General World News

GBP/USD: Trading the British Services PMI

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British Services PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index) is based on a survey of purchasing managers in the services sector. Respondents are surveyed for their view of the economy and business conditions in the UK. A reading which is higher than the market forecast is bullish for the pound. Here are all the details, and 5 possible […]

General World News

A new global oil deal could draw lessons from 1998

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By Dmitry Zhdannikov LONDON (Reuters) – After a year of secret diplomacy and hushed-up private talks around the world, OPEC’s mighty Saudi Arabia and rival Venezuela were persuaded to cut a deal by non-OPEC Mexico which overcame mutual acrimony and led to a much-needed rise in oil prices. It was 1998, trust had long broken […]

General World News

Asian Shares Slip as Crude Resumes Its Slide

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Asian shares fell on Tuesday as crude oil prices slid on oversupply fears and after downbeat manufacturing data raised concerns about sluggish global economic growth. Spreadbetters predicted European bourses would follow Asia lower, with IG predicting Britain’s FTSE 100 would start trading down 0.6 percent. Germany’s DAX was seen falling 0.7 percent, and France’s CAC […]

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RBA holds AUD/USD in range

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The Reserve Bank of Australia came back from the summer holiday in the land down under and left the interest rate unchanged at 2%, as widely expected. While the recent market turmoil and worries about China may have added some easing bias, domestic indicators including the inflation mandate looked quite healthy. So what was in […]

General World News

BP reports worst annual loss in at least 20 years

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LONDON (Reuters) – BP on Tuesday reported an annual loss of $6.5 billion (4.5 billion pounds) in 2015, its worst in at least 20 years as the British oil and gas company struggled with a sharp downturn in the oil market. Underlying replacement cost profit, BP’s definition of net income, for the fourth quarter of […]

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This is what regret looks like for the Pentagon

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America’s most expensive weapons system ever just hit another snag. The F-35 Lighting II, Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation fighter jet, is expected to miss a crucial deadline for successfully deploying its sixth and final software release — referred to as Block 3F. Block 3F is part of the 8 million lines of sophisticated software code that […]

General World News

If You Just Won the Lottery….

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All the recent buzz around the Powerball Lottery Jackpot of 1.6 billion dollars got me to thinking… Many people I spoke with in the last few weeks while doing my day to day activities were more than happy to share what they would do if they won the lottery. A technician at my doctors’ office […]

General World News

Exclusive: Travel insurer says sales soar on Zika fears

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By Jeffrey Dastin NEW YORK (Reuters) – Travel insurance sales for trips to Latin America have surged as vacationers consider scrapping their plans to avoid the rapidly spreading Zika virus, one of the top U.S. providers, RoamRight, told Reuters on Monday. The Maryland-based company, part of insurer Arch Capital Group Ltd , said revenue jumped […]

General World News

Google is showing discipline with 'moonshot' spending, which is exactly what investors wanted (GOOG, GOOGL)

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Google isn’t blowing that much money on projects like self-driving cars after all — less than 10% of its capital expenditures in 2015 were for forward-looking products outside its core. This came out in fourth-quarter earnings for Google’s parent company, Alphabet. This was the first time Alphabet broke numbers out for the core “Google,” which […]

General World News

Institute Reports Sizable Drop in N. Korea-China Trade

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Bilateral trade between North Korea and China fell nearly 15 percent last year in what appeared to be a reflection of a troubled relationship between the two countries, South Korea’s state-run policy research institute said Sunday. Trade between the two countries from January to November 2015 was worth $4.9 billion, down from $5.76 billion in […]