The US markets are hitting all time highs once again as third quarter GDP growth came in at an annualised rate of 5% and better than expected sending the equity indices and dollar up.

Yesterday the following article appeared in the New York Post that 17 year old High School students Mohammed Islam and Damir Tulemaganbetov had made millions playing the stock market. Now it appears that the story was completely made up…

After the recent allegations of inappropriate supplier payments at Tesco which significantly flattered profits at the troubled company, today it was announced that Chris Ronnie, the former chief executive of JJB Sports, had gone one better by personally taking nearly £1 million from the company’s suppliers before it went bust in 2012.

After the Dow Jones Industrials flirted with the key 18,000 level in the first week of December its been down hill all the way for the major stock market indices in the last week as investors have finally got jittery.

The Chinese Shanghai Composite index has had an incredible rise over the last few months. Today it closed down 5% at 2,856 after rising as high as 3,090 at one point. The index is up 39.5% for 2014, 24% in the last month and 32% in the last 12 months helped by Chinese retail investors piling into the market causing a rise of bubble like proportions.

The Dow Jones Industrials are within touching distance of the 18,000 mark with the index recently up 41 points to 17,941 with the S&P 500 up 4 points to 2,076 as the US non-farm payrolls number for November didn’t disappoint.

The Russian Rouble is currently trading at 53 Roubles to the US dollar, an all time low. Earlier this year a dollar bought less than 35 roubles. The collapse of the currency has been in part due to the sanctions imposed following Crimean/Ukranian crisis but more recently by the steep fall in the price of oil below $70 a barrel. This petro-economy is reliant on oil to balance the budget with oil and gas providing nearly two thirds of  [read more →]

It feels like being back in the dark days of 2009 the way that oil shares are being hammered by the markets right now with Brent crude oil down yet another $1.5 to $68.5 this morning. Back in June Brent was selling for $113 a barrel!

So it looks like OPEC are maintaining their daily output at 30 million barrels a day. Bad news for oil prices with Brent currently down $3 to $74.3 a barrel with WTI crude down $2.4 at $71.

Brent crude is up around half a dollar to $78.7 a barrel with the markets trying to figure out what will happen at tomorrow’s OPEC meeting in Vienna.