Featured Business and Trading News

The US has lost jobs for the fifth month in a row at 5.5 percent as the jobless rate spiked (increasing by 0.5%) as a consequence of a class of students graduating schools and moving into the workforce. This is the largest spike in teenage unemployment since 1948. The spike was larger than every forecast from a Bloomberg News survey of economists. Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics in New York, has said that "Most of the economy looks in recession.'' Also Ten-year Treasury yields dropped to 3.92% in New York, from 4.04% on Thursday.

The subprime mortgage crisis has created a credit squeeze. The credit crisis has led to increased costs of debt and the lack of investor interest to refinance existing debts, which lead to the collapse of RAMS home loans and also the recent end for packaged mortgages (also called securitisation). Higher interest rates are expected as non-bank lenders cannot offer home loans as a result of the credit crisis. Since non-bank lenders are out of the picture, the lack of competition means higher interest rates.

The Aussie dollar hit a 24-year high this morning against the US dollar greenback. At 7am local Sydney time, the Australian dollar was trading at $US0.9565, up more than one US cent from Friday's close of 0.9434. This means imports like electronics and other products from overseas are cheaper. The Australian dollar has more buying power overseas so it is a perfect time to travel or buy up foreign currency, especially the US Dollar.

Treasurer Wayne Swan delivered one of the biggest budgets ever for the nation today for the Australian Budget 2008. Economists and business groups hailed the budget and expressed their confidence in the budget. The Australian financial market also expressed their confidence and expected that the proposed budget shall help to reduce interest rates and benefit the financial markets as well. It is wise to understand that the budget surplus is heavily contributed by the boom in resource prices which is being fuelled by demand in China.

It is a bear season in the stockmarket and gold miners are prospering. The possible US recession is the most probable main driver. Gold is seen as the best hedge against both the US recession and the US dollar currency weakness. Gold has returned a neat 20 percent return compared to the S&P which has declined 12 percent. Market commentators relate the current action in the market to what happened during 1979-80, when gold prices trebled within a matter of few weeks. A Fed Reserve rate cut would surely propel gold to new high price levels.

Here's an update on Australian real estate. The "Australian Mortgage Industry Report", a joint research whitepaper by JPMorgan and Fujitsu Consulting, due to be published next month, makes the prediction that some 750,000 Australian homeowners will be subjected to "mortgage stress" in the coming months - which means more than 35 per cent of their income will be allocated to home-loan repayments alone.

Jérôme Kerviel , the 31 year old French rogue trader employed by France's second largest bank, Société Générale (SocGen) has been charged for "breach of trust'', "falsifying and using falsified documents'' and "breaching IT controls access codes''. News of the biggest ever financial fraud in history broke last Thursday on the 24th of January 2008. The rogue trader defrauded the bank of €4.82 billion (AUD$8.2 billion, US$7.09 billion) - the largest trading fraud by a single person. Kerviel took an US$83 billion losing bet on European share prices.

Uranium King (UKL) officially listed today and started trading ay 48 cents a share which represents a 92 percent rise from their float offer price of only 25 cents. The company was established to acquire, explore and potentially develop uranium projects within the United States. The company had planned to sell up to 26 million shares to raise $6.5 million. The prospectus had stated that Uranium King is planning to spend $5.19 million on exploration, while the costs of the initial public offer would be $455,000 and working capital needs would be about $943,000.