Dry cargo shippers with smaller vessels are shifting to more-risk, more-reward spot markets, eyeing rising demand for sugar and grains — commodities well suited to versatile supramax and handysize ships. Ship owners generally prefer long-term charters in a weak market. The Baltic Dry Index o-year lows in recent weeks but confidence has been rocked by South Korean dry bulk group Korea Line Corp filing for bankruptcy protection, […]
|By Mayank Bhardwaj and Jo Winterbottom| A bad monsoon in India is the one that fails to deliver enough rain … most of the time. This year, a lack of rainclouds could be the silver lining that the government needs. India has no place left to store more grain, and can ill afford a hefty payout to farmers for the truckloads of produce that another monsoon could […]
The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) aims to boost activity on its sharia-compliant commodity trading platform by partnering with a global brokerage, while local Islamic lender Noor Bank is set to offer use of the platform to all its corporate clients. The DMCC wants to increase both the volume and size of transactions on its Islamic platform, which it launched last year. This week, the DMCC partnered […]
A diplomatic split between Qatar and its wealthy Gulf neighbors may disrupt billions of dollars of investment in the region and slow efforts to make economies more efficient through trade and transport reforms. Qatar’s vast natural gas wealth means the tiny country, with a population of about 2.1 million, could probably continue operating indefinitely despite the displeasure of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. But […]
Dubai’s benchmark led a retreat among Persian Gulf stock indexes, tracking a decline in emerging markets after Russia’s intervention in Crimea raised concerns of armed conflict. The DFM General Index slipped 1.9 percent, the most since Jan. 26, to 4,105.90 at the close in Dubai. The measure, which more than doubled last year, dropped on 44 percent of three-month average daily volume. Abu Dhabi’s gauge closed 1.8 […]
BGC Partners, a global brokerage company servicing the wholesale financial and real estate markets, and the Dubai Multi Commodity Centre announced a partnership to promote a Sharia-compliant Commodity Murabaha mechanism. This marks the first agreement between DMCC and an interdealer broker to jointly market Commodity Murabaha on the DMCC Tradeflow Platform, DMCC said in a statement. Launching shortly, this partnership offers the trading community a faster, more […]
| By K Raveendran| Dubai is at such an interesting juncture that it lends itself to analyst opinions that are mutually challenging. There are enough silver lines on the horizon for those who tend to approach issues with a sense of optimism. But for those who are inclined to look the other way, there is an uneasy déjà vu setting in. As the local stock market gets […]
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 […]
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 […]
Middle East fund managers remain bullish on most of the region’s major equity markets, but some are shifting money from the United Arab Emirates to less richly valued markets, a Reuters survey shows. The survey of 15 leading investment managers, conducted over the past 10 days, found 53 percent – a four-month high – expected to raise their equity allocations to the Middle East over the next […]
The London gold fix, the benchmark used by miners, jewelers and central banks to value the metal, may have been manipulated for a decade by the banks setting it, researchers say. Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be […]
A last official link between the Gulf’s colonial era and its commercially dynamic present, Bill Duff devoted his life to Dubai and played a bigger part than any other westerner in the early transformation of the emirate from obscure outpost into global hub. Duff, who has died aged 91, arrived as an economic adviser in 1959 in what were called the Trucial states. His mission came at […]
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 […]
Manhattan Attorney Preet Bharara has sent subpoenas to Mt. Gox, other bitcoin exchanges, and businesses that deal in bitcoin to seek information on how they handled recent cyber attacks, a source familiar with the probe said on Wednesday. In the attacks – known as distributed denial of service attacks – hackers overwhelmed bitcoin exchanges by sending thousands of phantom transactions. At least three exchanges were forced to […]
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 […]
Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) is set to welcome 11 international congresses in 2014, spanning a variety of industry sectors. When combined, these congresses will contribute an estimated US$32millon (AED117 million) to the city’s economy. The congresses will attract more than 12,000 international delegates, including global thought leaders in their respective fields, which include healthcare, transportation, legal and technology sectors. “Dubai’s position as a premier international business […]
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 […]
India has decided to block investigations by the United States into its trade policies and patent laws and prepare for a battle at the World Trade Organization (WTO), a move that could escalate already-strained tension between the two countries. New Delhi is furious about a threat of trade sanctions made by the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) office over its protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), preference for […]
In an age of aerial drones and driver-less cars, Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc is designing unmanned cargo ships. Rolls-Royce’s Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel’s bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships. Drone […]
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 […]
