Integrating reporting could complete the vast jigsaw of business reviews September 13, 2011 HEAD OF ACCA UK THE annual review, the management commentary, the chairman’s review, year-on-year summaries, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) report, the operating and financial review… we could easily go on. Today’s big businesses produce an eye-watering number of corporate reports at the end of each financial year. The whole package contains hundreds of pages [...]
EU ministers fail to address euro’s flaws September 13, 2011 SUCH is the precariousness of the Eurozone project that every bit of hearsay sends the currency markets scrambling. Yesterday afternoon, the word was that we would see a reappearance of Merkozy – the Euro-Frankenstein merger of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French premier Nicholas Sarkozy that first had life breathed into it at an emergency [...]
COMMODITY DOLLARS MAY SEE PARITY September 13, 2011 FOR most of this year the strength of the commodity dollars has been one of the most consistent trends in the currency market. Both the Australian and the Canadian dollars spent the better part of 2011 trading above parity to the greenback, and as a result New York has been flooded with Australian tourists all [...]
THE TIPSTER September 13, 2011 THE last time the euro was trading at these levels against the yen was in June 2001 and it appears that traders see the Japanese currency as the strongest safe haven in the midst of the Eurozone debt crisis. This is down to Japan’s current account surplus, which means it doesn’t have to rely so [...]
FOREX ANALYST PICKS September 13, 2011 FOREX STRATEGIST JOHN KICKLIGHTER My pick: Long dollar-yen above ¥77.75 Expertise: Fundamental analysis with risk management Average time frame of trades: 1 day to 1 week Conditions are not very favourable for intermediate swings for either euro or dollar-based pairs. For the euro, the progress of the region’s crisis is a constant battle between market [...]
Weak commodities take toll on FTSE but banks rebound September 12, 2011 BRITAIN’S leading share index fell yesterday, on weakness in heavyweight mining and energy issues as commodity prices retreated, while a partial recovery by banks brought blue-chips back from intra-days lows for the month. At the close, the FTSE 100 index was down 85.03 points, or 1.6 per cent, at 5,129.62, having bounced off the session [...]
Hope of help for Italy lifts stocks September 12, 2011 US stocks rose yesterday, bouncing back in late trading, as hopes that Italy could get financial support from China tempered investors’ worst fears over the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis. Traders started the day braced for a possible downgrade of France’s top banks by Moody’s rating agency, but sentiment improved as various European officials succeeded in [...]
Trade with the equity sector’s economic cycle September 12, 2011 BUSINESSES prosper at different times. Over the duration of a business cycle, which typically lasts for about seven years, certain businesses do well in the early period of economic expansion, some do better during mid-expansion and others prosper as economic activity begins to lessen. These fluctuations in the business activity of companies can be traded [...]
OBAMA’S JOB PLAN BRINGS CALLS FOR QE3 September 12, 2011 AT THE end of last week, investors were digesting President Obama’s proposed $447bn jobs package. This was significantly bigger than the $300bn expected, and the hope is that it will encourage firms to start hiring again. But everything comes with a cost, and savings will have to be made elsewhere. The President has passed these [...]
Resistance is futile: French banks come under fire September 12, 2011 AT the end of yesterday’s European trading session, the equities market was a sea of red. European banking stocks were sold across the board, with the French banks being hit hardest. BNP Paribas fell by more than 10 per cent. Its Gallic brothers in arms, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole, also took a heavy battering, [...]