Don’t assume the sell-off is a great buying opportunity May 24, 2010 AT THE end of last week, equity markets slumped further into the red and some even entered a technical correction – that is, they are now down more than 10 per cent from their recent peaks. The S&P 500 is down 11.1 per cent from its latest high while the UK blue-chip index is off [...]
FORK IN THE ROAD FOR THE PRICE OF OIL May 24, 2010 DAVID MORRISON CFD MARKET STRATEGIST, GFT GLOBAL equities have taken a hammering over the past month. A whole host of issues which had been simmering on the back-burner have begun to boil over. The European sovereign debt crisis, concerns over the effects of tighter financial regulation and the continuing withdrawal of liquidity by the Chinese [...]
CFD ANALYST PICKS May 24, 2010 TECHNICAL STRATEGIST JOEL KRUGER My pick: Long FTSE 100 at 5,000 Expertise: Technical analysis Average time frame of trades: 5-10 days We had to wait the entire week, but our counter-trend long recommendation was finally triggered on Friday. The market dropped through our psychological barrier to trade slightly below 5,000, before bouncing into the close [...]
Tensions within the Eurozone put the single currency’s future at risk May 24, 2010 RESEARCH DIRECTOR, FOREX.COM JANE FOLEY IT SEEMS improbable that fiscal issues in a small country such as Greece could make the government of a country as large as the US worried about contagion. Yet this is exactly what has happened. This is only so, of course, because the US government is mindful of its own [...]
Looming hike in capital gains tax is fuelling investor panic May 23, 2010 HIGH-EARNING investors are rushing to sell off assets that will attract Capital Gains Tax (CGT) before next month’s emergency Budget due to indications that CGT rates could shoot up from 18 per cent to as much as 50 per cent. Gains on non-business assets now look set to be taxed in line – or close [...]
Options can help traders when the outlook for the markets is unclear May 23, 2010 THE markets are a mystery sometimes, and it can be difficult to decide which way they are going to move. One way for spread betters to trade even if they don’t have a clear idea which direction prices are going is through options. But how do you actually spread bet on an option? An option [...]
Good sales are driving auto stocks higher May 23, 2010 WHEN markets drop as dramatically as they did last week it can be helpful if traders have a glass-half-full mentality: as the market swoons it’s the perfect time to pick up stocks at bargain prices. But where should spread betters be looking to pick up good quality stocks on the cheap? Goldman Sachs produced a [...]
THE TIPSTER May 23, 2010 BHP BILLITON hosts its AGM on Monday. The decision by the Australian government to impose a 40 per cent tax on mining profits, the rise in the value of the dollar and the general slump in commodity prices has seen BHP Billiton’s shares fall nearly 23 per cent in less than a month. With the [...]
SPREAD BET GURU May 23, 2010 MARKET STRATEGIST josh@cityindex.com Q. Why did Germany’s ban on short selling cause the markets to fall by so much last week? A. It is important to note that this decision came at a critical time for the markets. Investors were already feeling incredibly jittery about the European sovereign debt crisis spreading from Greece to other [...]
Shares seen higher but the age of austerity looms May 23, 2010 AFTER last week’s jitters and ensuing sell-off which resulted in 200 points being shed from the FTSE, all eyes are on the UK market to see if it will hold up above 5,000 today after testing the psychologically significant level last week for the first time since October. We foresee a mildly positive open for [...]