Gold prices marked a fresh four-month high on Friday to tally a fifth week of gains in a row, finding support as the dollar extended its earlier decline despite a slightly higher-than-expected climb in core U.S. inflation. Some "momentum and positioning for next week" may have given gold an "extra boost," said Jeff Wright, chief investment officer at Wolfpack Capital. February gold GCG8, +0.30%...Read More
(Refiles to change "expanding" to "expand" in first paragraph)By Liz HamptonHOUSTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Oil producers are unlikely to significantly expand drilling budgets this year despite the recent run-up in crude prices, Chris Wright, chief executive of Liberty Oilfield Services Inc, told Reuters in an interview on Friday. "Spending budgets for E&P customers were...Read More
ABUJA, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Nigeria's central bank said on Friday it had injected $262.5million into the interbank foreign exchange market, extending efforts to improve liquidity and alleviate dollar shortages.The bank said in a statement it had released the funds for use by businesses in the agricultural and petroleum sectors as well as airlines.The bank said it would continue to intervene in the f...Read More
Although bitcoin (BTC)came to the surface nearly a decade ago, the digital currency really burst into the mainstream in late 2017. The fresh surge in demand was evident when bitcoin futures began trading on Cboe Global Markets (CBOE) and CME Group (CME) exchanges, the former of which experienced website outages amid crazy volume. Below we will take a deeper look into the volatile cryptocurrency w...Read More
LONDON, Jan 12 (IFR) - Crown Holdings is looking to issue senior unsecured high-yield bonds to back its acquisition of peer Signode Industrial Group Holdings. The company is looking to issue 335m of five-year, 600m of eight-year and US$750m of eight-year notes, according to a banker on the deal. Citigroup is leading the trade and other banks are involved.The bonds are being issued as part of a bro...Read More
ACCRA, Jan 12 (Reuters) - The Bank of Ghana said the yield on its weekly 91-day bill edged up to 13.36 percent at an auction on Friday from 13.32 percent at the last such sale on Jan 5.The bank said it had accepted 497.89 million cedis ($110 million) worth of bids out of the 498.39 million cedis tendered for the paper, which will be issued on Monday.Ghana's treasury bill yields, which were around...Read More
Discretionary cash is critical to Barrick Gold and Kinross Gold to sustain their growth capex and debt capacity.Barrick Gold wins out in deleveraging using discretionary cash and its strong liquidity.Kinross Gold has adequate discretionary cash thanks to organic growth strategy. Image source: The Balance Investment Thesis: Releveraging of balance sheets is one of the important concerns of most go...Read More
(Adds link to related content)By David LawderWASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday he believed the Republican tax cuts will ultimately become revenue neutral over 10 years due to higher growth, but the Treasury will likely ask Congress for more money to implement the plan."We think there will be over $1 trillion in growth, so I do think this wil...Read More
* Consumer prices rise 0.3 pct in Dec. vs est. rise of 0.2 pct* Retail sales up 0.4 pct vs est increase of 0.4 pct* Facebook falls after making changes to News Feed* Indexes up: Dow 0.65 pct, S&P 0.50 pct, Nasdaq 0.59 pct (Updates to early afternoon)By Sruthi ShankarJan 12 (Reuters) - Wall Street rose to record highs on Friday as fourth-quarter earnings season kicked off with solid results fro...Read More
Gold has reached the full ATR projection boosted by the positive EUR flow and weaker USD. According to Admiral Correlation Matrix, we see a very positive correlation between EUR/USD and Gold on last 500 H1 bars. At this point we could see a retracement from the top 1333.40 and if the price breaks 1326.70 to the downside, next target might be 1320 zone. However, if the price breaks above 1334 then...Read More
Earnings season is upon us, and Dow component UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) is set to report fourth-quarter earnings next Tuesday before the open. Below, we will break down UnitedHealth's upbeat earnings history, as well as some other "buy" signals that have cropped up lately for the Dow stock.UNH stock has moved higher the day after seven of its last eight earnings releases, including a 5.5%...Read More
By John McCrankNEW YORK, Jan 12 (Reuters) - The post-trade processor for U.S. stocks, as well as corporate and municipal bonds, said it is taking steps to further cut the time it takes to settle trades in a bid to reduce risk in the financial system and free up more capital.The U.S. financial services industry moved to a two-day settlement cycle, which refers to the time an investor's order is exe...Read More
Bank earnings are in focus today, and financial institution Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings before the markets open on Tuesday, Jan. 16. Below, we will dig deeper into how the stock has been faring ahead of its highly anticipated report, and why C options can still be had at a bargain.C stock has had a stellar year, picking up more than 28% over the past...Read More
SAO PAULO, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Brazil's securities regulator on Friday prohibited local investment funds from buying cryptocurrencies, making it the latest global markets watchdog to call for caution with the volatile asset.Cryptocurrencies cannot be considered financial assets, regulator CVM ruled, in effect barring funds from investing directly in assets such as bitcoin.Local funds interested in...Read More
By Ben MartinLONDON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - The Singaporean billionaire trying to buy Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C) has hired advisory firm Georgeson to help to drum up investor support for the deal in the face of shareholder opposition that could derail the bid.City Developments Limited (CDL), the vehicle of businessman Kwek Leng Beng, has offered 620 pence per share to acquire the 34.8...Read More
(Kitco News)- There is little standing in gold’s way next week thatwill stop prices from pushing higher in what will be a shortened trading week,according to some analysts.The gold market is seeing its fifth weekly consecutivegain as prices hold near their highest level in four months. February gold futures lasttraded at $1,331.70 an ounce, up 0.7% since last Friday. Since its December lowgo...Read More
By Marc JonesLONDON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Following are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them.YUAN TO WATCHNext week's data on Chinese GDP, industrial output and retail sales figures are expected to confirm a very modest slowdown is taking place in the world's second largest economy. It has been largely propell...Read More
Jan 12 (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Patrick Harker repeated on Friday his expectation for two interest-rate rises this year thanks to a "pretty good" U.S. economic outlook."I see two rate increases as the likely appropriate path for 2018," Harker said in prepared remarks in Ivyland, Pennsylvania that largely reflected a speech he gave a week ago.(R...Read More
LIMA, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Peru's economy likely grew "a little under" 2.7 percent last year because of weaker-than-expected public investments that factored into the bank's interest rate cut this week, the central bank said on Friday.But the bank still expects the economy to grow by 4.2 percent this year, as recent political uncertainty should be transitory, Jorge Estrella, the manager of...Read More
(Adds details on BlackRock tax rate, performance, succession plan)By Trevor HunnicuttNEW YORK, Jan 12 (Reuters) - BlackRock Inc charged past a record $6 trillion in assets, its profit beating Wall Street forecasts, as investors flooded into the relatively low-cost funds of the world's largest asset manager.A new U.S. tax law, which sliced corporate and individual income rates, also helped the com...Read More