Miners boost the South African stock market April 21, 2010 SOUTH Africa will be in the world’s spotlight like never before as the World Cup approaches. Television pictures of gazelles and wilderbeest roaming across the veldt will no doubt be great for the country’s tourist industry, but other parts of its economy also look sure to benefit. According to a report released last month by [...]
THE TIPSTER April 21, 2010 UK GDP figures for the first quarter of this year are released on Friday morning and analysts suggest that the economy could have stagnated after a weak showing in the fourth quarter of 2009. Uncertainity surrounding the impact of the volcanic ash cloud on some UK companies combined with weak growth figures could see the [...]
LISTED PRODUCT NEWS April 21, 2010 FIRST LISTING FOR RBS’S ETC PLATFORM Standard Commodities, the Royal Bank of Scotland’s exchange-traded commodities (ETC) platform, launched its first product on the Frankfurt Xetra stock exchange this week. Its physical gold ETC gives investors exposure to the performance of the London gold market fix price and the ETC is denominated in euros. The ETC [...]
Lower commodity prices and concerns over Greek debt weigh on FTSE stocks April 21, 2010 BRITAIN’S top share index ended down yesterday as lower commodity prices hit miners and oil stocks and concerns over Greece’s debt returned to haunt banks, though positive broker comment boosted food retailers. The FTSE 100 index closed down 60.26 points, or 1 per cent, at 5,723.43, giving back Tuesday’s one per cent gain. “Equity sentiment [...]
Poor forecasts from drug firms leave Wall St flat April 21, 2010 US stocks finished little changed yesterday as disappointing outlooks from healthcare companies offset strong earnings from Morgan Stanley and Apple. Healthcare stocks took a beating after both Abbott Laboratories and Gilead cut profit forecasts. Both Abbott and Gilead cited the impact of costs from US healthcare reform in their outlooks. The two represented a setback [...]
Beauty parades are no way to recruit April 21, 2010 THERE is some very bizarre behaviour going on,” says David Sims, professor of organisational behaviour at Cass Business School in London. He has heard of one HR department that threw away any applications written in blue ink, not because anybody believed there was anything wrong with those candidates, but just as a way of whittling [...]
CAREERS CLINIC April 21, 2010 I have been asked to mentor somebody, but I am really unsure about what it entails. How do I go about it and what should I expect? The first time I was asked to mentor a young aspiring person I asked the old-fashioned question: why should I, when no-one had done that for me? But [...]
Rebound in oil prices and strong bank results give FTSE a one per cent boost April 20, 2010 RECOVERING oil prices fuelled a one per cent rise in energy stocks and banks also gained to push Britain’s top share index one per cent higher by yesterday’s close. The FTSE 100 index ended up 55.78 points at 5,783.69, having closed down 0.3 per cent on Monday. The index is up 6.9 per cent this [...]
Apple and Yahoo lift US stocks with strong results April 20, 2010 US stocks rose yesterday as oil prices lifted energy shares and investors were upbeat about the overall profits recovery, even as some high-profile results fell short of lofty expectations. Goldman Sachs earnings trounced forecasts, but its stock slipped 2.1 per cent to $159.98. UK regulators launched a probe into alleged fraud by the company, adding [...]
How to find alpha even in a storm April 20, 2010 ABSOLUTE return funds claim to offer the Holy Grail of fund management, by delivering positive returns regardless of whether markets rise or fall. It’s a great pitch, and there has been a spate of new launches. But is absolute return really that fabulous? Absolute return funds work differently to conventional “relative return” funds, where the [...]
