THE LONDON REPORT October 22, 2009 The FTSE 100 closed one per cent, or 50.49 points, lower yesterday at 5,207.36, as weaker crude and metals weighed on energy stocks and miners. The index has rallied more than 50 per cent since hitting a low in early March, and is up 17 per cent this year. Energy stocks suffered with crude slipping [...]
CAREERS CLINIC October 21, 2009 JOHN HACKSTON, MANAGING CONSULTANT, OPP I got promoted, and am now managing people I’ve worked with for a long time. We know everything about each other, and I’m concerned my mates won’t take my role seriously.First of all, it’s useful to recognise you may not know these people as well as you think you do, [...]
Speculation is driving the price of oil October 21, 2009 OIL’S break through to $80 per barrel earlier this week was attributed to yet another bout of dollar weakness in forex markets, or a strong gasoline inventory draw-down in the US. But looking at the truly fundamental factors – the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (Opec) spare production capacity standing at a whopping 5.5m [...]
ECB TALK HAS SLOWED FALL IN THE BUCK October 21, 2009 JANE FOLEYRESEARCH DIRECTOR, FOREX.COM THANKS to a healing of risk appetite, a sharp deterioration in the American fiscal position and the perception that US monetary policy will stay loose potentially until the latter part of 2010, further losses could well be ahead for the US dollar. And with euro-dollar rising towards, and potentially through the [...]
If you’re stuck in a rut, you have to be ready to change care%r October 21, 2009 YOU’RE bored, you don’t feel as though your skills are being used properly, your colleagues seem to achieve more than you do, and worst of all, it’s been this way for months. In short, you feel you’ve hit a dead-end in your career. What can you do about it? If you’re in a rut in [...]
DOLLAR BEAR MARKET NOT DOLLAR CRISIS October 21, 2009 GEORGE TCHETVERTAKOVHEAD OF MARKET RESEARCH, ALPARI UK ONE of the biggest casualties of the financial crisis was trust in banks and financial institutions, sparking a collapse of confidence in the markets and precipitate falls across all asset classes from equities to commodities. The greenback was in extremely high demand throughout 2008 as panicking investors looked [...]
BE DEFENSIVE BY TRADING AGRICULTURE October 21, 2009 NICHOLAS BROOKSHEAD OF RESEARCH AND INVESTMENT STRATEGY, ETF SECURITIES DURING the first half of 2009, exchange-traded commodities (ETCs) in industrially-focused precious metals – silver, platinum and palladium – as well as industrial metals all saw rapid rises in inflows as cyclical indicators rebounded. Although recent months have seen outflows in individual industrial metal ETCs, the [...]
Forget active: savvy investors are going for the smart ETFs instead October 21, 2009 WHEN BlackRock acquired Barclays Global Investors and its exchange-traded funds (ETFs) business iShares back in June in a multi-billion dollar deal, it was widely expected that this would give some impetus to the evolution of ETFs both in the US and in the UK. One product that was expected to arrive in the UK was [...]
TARGET YOUR PROFITS WITH SECTOR ETFS October 21, 2009 NIZAM HAMIDHEAD OF SALES STRATEGY, ISHARES EUROPE SINCE the start of this year we have seen assets under management in sector exchange-traded funds (ETFs) overtake the open interest in the futures markets – the net value of all open positions. At the end of September 2009, the total value of assets under management in sector [...]
Goldman sends LSE shares down despite praise for CEO October 21, 2009 The FTSE 100 was all about the power of the analyst today, with a number of individual movers spurred up or down by words of wisdom from the City’s finest. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) shed 2.2 per cent to close at 914p after Goldman Sachs cut its rating on the stock to “neutral” on [...]