Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) continues to expand its solutions and services. The leading provider of financial market data recently declared that its Real-Time Services business has added new market data coverage to PlusFeed, its low-latency, consolidated global datafeed. The company has also added different emerging market exchanges to PlusFeed services.  Interactive Data has added exchanges like National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange ( India ) in its Level 1 data services and Micex ( Russia ) Level 2 data services, as well as depth-of-market data for Johannesburg ( South Africa ) and Bombay ( India ) Stock Exchanges. Coverage of the Tokyo Financial Exchange ( Japan ) has also been added.  This apart, a few weeks back the company announced that its Pricing and Reference Data service business has enhanced the horizon of the interest rate swap valuation service. This service is of special help to clients, since it ...

AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (AU), the world’s third largest gold producer, plans to expand output through exploration. The company aims to produce up to 6 million ounces annually, up from 4.98 million ounces in 2008, largely by improving its mines and expanding through exploration. AngloGold expects the dollar price of gold to rise. The company has forecasted gold prices of $950 to $1,100 per ounce in 2010. It expects gold prices to rise beyond $1,100 if the downtrend in the US economy continues and investment demand for gold increases further. Although electricity costs and new wage settlements have put pressure on the company's bottom line, it has no plans to lay off workers to save costs. AngloGold is also planning to develop its La Colosa project in Colombia. In July this year, AngloGold had teamed up with African miner Randgold Resources to buy Moto Goldmines, which owns ...

By Shaun le Roux

The Credit Crisis was at the heart of the monumental collapse in global stock markets in 2008.

The credit-specific crisis has largely been averted by extraordinary government and central bank intervention, which has seen a massive expansion in the monetary base, and credit markets are now operating on pre-crisis terms. Now that we have that particularly ugly episode behind us, we can turn our attention to real world economics and try to assess what financial markets have in store for us over the years ahead.

We are of the view that no rational investment decision can be made today without first recognizing the major secular changes that are busy taking place in the world. In two key areas, the balance of power is in the process of shifting. We believe that you ignore these shifts at your peril.

Firstly, we believe that the world is becoming increasing dependant

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This short update comes to you from Cape Town airport where I am awaiting my flight to Johannesburg, and then to Frankfurt and finally Ljubljana (capital of Slovenia) where I will be spending the next few days with a group of South African business people.

I often argued the bull case for gold over the past few months. With gold having surged by $40 an ounce (+4.1%) to $994 this week, it would certainly seem as if renewed interest in the yellow metal is being stirred up.

As printing presses are running at full speed to produce ever-increasing quantities of fiat money as governments engineer the greatest asset price reflation in human history - and the US greenback is heading South - the longer-term fundamental case for the yellow metal is arguably positive.

The shorter-term technical picture is also starting to look interesting. This is explained by Adam Hewison

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PennyOmega.com Stock Report!

PennyOmega.com Hot Stock News & Alerts!

 

Tuesday August 25, 2009

PennyOmega.com Stock Report!

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Sierra Monitor Corporation (OTCBB: SRMC), a Cleantech focused company that designs, manufactures and sells electronic safety and environmental instrumentation, announced that its subsidiary FieldServer Technologies, a major gateway manufacturer in the building automation and process control industries, will be demonstrating its full range of products at the Intelligent Building Automation Symposium & Exposition which will be held at the Gallagher Convention Center in Gauteng, South Africa on September 1-2, 2009. This is the largest event of its kind in Southern Africa focusing on intelligent building design. Building owners, managers and integrators will be introduced to the latest technologies aimed at improving

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So argues Henricus J. Stander III, CIO of Henshaw Capital Partners, a London and Johannesburg-based alternative asset management company that launched the first-ever Pan-Africa private equity fund of funds early last year, in a fascinating piece penned for Africa investor in July.

To help escape the “second wave of effects” stemming from the credit crisis–”reduced export demand for natural resources, lower remittances, lower tax revenues, lower capital inflows, lower concessional lending, lower tourist arrivals all leading to “twin deficits” at the national levels; depressed capital markets and devalued currencies”–not only must domestic bond markets gain traction, but more importantly for the entrepreneurial engine that ultimately ignites and sustains economic recovery and growth, “the vast pools of capital that sit underutilized in African’s pension and insurance balance sheets” must be tapped, he states:

“In Nigeria, the pension industry has grown to more than US $7 billion in just a few

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In a speech given to mining investors while in Johannesburg earlier this year, Frontier Advisory CEO Dr. Martyn Davies reiterated the case for frontier, and specifically, Africa-centric investment:

“If you believe in the long-term urbanization success story of China and India, you buy Africa, because that’s where the commodities are going to come from,” Davies told the audience.

Endowed with 30% of the world’s minerals, the African continent is experiencing continued attention and capital from Chinese and Indian firms which, according to McKinsey’s sub-Saharan Africa principal Dr. Heinz Pley, will concurrently provide growth to those economies as well as those in Africa itself:

“The Chinese have a long way to go to reach the personal income levels that Europeans and Japanese had. There is a lot of room left for growth in China and there is India in the wings and actually also Africa, in the long-term, will create significant

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I wouldn’t read a lot into the action in the gold market on Friday. It was just another day off the calendar…as Ted Butler would say. The only comment I would make is that the action in the gold price feels more like a top than a bottom. Silver was a little more interesting, as it rose in price through the entire trading day, and finished virtually on its high of the day…and a new high for this move. Now the dichotomy between gold and silver is starting to show up in the price action, and not just the open interest numbers.

Speaking of open interest numbers, gold o.i. on Thursday fell 3,216 contracts to 391,144…on absolutely monstrous volume of 174,662 contracts. Silver’s decline was much more modest…only 93 contracts to 96,309…on total volume of 18,664 contracts.

The Commitment of Traders report issued yesterday, was as expected. In silver, the bullion banks

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The following appeared in June’s Business Diary Botswana:

Private equity (PE) has long been considered a viable way to achieve risk-adjusted returns that exceed those possible in the public equity markets (though per University of Chicago scholar Steven Kaplan, during the three decades ending in 2005, the average private equity firm’s annual return was no better than that of Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index). Accordingly, institutional investors include private equity (or even funds of funds) in order to concurrently achieve optimal diversification and risk premia. And while such “limited partnership interests” demand that investors lock-in their contributions for an appreciable time period, such that general partners can commit to any number of strategies, in recent years the once highly illiquid asset class has given way to a vibrant secondary market available for sellers of private equity assets, which in turn has spread risk and further fueled

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From the close of trading in New York on Wednesday afternoon at 5:15 Eastern Time…and the close of trading 24 hours later on Thursday at the same time…the U.S. dollar lost about 90 basis points. That’s a big drop. Gold’s response? Up three bucks…and silver was actually down on the day.

Yesterday’s low tick on the U.S. dollar occurred around 2 p.m. in New York at 79.72 cents…plus or minus a couple of ticks. Gold’s peak price in the first few days of June was around $990…when the dollar printed a low of about 78.70 cents. In five weeks, the U.S. dollar has gained a full cent [one percent and change], while the US$ gold price has been hit for 77 big ones. That’s a drop of 7.8%.

The point I’m making here is that this decline in the gold and silver price over the last five weeks has had

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