MELBOURNE/TOKYO (Reuters) - Crude oil benchmarks fell sharply on Monday, with Brent hitting its lowest since November 2002, as the global coronavirus pandemic worsened and the Saudi Arabia-Russia price war showed no signs of abating. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell as far as $19.92, near an 18-year low hit earlier this month, and was last trading down 5.4%, or $1.17, at $20.34 a barrel. The oil markets have been slammed by demand destruction caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the Saudi Arabia-Russia price war that is flooding markets with extra supply....
We hate to say this but, we told you so. On February 27th we published an article with the title Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW and predicted a US recession when the S&P 500 Index was trading at the 3150 level. We also told you to short the market and buy […]...
(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. fell as much as 10% after a satellite operator it invested in filed for bankruptcy, ceding some gains from an unprecedented plan to sell assets and buy back shares.OneWeb made the filing late Friday U.S. time after raising about $3.3 billion in debt and equity financing from shareholders including SoftBank, Airbus SE and Qualcomm Inc. since its inception. At least $1 billion of that came from SoftBank, which said it first invested in December 2016 and declined to give a total amount.It is the latest blow to SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, who last week unveiled a plan to raise $41 billion to buy back shares and slash debt. The announcement sent the shares soaring more than 50% in just a few days. The rally was interrupted when Moody’s Corp. cut its debt rating by two notches, saying the Japanese investment firm’s plan to sell off assets...
Mar.29 -- Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota, talks about the U.S. government's response to the coronavirus outbreak. In an opinion piece he co-write for the New York Times, Osterholm discussed that the U.S. needs a unified national strategy. He speaks with Haidi Stroud-Watts and Taylor Riggs on "Bloomberg Markets."...
(Bloomberg) -- Stocks retreated along with crude oil, and the dollar snapped a four-day slide as investors took in weekend developments that underscored a long road ahead to defeat the coronavirus.Still, the risk-off moves were more contained than in the past three Mondays, when futures on the S&P 500 Index hit limit-down early on. Today they were down less than 2%. Japan’s Topix underperformed as a majority of its members traded without the right to the latest dividend. The yen advanced along with sovereign bonds, while crude oil in New York dropped below $20 at one point.Singapore’s dollar fluctuated after the monetary authority there -- which uses the exchange rate as its main policy tool -- announced a modest easing, reducing the slope of its currency band to zero while affirming the current level. Emerging currencies including South Africa’s rand and Mexico’s peso tumbled amid concerns about debt downgrades.The latest news...
(Bloomberg) -- Insurers the world over have been walloped by evaporating investment returns, but those in South Korea have been hit particularly hard. Just consider this: The nation’s second-largest life insurer became a penny stock this month.Hanwha Life Insurance Co. has fallen 66% over the past year, and its shares touched the equivalent of about 71 cents on March 23. Its price-to-book value is just 0.1 times, a fraction the 0.8 average for European insurers or 0.9 among U.S. counterparts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.The latest slump in markets, which has seen the South Korean won tumble -- casting a cloud on Hanwha’s tactic of investing heavily overseas -- has layered pain on top of a pre-existing condition. Hanwha, along with its peers, sold a welter of long-term, fixed-rate products to retail investors two decades ago that are now proving costly to maintain.Those legacy liabilities from the late 1990s to...
At this time, we stand by our forecast for a minimum 50% to 61.8% correction of the entire rally from 2009 to 2020. That’s the value area that will start bringing in the real buyers and not just the reactionary buyers....
