FTSE commodities drop on fear over Fed announcement September 21, 2011 BRITAIN’S top shares dropped back yesterday, led by weakness in commodity issues as investors nervously awaited the outcome of a US Federal Reserve meeting with expectations for further economic stimulus seen as already discounted. The FTSE 100 closed down 75.30 points, or 1.4 per cent at 5,288.41, retreating after a two per cent bounce on [...]
US grim forecast spooks investors September 21, 2011 THE Federal Reserve’s warning that the US faces a grim economic outlook jolted investors yesterday, driving down US stocks more than two per cent, while benchmark Treasury yields hit a more than 60-year low on the Fed’s announcement of a $400bn bond-buying programme. The dollar rallied against the euro and the yen, buoyed by the [...]
This year’s hot sectors: risk and compliance September 21, 2011 WE’VE been told that the boom years are over. The fast-growth sectors of City employment have ground to a halt. New job opportunities will be fewer and far between. Well, that is unless you work in risk and compliance: the fallout from the credit crunch has given a new lease of life to these sticklers [...]
ETF criticisms don’t stand up to scrutiny September 21, 2011 EVEN prior to Kweku Adoboli’s UBS fraud, there was plenty of mud being slung at exchange-traded funds (ETF) – almost all unjustifiable. UBS’s rogue trader is irrelevant to the concerns of retail investors, for whom ETFs offer a cheap and liquid way to track many indexes. UBS IN CONTEXT In the case of the UBS [...]
Only facing up to your debt problems will stop the stress September 21, 2011 DON’T look so frightened,” Tracy Finn tells me. We are sat in the big Queen Street branch of HSBC in the City. It’s 10am on Wednesday morning, and I’m only about a year late for this meeting. “I help dozens of people with their personal debt every month,” she assures me. “Most of them earning [...]
Growing role of automatic FX trading September 21, 2011 OVER the last two years, we have witnessed a significant increase in demand to trade automatically in the FX market. Even if it is to follow the same trend as the equity and futures markets after Mifid – its high levels of liquidity and huge volumes of trade per day makes it a very attractive [...]
FTSE makes gains on lower volumes September 20, 2011 THE FTSE 100 index rose two per cent yesterday as traders said dividend hunters tapped into beaten-down defensives and there was some short-covering ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting on US monetary policy options. Oil stocks including BP, pharmaceuticals including GlaxoSmithKline and telecoms including Vodafone were among those adding most points to the index. But [...]
Wall St awaits Fed decision as Greece stalls September 20, 2011 US stocks ended little changed yesterday as investors waited to see if the US Federal Reserve would offer more economic stimulus and if Greece made progress in talks to avoid a default. In the lowest volume session since late August, the market gave up earlier gains of about one per cent as investors were wary [...]
Replicate innovators’ disruptive DNA September 20, 2011 “SO what makes innovators different from the rest of us? Most of us believe this question has been answered. It’s a genetic endowment. Some people are right brained, which allows them to be more intuitive and divergent thinkers. Either you have it or you don’t. But does research really support this idea? Our research confirms [...]
A model for the generation of innovation September 20, 2011 “THE DNA of innovators – or the code for generating innovative ideas – is expressed in the model on the right. The key skill for generating innovative ideas is the cognitive skill of associational thinking. BEHAVIOURAL SKILLS The reason that some people generate more associations than others is partly because their brains are just wired [...]