Tag Archives: Linkedin

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Dollar Gains But Euro Weaker As ECB Considers Easing

Here’s Friday’s ‘Just A Minute’ bringing you a 60 second summary of what’s happening in the markets:

Main Trading Event Of The Day: GBP Current Account @ 09.30 GMT

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING TODAY

Dollar Gains But Euro Weaker As ECB Considers Easing

The dollar gained against the euro on Thursday as investors bet the Federal Reserve will start hiking rates before Europe’s central bank, which has signaled it could loosen monetary policy soon. Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that the central bank could potentially raise rates after a period of about six months from the end of its bond-buying program. That puts the first hike as early as next spring and has surprised market participants. At the same time, the euro has been under pressure on rising expectations the European Central Bank will move to further ease monetary policy in an effort to stave off deflation. The euro EUR/USD changed hands at $1.3744, down 0.3% on the day. The shared currency has weakened since ECB officials this week signaled the central bank would consider negative deposit rates and a move toward outright quantitative easing. The U.S. dollar added slightly to gains after the Labor Department said the number of people who applied for first-time weekly jobless benefits fell by 10,000 to 311,000 in the week ended March 20, the lowest level in four months. Economists had forecast claims of 320,000.

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Gold Near 6-Week Low; Heading For Second Weekly Loss

Gold recovered slightly on Friday after sharp overnight declines but the metal remained near six-week lows and on track for a second straight weekly decline, as improving sentiment over the U.S. economic outlook dented its safe-haven appeal. Bullion has dropped about $100 an ounce from a six-month high in the last nine trading sessions on strong U.S. economic data and comments by Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen that interest rates could rise in the first half of 2015. The sharp drop in prices in the last few days is expected to bring physical buyers back into the market and help gold prices consolidate although some analysts have expressed concern that there could be a further downside ahead for gold and that the metal will struggle in the face of weak demand and forecasted rising real interest rates in the U.S.

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Is Social Media The Future Of Trading?

Stock prices are driven largely by mass psychology while social media enhances people’s ability to share opinions and news on a large scale. As more individuals join the social networks Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, their role in spreading information will increase. Market information will be more easily shared amongst consumers of social media, decreasing the time it takes for potential investors to react to changing conditions. Simultaneously, the reaction time of potential investors to opinions will decrease. If there are rumours surrounding a stock or other investment and no factual information to check them with, social media users will consume the rumours as a substitute for fact. The mass psychology of the investing community will be more heavily dictated by social media. Looking to the future, traders will rely on social media for trading matters more and more.

That sums up Friday’s highlights! Keep up with all the trading news for the day via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. We hope you have a profitable day on the markets.

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Just A Minute!

Welcome to Tuesday’s ‘Just A Minute’. Here’s a 60 second summary of some of the key market activities today:

  • Main trading events of the day: UK Construction PMI @ 09.30 GMT & U.S. Factory Orders @ 15:00 GMT
  • Stocks to watch: Buffalo Wild Wings Inc, Hillenbrand Inc & Sirius XM Holdings. Twitter & LinkedIn shares edge higher ahead of reports later this week.
  • Other trading news: Gold holds advance as concern that global growth may be faltering sends equity markets lower and boosts demand for haven assets.

What We’re Watching Today:

Market Watch: More Selling Ahead

The S&P 500 broke below an important trend line yesterday, and technicians are seeing more selling ahead. Whether this means the start of a bear market remains to be seen but at the very least, there’s going to be a very severe, very sustainable and really quite an ugly correction. The S&P 500 is down 5.7 percent since the start of the year, and it fell 2.3 percent Monday. The S&P ended the day at 1741, and selling accelerated when it broke through 1770, a level it tested and held last week. According to the Stock Trader’s Alamanc, “A bear market requires a 30 percent drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average after 50 calendar days or 13 percent decline after 145 calendar days. Reversals of 30 percent in the Value Line Geometric Index since 1965 also qualify.”

Eurozone:

Deflation fears: Will The ECB Pull The Trigger Again?

Another low inflation shock in the eurozone has increased the pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB) to act, with some economists arguing that a rate cut could be announced as soon as this week. The focus will be on ECB President Mario Draghi this Thursday following the central bank’s policy meeting, with economists expecting him to act sooner rather than later. Concerns that the 18-nation currency bloc was headed for deflation were boosted further on Friday, when official data revealed that inflation fell to 0.7 percent in January – below the 0.9 percent expected by economists, and significantly lower than the ECB’s 2 percent target. Although the ECB remains in a wait-and-see mode, it is likely that it will be forced to act and this is only a question of time.

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Tech:

Investors Eye Microsoft Breakup

Microsoft’s new leadership could almost double the company’s valuation by parting with a good chunk of the businesses it uses to court consumers. Offloading units such as Xbox video-game consoles and the Bing search engine may be the change Microsoft needs to stimulate growth as it prepares to make Satya Nadella chief executive officer. Some analysts believe that Microsoft should go further by also splitting off Windows and smartphones to focus on providing services to business customers. Former CEO and co-founder Bill Gates is weighing giving up his title as chairman, but is likely to remain involved in product development. Stocks are cheap – keep an eye on them!

That sums up Tuesday’s highlights! We wish you a profitable trading week. Remember to keep in touch with us on Facebook, Google+ & Twitter for all the latest news, information, tips and more! Trade with the experts and become a superior trader!

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Company Confidential?

Still in app mode following yesterday’s post on Aviate and with Las Vegas’s CES still in full force, it’s interesting to hear that tech companies are pitching apps that provide untraceable message delivery. These are designed for corporate users that want a higher level of security than Snapchat offers. The latest offering is Confide, a text-based iOS app released this week by former AOL executive Jon Brod and Howard Lerman, chief executive officer of location-services company Yext.

Confide is aimed at professionals who want to speak openly about delicate personnel or legal matters without leaving a trail of evidence that exposes confidential information. Think about the times when someone sends a memo that says, ‘Confidential, do not forward,’ or when someone asks for your personal e-mail to go off the company’s network or when it’s something you’d rather talk about on the phone or face to face, but don’t have time – that’s where Confide comes in.

There is, however, still one potential problem. Companies face heavy regulatory pressure to preserve and not destroy business e-mails, financial records, and other documents. In business, there still needs to be some kind of audit trail and accountability. For instance, last month, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Barclays $3.75 million for its decade-long failure to retain certain electronic records, e-mails, and instant messages. If employees are discussing critical information or creating financial records, they should most probably be retained.

Confide could also face a much higher barrier to entry if Snapchat were to market itself more aggressively to business users. As the app has just been launched it is as yet unclear whether business people will commit to using such a service, but Brod and Lerman point to the success of Facebook’s corporate ‘copycats’ such as LinkedIn. The founders remain convinced that it’s incredibly important, like in the offline world, to provide the option of impermanence online.

Is this clever app a success in the making? Drop us a line and we’ll ‘confide’ in you!’

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LinkedIn All Work And No Play

According to its fourth-quarter earnings report, LinkedIn boosted its shares almost 20 percent to $148.50 by early Friday afternoon — breaking an all-time high for the professional and increasingly popular social network.

In other LinkedIn related news, the company banned Facebook’s bangwithfriends.com app from its site, leaving the sex-crazed workaholics out in the cold. According to LinkedIn the app sullied its terms of service, which explicitly forbids endorsing adult activities. Paradoxically, the site is about adult of activities: finding and keeping an unexciting job.