A drop in OPEC production came just as refineries began looking for supply, helping boost bullish speculative bets on crude last week by the most since July. The group, which pumps about 40 percent of the world’s oil, reduced output to the lowest for March since 2011 as a standoff between the Libyan government and rebels kept exports near the lowest level since Muammar Qaddafi was driven […]
The wrenching selloff in U.S. high-growth technology and biotech shares could leave investors braced for more than a minor pullback when earnings pick up speed this week. First-quarter earnings estimates have fallen sharply as many companies have blamed the brutal winter for weak outlooks. With high-valuation stocks under pressure, earnings could be subjected to even more investor scrutiny than usual. “There’s skepticism among investors about the outlook, […]
Dubai’s benchmark stock index fell the most in a month, tracking a decline in global markets last week, on investor concern this year’s rally was overdone given prospects for earnings growth. Saudi Arabia’s gauge dropped. The DFM General Index tumbled 1.7 percent, the most since March 12, to close at 4,759.15 in the emirate. Dubai Islamic Bank , the United Arab Emirates’ biggest shariah-compliant bank, declined for […]
The rupee falls to 60.27/28 from its Wednesday close of 60.14/15, as state-run banks are spotted buying dollars, which traders say is likely for defence and oil-related payments. Gains in USD/INR come despite positive stocks, with the Sensex up 0.2 percent. The gap between the spot USD/INR and one-month NDF has widened to around 0.45 rupee on Thursday, much higher than the usual 0.20-.025 rupee spread, suggesting […]
Gold extended gains to a third session on Thursday, scaling fresh two-week highs, after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting showed that officials were not keen on increasing interest rates anytime soon. Gold prices came under pressure last month after Fed Chair Janet Yellen said the U.S. central bank would probably end its massive bond-buying programme this fall and could start raising interest rates around six […]
New York’s highest state court has ruled that a lawsuit by the Algosaibi family conglomerate, claiming that a Saudi billionaire who married into the family committed a $150 million fraud, should be heard in Saudi Arabia. In the lawsuit, Ahmed Hamad al Gosaibi & Brothers Co claimed that Maan al-Sanea, the billionaire head of the Saad Group, used its accounts with Dubai-based Mashreqbank PSC to commit fraudulent […]
Warburg Pincus, the private-equity firm managing about $37 billion in assets, is considering investments in Africa and the Middle East as capital starts to flow back into emerging markets. “We are looking beyond the core euro-zone markets into the rapidly growing emerging markets around Europe for investment opportunities,” Joseph Schull, head of Warburg Pincus in Europe, said in an interview yesterday. “Africa is the next big frontier […]
Commodity futures trading volumes in India fell 40.49 percent in the year to March 2014, its second straight year of decline, the market regulator said on Tuesday. In value terms, futures trading at commodity exchanges fell to 101.44 trillion rupees in the first twelve months from April 2013 from 170.46 trillion rupees a year ago, the Forward Markets Commission said in a statement on its website. Trading […]
Asian shares rose in early trade on Wednesday after Wall Street reversed a three-day losing streak, but Japanese stocks dropped sharply after the yen surged on fading hopes of near-term stimulus from the Bank of Japan. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan advanced 0.9 percent, taking heart from a recovery in U.S. stocks overnight. Japanese stocks, on the other hand, had a tough day on […]
Gold ticked higher on Tuesday to within a whisker of the $1,300-an-ounce level, regaining ground from overnight losses as weaker equities increased its safe-haven appeal. * Spot gold rose 0.2 percent to $1,298.11 an ounce by 0026 GMT. It fell 0.5 percent in the previous session as a short-covering rally after U.S. jobs data fizzed out. * Holdings of the world’s largest platinum-backed exchange-traded fund, Johannesburg’s NewPlat […]
Fears that high-speed traders have been rigging the U.S. stock market went mainstream last week thanks to allegations in a book by financial author Michael Lewis, but there may be a more serious threat to investors: the increasing amount of trading that happens outside of exchanges. Some former regulators and academics say so much trading is now happening away from exchanges that publicly quoted prices for stocks […]
Dubai told international bankers on Monday that it was gearing up for another boom and did not regret the pro-growth policies which brought it to the brink of default five years ago. It appeared to win the endorsement of many of the bankers. Over a dozen top Dubai officials and executives met about 100 representatives of financial powerhouses including Deutsche Bank, Nomura Holdings and Fidelity Investments for […]
Dubai’s gold trading centre said it would tighten supervision of how the metal is sourced after reports in the British media alleging it ignored international guidelines designed to prevent human rights abuses and underground trade by African warlords. In February, Britain’s Guardian newspaper and the BBC said the Dubai-based Kaloti Group, a major gold refiner and jeweller, had failed to examine suspicious deals, accepting for example 2.4 […]
When Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi gave a speech on the virtues of smaller government and privatization on April 8 last year, supporters called him an ideological heir to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died that day. Modi, favorite to form India’s next government after elections starting on Monday, has yet to unveil any detailed economic plans but it is clear that some of his […]
U.S. stocks fell, with the Nasdaq Composite Index sliding the most in two months, after large technology stocks from Google Inc. to Yahoo Inc. plunged as investors sold the bull market’s biggest winners. Google Class A shares sank 4.6 percent in the biggest drop since October 2012. Facebook Inc. lost 4.6 percent, bringing its two-day slide to 9.5 percent. Yahoo Inc. declined 4.2 percent to the lowest […]
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating high-speed trading for possible insider trading, Attorney General Eric Holder told lawmakers on Friday. The disclosure comes the same week that regulators and the FBI also confirmed they are looking into potential wrongdoing by high-frequency stock traders. Regulators have been examining whether ordinary investors are at an unfair disadvantage to high-speed traders, who use computer algorithms to rapidly dart in and […]
India’s high-profile RBI governor is likely to come under political pressure to retreat from his hawkish stance on inflation if opposition leader Narendra Modi wins power in the general election. Strategists in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), confident that his jobs-first policy pitch will secure a strong voter mandate, suggest that they would prefer to have one of their own at the helm of the Reserve Bank […]
Abu Dhabi’s largest oil refinery is preparing to boost production of the industry’s lowest-sulfur diesel within three months as standards for the fuel rise, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The emirate’s 400,000 barrel-a-day plant at Ruwais will only produce diesel with 10 parts per million of sulfur by July, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak […]
Dubai will compete with London for a share of Islamic banks’ liquidity management business by offering a new platform for murabaha trading. Many Islamic banks around the world manage their short-term funds with murabaha, in which one bank acquires merchandise and another agrees to buy it at a mark-up. Traditionally, banks from the Gulf and as far afield as southeast Asia use commodities traded on the London […]
Northern Chile was shaken by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake, triggering a tsunami warning along most of the Pacific Coast of South America. There were no immediate reports of major damage or deaths. The quake struck at 9 p.m. local time 95 kilometers from the city of Iquique at a depth of 20 km, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The first tsunami waves reached as high as […]
After pouring billions of dollars into cities including London, New York and Sydney, individual investors and developers in China are expanding into Dubai. About a thousand individual Chinese investors spent 1.3 billion U.A.E dirhams ($353 million) on land, residential units and office real estate in Dubai last year, according to data from the Dubai Land Department. That is a nearly threefold increase from the 486 million dirhams […]
A year after Citigroup Inc. declared the decade-long run of commodity gains over, wacky weather, dead piglets and Vladimir Putin have gotten in the way. While Citigroup rang “death bells” in April 2013 for the synchronized super cycle fueled by economic growth in China, extreme weather and supply squeezes led to surprise rallies in 2014’s first three months. Coffee hit a two-year high, cattle and hogs rose […]
The U.S. stock market is rigged in favor of high-speed electronic trading firms, which use their advantages to extract billions from investors, according to Michael Lewis, author of a new book on the topic, “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt.” High-frequency trading (HFT) is a practice carried out by many banks and proprietary trading firms using sophisticated computer programs to send gobs of orders into the market, […]
Swiss and British regulators stepped up their scrutiny of alleged manipulation of foreign exchange markets on Monday, as watchdogs take a closer look at whether banks have a tight enough grip on the behavior of their traders. Switzerland’s competition commission WEKO said it opened an investigation into several Swiss, British and U.S. banks over potential collusion to manipulate currency rates. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), meanwhile, […]
