lowest since July as progress on US tax reform fuelled optimism about the US economy and boosted the dollar. […]
|By Matein Khalid|I am often asked by investors to articulate my “philosophy” of real estate investing. Tough question. My ideal deal is one where it is possible to buy brick and mortar assets at 60 – 70% of replacement cost. This usually occurs in the aftermath of a banking crisis or economic shock. This was the case in Florida homes in 2009 or Spanish office space in […]
|By Matein Khalid| US and global equities surged on news of the US House of Representatives pass the tax reform bill, Cisco and Walmart posted blowout earnings and a potential bidding war emerged for Fox’s media assets. The rally on Thursday followed a week of carnage in the US high yield debt markets, flattening of the US Treasury yield curve and losses in the major stock market indices worldwide. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Emaar Development said on Thursday it plans to price its initial public offering in between Dh5.7 to Dh6.9, thereby valuing the company at Dh25.2 billion. The company plans to offer 800 million shares or 20 per cent of the share capital, it said in an emailed statement.The final price will be announced on November 16, and the shares will be listed on the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Emaar Properties announced an IPO, offering 20 per cent of Emaar Development, the company’ development unit to investors. The size off the IPO size is lower than what the market had anticipated, which was at least 10 percent higher. The listing will take place in November on the Dubai Financial Market. “The IPO of our UAE development business will allow potential investors an […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The introduction of value added tax would force Dubai’s precious metals and gems businesses to relocate to other centres such as Singapore and Hong Kong, DMCC excutive chairman Ahmed Bin Sulayem has warned. VAT could lead to an “exodus” of firms in the gold and diamond industry from the UAE, Bin Sulayem said in a message to the Dubai Diamond Conference and urged the […]
|By Matein Khalid| Jamie Dimon, the unanointed king of Wall Street and chief executive of New York banking colossus J.P. Morgan did not mince his words. He called Bitcoin “a fraud”, a speculative bubble comparable to the Dutch tulip mania of the seventeenth century and declared he would fire any trader at his bank trading in the cryptocurrency “in a second” for “stupidity”. This has only reinforced the […]
|By F R Chowdhury| Myanmar (previously known as Burma) is a vast country of 676,550 sq. km. or 261,217 sq. miles on the north-east coast of Bay of Bengal. Basically it is between Bangladesh and Thailand though it has also long common border with India and China. Its population is only about 49 million. Majority are Buddhists. Next large population is ethnic Bengali Muslims and a small percentage […]
|By Matein Khalid| Trump’s post Charlottesville remarks, the Barcelona terrorist attacks and Cisco’s results unnerved the US stock market bulls last week. Friday was a surreal moment in the history of Wall Street. It was entirely rational for traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor to cheers and the Dow Jones Index rise 150 points when news broke that Trump had fired his alt-right, white nationalist chief strategist […]
|By Jordan Roy-Byrne| Intermarket analysis is a rather new field in technical analysis but one of my favorites because it is critical in understanding Gold. Asset classes like stocks and bonds are enormous and aren’t as influenced by as many factors as Gold. Trends in stocks, interest rates, commodities and currencies impact Gold in one way or another. We have written many articles over the years analyzing […]
