The president of the Stockholm School of Economics, one of Sweden’s most prestigious universities, has been forced out in response to a scandal over his hiring of a high-ranking official who’d been convicted of insider trading. … Read More
US shale oil boom will make OPEC voice smaller in energy market- IEA
The US shale oil will meet most of the demand from across the world in the next five years, even if it goes into ‘recovery motion’. The developing economies outside OECD, such as BRICS countries and Saudi Arabia, that’ll be driving increased demand.The forecast is made by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its closely watched semi-annual report.“North America has set off a supply shock that is sending ripples throughout the world,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.“The good news is that this is helping to ease a market that was relatively tight for several years. The technology that unlocked the bonanza in places like North Dakota can and will be applied elsewhere, potentially leading to a broad reassessment of reserves,” Maria van der Hoeven added.The US Government has forecast daily oil production in the country to skyrocket in 2014 to the highest level since 1988.The price of oil slid below $95 a barrel on Tuesday as the Paris-based IEA, that advises 28 countries about energy issues, raised its U.S. oil production forecasts and cut its prediction for global crude demand.On a global demand side, the IEA forecast it to rise by a total of 6.1 million barrels a day over the next five years, from 90.6 million barrels a day in 2013 to 96.7 million barrels a day in 2018.The IEA says supply capacity of non-OPEC countries is set to be steadily rise, while hurdles in North and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a regional fallout from the ‘Arab Spring’ will be affecting supply from OPEC members.In case global demand rises, this will leave OPEC – an organization largely seen as the last resort to meet demand fluctuations – with the output levels almost unchanged from the current levels, the IEA said.Global refining industry and oil trading patterns are also set to be affected by the rising capacity of the developing world, the report said.“European refiners will see no let-up from the squeeze caused by increasing US product exports and the new Asian and Middle Eastern refining titans,” the paper specified. … Read More
Scandal rocks Stockholm School of Economics
The Stockholm School of Economics, one of Sweden’s most prestigious universities, has been hit by scandal after a high-ranking official was sacked when it emerged he’d been convicted of insider trading in Greece. … Read More
Stocks climb as unemployment hits lowest level since mid-March
US stocks Thursday finished a volatile trading session higher following improved jobless claims data and a mixed bag of corporate earnings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 24.50 (0.17 percent) to 14,700.80. After touching close to break-even, the index rallied in the final minutes for a…
The Tweet that rocked Wall Street: $200 billion lost on fake message
A picture may contain a thousand words, but a single fake tweet can blow a hole in financial markets in seconds.That was the costly lesson learned on Tuesday as a tweet allegedly from the Associated Press went the global rounds just before 1:08 p.m., reporting two explosions in the White House and that President Barack Obama had been injured.Within minutes AP personnel swung into damage control, attempted to reassure the tweet was a hoax. But the damage was already done: The bogus message sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a tailspin, shaving 150 points, or about 1 percent, in the blink of an eye.Here is the effect that the fake Tweet has on other markets: the S&P 500 Index, the NASDAQ Composite Index, and crude oil all dropped 1 percent. At the same time, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note fell 4 basis points and the CBOE Volatility Index (the so-called fear index), surged 10 percent.The fallout from the fake tweet, which came as the nation remains on edge following the attacks at the Boston Marathon, was compounded by new technology that can ‘read’ social media messages and place bets accordingly, experts say.The two-minute period of panic selling forced the Dow down from around 14700 to 14554. By 1:13 p.m., a mere 5 minutes after the message was picked up by traders, the market had recovered most of the ground that had been lost.Despite the brief pandemonium, the Dow at the closing bell was up 152.29 points, or 1.05%, at 14719.46.The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said it is investigating trade activity that occurred at the time of the tweet, recently gave companies permission to release vital information through social media such as Twitter and Facebook.The computer programs that are able to decipher the messages “are incredibly sophisticated,” Eric Pritchett, chief executive at Potamus Trading, a brokerage firm that specializes in electronic trading, told the Wall Street Journal. A program “reading the feed and seeing ‘blowing up’ can also read the one saying the account was ‘hacked,’” Pritchett said.SEC officials said it was too early to determine if the hoax was an effort on the part of some individuals to profit from the confusion, but some are pointing to such a possibility.”Imagine a situation where knowing a tweet of this kind can cause a market to go down,” Giovanni Vigna, co-founder and chief technology officer of the security firm Lastline, told WSJ. “You buy at a low price, and when the market rebounds, you make a profit.”Meanwhile, the seven minutes that elapsed before the market understood it was the victim of a hoax would have given any perpetrators plenty of time to pocket a huge profit.“Mom-and-pop traders could hardly move in time to profit off the dip, but seven minutes is an eternity in the world of high-frequency trading, where equities are exchanged in fractions of a second,” the business news outlet Quartz reported. “Trading bots could certainly have bought index funds at the bottom of the plunge, quickly profiting as the rest of the market realized that the AP tweet was wrong.”Tuesday’s incident represents a weak link in the way Wall Street does business, where getting information fast sometimes means the difference between millions – even billions – of dollars. Thus, too many investors seem ready to eschew calm fact-checking and place all their trust in largely unregulated social media as a form of news gathering.“In many respects, Twitter is the latest news wire of Wall Street. Investors have come to rely on the social medium for minute-by-minute news and opinion,” Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank, said in emailed comments to MarketWatch. “We have to recognize Twitter for what it is, a social media site, and an unfiltered news source.”A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army on Tuesday claimed responsibility on its own Twitter feed for the AP hack.The FBI is investigating the incident, said Jenny Shearer, an FBI spokeswoman in Washington. She declined to elaborate on the details. … Read More
Market Buzz: Floors to rally on positive sentiment in US, EU
Russian floors ended April 23 in the black: By close of Tuesday’s trading session, the MICEX rose by 0.23% to 1339.91 and the RTS added 0.36% to 1333.89. Macroeconomic news from the West did little to cheer investors. HSBC’s PMI survey showed manufacturing activity in China slowing in April, adding to concerns about global economic growth. The Flash Manufacturing PMI for the eurozone slipped to 46.5 in April from 46.8 in March. The Flash Manufacturing PMI in Germany, the powerhouse of the EU’s economy, was lower than expected at 47.9 in April, a four-month low that was down from 49.0 in March.European stocks rallied on Tuesday following a successful debt auction in Spain, sending yields on peripheral eurozone government bonds sharply lower. Prospects that the European Central Bank will cut interest rates next month to support the weary economy buoyed the positive sentiment. Germany’s DAX added 2.4% to close at 7,658.21, the CAC40 in France rose 3.6% to 3,783.05 and the FTSE 100 in the UK rallied 2% to 6,406.12.Updates from the US released late Tuesday were mixed: Single-family house sales grew by 1.5% to 417,000, failing to reach a forecasted mark of 419,000, the US Commerce Department reported. However, this figure grew by 18% year-on-year, rising form 352,000 in March 2012. US stocks were thrown into a tailspin for a brief period on Tuesday after hackers took control of the Associated Press Twitter account and sent out a false tweet about explosions at the White House that had injured President Obama. The fake report caused a brief plunge on US floors. The Markit Flash US Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index also fell to 52.0 in April, its lowest in six months.Despite disappointing manufacturing data from China, US investors focused on the encouraging earnings reports from the US, pushing stocks higher: The S&P 500 closed at 1,578.78, up 1%, the Dow Jones closed at 14,719.46, having added 1.1%, and the Nasdaq closed at 3,267.31, up 1.04%.Asian stocks are trading higher on Wednesday on the news of US company earnings and housing sales. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.8% to 13,772.98, rising above 13,700 for the first time in nearly five years. South Korea’s Kospi added 1% to 1,936.83, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 1.4% to 5,087.90, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.95% and the Shanghai Composite grew by 0.37%.Oil is currently in the black, with Brent adding 0.35% and WTI up 0.63%. … Read More
Jon Stewart castigates Congress for loosening insider trading law
On his show Tuesday night, The Daily Shot host Jon Stewart ripped Congress for weakening a recently approved law that subjected lawmakers to the same insider trading laws as every other American. Following a scathing 60 Minutes report on the topic, Congress passed the STOCK Act in 2012 to prohibit…
