Beer-bellies meet spread bets as arrows fly this week November 15, 2009 MENTION the name Mervyn King in the City and most readers of this newspaper will think of the chap who’s in charge of the Bank of England. But there is another fellow with the same name, who is far more at home on the oche than discussing the finer points of quantitative easing. This other [...]
Dow’s winning run ends as energy falls November 12, 2009 THE Dow industrials six-day winning streak came to a halt yesterday as a drop in oil prices pulled energy stocks lower and a guarded outlook from Wal-Mart fanned worries about consumer spending. Stocks were also undermined by a US dollar rally, as its safe-haven appeal rose after several policymakers around the world warned the economic [...]
British Airways and Iberia merger sends FTSE soaring November 12, 2009 BRITAIN’S FTSE 100 hit its highest close in three weeks yesterday as British Airways soared with investors cheered as a merger with Iberia looked imminent, while gains were also powered by strength in banks. But the rise was limited by falls in commodity prices hitting miners and energy stocks, which together constitute a third of [...]
UK COVERED WARRANTS SURE TO GROW November 11, 2009 ALEXANDRE HOUPERTHEAD OF LISTED PRODUCTS UK, SG CORPORATE & INVESTMENT BANKING WHILE covered warrants might seem like a relatively new means of trading the markets to UK investors, this month marks their 20th birthday in continental Europe, where they are now a well developed market widely recognised by the private investor. And Société Générale not [...]
CHOOSING SURVIVAL OVER LITIGATION November 11, 2009 MARCUS MCCAFFREYPARTNER, FORENSIC SERVICES, BAKER TILLY WHERE previous recessions have seen problems of funding, this time round global financial liquidity has shrunk to unprecedented levels. There are still few re-financing options and what is available is only on offer to those entities with strong balance sheets or guarantees. One result of this is that international [...]
Reassurance on UK growth boosts the blue chip index November 11, 2009 BRITAIN’S top share index closed higher yesterday, as risk appetite received a boost after reassuring signals on the UK economy, and with miners the biggest gainers after a jump in Chinese factory growth. The FTSE 100 index ended 36.20 points higher, or 0.7 per cent, at 5,266.75, having touched a high of 5,301.14 earlier in [...]
China data pulls up Dow and S&P 500 November 11, 2009 THE Dow and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed at 13-month highs last night as an upbeat forecast from a top homebuilder and data from China pointed to a strengthening global economy. The Dow’s advance was its sixth straight as comments from top Federal Reserve officials suggesting low interest rates will stay for some [...]
THE TIPSTER November 11, 2009 DYED in the wool chartists may still be hanging onto the longer term downtrend in the S&P 500 and claiming that the 65 per cent recovery since March is just a bear market rally – or even a dead cat bounce. But reasons to be bearish on the US stock market are rapidly vanishing as [...]
Accountants can save the world, report November 11, 2009 THERE has been no shortage of talk about the forthcoming Copenhagen climate change conference in December, at which presidents and prime ministers will discuss ways to save the world by reducing carbon emissions. Already, many suspect that little will be decided at the meeting. The reality is that if the world is saved, it will [...]
Investors ignore bubble concerns and flock to high-yielding bonds November 11, 2009 INVESTORS’ memories are notoriously short, so when Standard & Poor’s (S&P) recently warned that they were getting even shorter, it was something of a wake-up call. Despite one of the biggest financial meltdowns and dislocations of credit in history, European investors are once again being seduced by the high yields on offer with junk bonds. [...]
