Wednesday 06:00 GMT Overview Bourses across Asia were higher, taking their cue from Wall Street’s return to near record highs and rally in Europe led by Italian banks. European bourses are expected to open firmer, with spreadbetters predicting the UK’s FTSE 100 will add 30 points to 6,810 and Germany’s Dax to gain 60 points to 10,835. US index futures suggest the S&P 500 will shed 1 […]
Abu Dhabi // Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid led the UAE delegation to the two-day GCC Summit on Tuesday, which is also being attended by UK prime minister Theresa May as she looks to expand trade ties ahead of Britain’s exit from the European Union. The 37th annual talks among the six Gulf member states in Manama were expected to focus on security within the GCC, economic integration […]
AMBERNATH, India—Saturdays are typically busy at the sales office of Patel’s Planet, one of the many new apartment developments in the suburbs surrounding Mumbai where India’s fledgling middle class has been flocking in recent years. But last Saturday, it was virtually deserted. Prateek Patel, the cousin of the developer, complained that he hasn’t sold an apartment since early November, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shocked the country by announcing an unprecedented […]
Picture it: rumours of a renminbi devaluation keep growing. Residents rush to open accounts offshore as experts warn Beijing will get off on the wrong foot with a relatively new US administration if a big depreciation happens. Official denials are made regularly — until a devaluation of about 50 per cent follows in short order. That was China in 1994. Today the idea of a similarly brutal, […]
By Julia Love and Stephen Nellis | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Apple Watch sales appear to have rebounded for the holidays from mid-year doldrums on a redesign, price cuts and strong promotions, but analysts say long-term demand has yet to be proven. The Watch is Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) first new product under Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and is seen as a barometer of whether the company […]
Chesapeake Energy, the indebted US energy group that was among the pioneers of the country’s shale revolution, tapped debt markets for the first time in more than two years on Tuesday in a deal that underlined renewed appetite for oil and gas assets. The Oklahoma-based company, which defaulted on some of its obligations this year, secured $1bn in a larger than expected financing to repay as much […]
London’s FTSE 100 stands apart as the global laggard among major stock indices with investors giving it a wide berth almost a month since the election of Donald Trump. The performance reflects concern over Brexit negotiations hurting the shares of companies exposed to the UK economy while the pound’s recent rebound against the dollar and the euro offsets the boost for resource stocks from rising crude and […]
Wall Street climbed on Tuesday as telecom stalwarts AT&T and Verizon gained and bank shares added to their torrid post-election rally, helping the Dow set another record closing high. The S&P financial sector .SPSY rose nearly 1 percent, lifted by a 2.2 percent gain for Wells Fargo (WFC.N). The bank’s chief executive told an investor conference it will see a near-term profit hit because of the sharp […]
Hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand has returned almost 15 per cent this year by betting on a recovery in oil prices and he forecasts the rally has further to run after Opec’s agreement last week to cut supplies. The French founder of Andurand Capital, which has grown to be one of the world’s largest oil funds, returned 6.1 per cent in November as he positioned for crude’s […]
By Angus McDowall , John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay | BEIRUT/GENEVA BEIRUT/GENEVA Syria’s army and allies closed in on areas near Aleppo’s Old City on Tuesday, looking closer than ever to achieving their most important victory of the five year civil war by driving rebels out of their last urban stronghold. Rebels said on Tuesday they would never abandon Aleppo, after reports that U.S. and Russian diplomats […]
The petrochemical sector helped carry Saudi Arabia’s stock market to a fresh one-year closing high on Tuesday after crude oil prices hit a 17-month peak. The main Saudi index added 0.7 percent to 7,155 points in extremely heavy turnover with gainers outnumbering losers 139 to 18. The index is now up 3.5 percent year-to-date. The petrochemical sector stayed strong; it has been contributing to the market’s positive […]
If you set out to make a positive investment case for Italy 20 years ago, the best hope was to play down the myriad structural inefficiencies that blighted the corporate sector and argue that this was a good economy burdened by an unworkable state. Now, after years of no growth accompanied by stubbornly high public debt, a positive case looks even harder to make, especially after the […]
By Jonathan Cable | LONDON LONDON Britain will most likely leave the European Union having signed a bilateral trade agreement, according to a Reuters poll of economists on Tuesday that also suggested there remains little chance of the country slipping into recession. Since the June 23 decision to leave the EU, Britain’s economy has performed much better than had been previously feared. The Bank of England is […]
ABU DHABI // As ties between Turkey and the UAE grow increasingly warm, Ankara’s new ambassador — formerly the most senior Middle East official in the Turkish foreign ministry — says his appointment shows his country is serious about improving bilateral ties. “That is my mission here,” Ambassador Can Dizdar, who began his tenure in October, told The National. “I want to increase the pace, and achieve […]
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com, When gold exploded to the upside earlier this year amid the biggest New Year’s stock market panic in history, we noted that the bull market had awoken. And despite arguments to the contrary from mainstream financial pundits that gold and silver were not monetary metals and nothing but historical relics, it became apparent during the Brexit vote that precious metals were the […]
HONG KONG Asian stocks opened higher on the back of a strong Wall Street with markets discounting the potential impact of Italy’s referendum vote, while U.S. Treasury yields firmed as robust economic data pointed to an interest rate hike next week. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.4 percent in early trade with Antiopodean markets leading gains. Korea .KS11 climbed 1 percent in […]
A parliament packed with lawmakers who oppose wage cuts and taxes, and who want to keep Kuwait’s sumptuous welfare state intact, is threatening the government’s attempts to close a gaping budget deficit. Opposition candidates won about 24 out of 50 seats last month in a parliamentary election seen by Kuwaitis as a referendum on austerity measures aimed at dealing with the 2016/17 shortfall, forecast at 9.5 billion […]
20 years, to the day, after Greenspan’s iconic speech that warned of the unintended consequences of “irrational exuberance,” we find ourselves, yet again, in the midst of perhaps the largest asset bubble in history. In fact, Greenspan’s warning, previously made in a speech on Dec. 5, 1996, eerily reflects many of the same concerns surrounding the market today with low interest rates and lower risk premiums driving […]
December 5, 2016 by: Anjli Raval, Oil and Gas Correspondent Oil rose to its highest level since mid-2015, topping $55 a barrel, as traders bet on supplies tightening after Opec struck a deal last week to cut production for the first time in eight years. The 13-member cartel has now invited producers from outside the cartel to Vienna this week, as it looks to secure their backing […]
OPEC’s oil output set another record high in November ahead of a deal to cut production, a Reuters survey found on Monday, helped by higher Iraqi exports and extra barrels from two nations exempted from cutting supply – Nigeria and Libya. The latest rise in supply means the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will have a bigger task in complying with a plan to cut supply […]
Following a successful listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on November 17 with a market capitalisation of AU$23 million, conversational commerce company Flamingo is now looking at Australia as a key market, with online lending marketplace DirectMoney being announced as its first local client. Born in Australia and based in the US, Flamingo is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that provides an “intelligent guided selling platform” to […]
Investors should invest in properties as prices are reasonable and the market is showing signs of recovery, according to an Omani real estate developer. Latest data released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information showed sales are up 124 percent to $19.99 billion (OMR7.7 billion) in the first ten months of 2016 from $8.83 billion (OMR3.4 billion) for the same period 2015. Mortgage deals jumped by […]
High inventories and the potential for US shale production to respond quickly to any market tightening mean oil prices may flatline in 2017 before gradually moving higher over the next few years, according to Fitch Ratings. The ratings agency said it expects supply and demand to be broadly balanced in the first half of next year, with a move to a more pronounced deficit from July onwards. […]
Hotels operating in the UAE continued to see declines in occupancy and room rates during October, according to the latest data from industry consultants STR. It said the UAE’s hospitality sector reported an occupancy dip of 2.9 percent during the month to 75.6 percent, while average daily rates (ADR) dropped 9.6 percent to AED668.05, the lowest for an October since 2005. As a result, revenue per available […]
