Global ETF News Older than One Year
ETF Securities-ETFS Precious Metals Weekly-White Precious Metals Rally as Investors Bet on China and US Growth Recovery
December 3, 2012-- Precious metals see wide performance divergence as investors remain conflicted between fiscal cliff risks and signs US and China are recovering.
In the early part of last week the gold price slid from $1753/oz to $1719/oz on hopes that headway on fiscal cliff discussions was being made. By the end of the week, however, the gold price had risen to $1726/oz as the House speaker lamented "no substantive progress" had been made. The uncertainty over the fiscal cliff stands in contrast to growing signs of a recovering economy. US Q3 GDP data was revised upwards to 2.7% annualised growth from an earlier 2.0% estimate. The housing market, which has for years been a drag on the US economy, is now rebounding. House prices increased for the sixth consecutive month (by 3.0% month on month in September). Should US politicians come to an amicable solution on the fiscal cliff, cyclical commodities, including the white "industrial" precious metals such as silver, platinum and palladium will likely benefit (as we saw last week). For now, gold continues to be investors' favourite safe haven asset, with gold ETP holdings extending their record highs.
Greece inches closer to receiving its much-needed tranche of aid. As the uncertainty around Greece's near-term solvency starts to lift, the euro rose against the US dollar, helping to boost precious metals prices. After a third attempt, the Troika finally came to an agreement on Greece's bailout terms. The new compromise involves a commitment to cut Greece's debt to 124% of GDP by 2012 (rather than 120%) and to 110% of GDP only two years later. Greece's borrowing rate was cut by 1%, maturities doubled to 30 years and interest payments were deferred by ten years. Under the terms laid out by the IMF, Greece must buy back some of its debt at distressed prices to reduce its overall debt burden. The deal was approved by German Bundestag on Friday, but it still needs the approval of other Euro-nation parliaments. While the agreement falls short of the debt write-offs (or "hair-cuts") the IMF favoured, the fact that some countries are lending to Greece more cheaply than they can borrow, has imposed losses on Greece's creditors.
Platinum supported by a US shift into clean diesel cars. Sales of clean diesel vehicles in the US have increased by 25.6% this year. Clean diesel cars only account for 3% of US sales (compared to over 50% in Europe). A shift toward clean diesel cars in the US will likely boost the demand for platinum that is used in diesel auto-catalysts. Palladium prices are also benefiting from the belief that US and China recovery will boost palladium sales destined for the gasoline auto-catalysts that dominate the Chinese and US auto markets.
Key events to watch this week: US fiscal cliff negotiations. US politicians continue to bicker, with Republican House leader Boehner dismissing a Democrat proposal outright, saying 'the White House has to get serious'. Time is running out and markets are becoming increasingly anxious. US jobs numbers late this week will also be watched carefully, though Hurricane Sandy is expected to disrupt the relevance of the month's numbers.
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Source: ETF Securities
NASDAQ OMX Launches Global Index Family
Provides Investors a Broad Representation of the Global Investable Marketplace
December 3, 2012--The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ), parent of the world's first electronic stock market, today announced the launch of the NASDAQ Global Index Family-an extension of NASDAQ OMX's growth as an innovative global index provider.
The NASDAQ Global Index Family represents more than 98% of the global equity investable marketplace and will result in the development of 24,000 indexes. The family consists of global securities broken down by market segment, region, country, size and sector. The NASDAQ Global Index Family covers 9,000 securities with a combined float-adjusted market capitalization of over $32 trillion.
Today marks the first phase of the launch of the NASDAQ Global Index Family, with the introduction of approximately 4,000 indexes that are calculated in US dollars. The remaining indexes will be unveiled in subsequent phases in other currencies.
Source: NASDAQ OMX
NCB Capital becomes first Saudi firm to launch Dublin Ucits funds
December 3, 2012--Wealth manager NCB Capital has become the first Saudi Arabia institution to establish a non-Saudi registered range of Ucits funds in Ireland.
NCB Capital, which claims to run the world’s largest Shariah compliant fund at US$3.93bn, is starting its Ucits range with the NCB Capital Saudi Arabian Equity Fund and the NCB Capital GCC Equity Fund.
The objective of the two funds is to generate long-term capital growth by investing in listed companies in the Saudi Arabian and Gulf Co-operation Council markets in line with Shariah guidelines.
Source: International Adviser
CFA and Eurex to cooperate and jointly enhance futures market structure in China
Cooperation agreement signed on 2 December 2012
December 2, 2012--The China Futures Association (CFA) and Eurex Group signed today a comprehensive cooperation agreement in Shenzhen at the 8th International Derivatives Forum in Shenzhen.
Both partners foresee an extensive dialogue in order to facilitate the further development of both derivatives markets.
Eurex is the first international and globally operating derivatives market which has entered into a cooperation agreement with the leading Chinese futures association. Both partners have already started to work together and hosted joint training sessions over the last months in the People’s Republic of China. Today’s signing will transform and enhance the cooperation further.
Source: Eurex
IMF-External Debt Statistics: Guide for Compilers and Users
November 30, 2012--The Inter-Agency Task Force of Finance Statistics (TFFS) presents the draft of updated chapters and appendices of the EDS Guide.
The update is the result of a cooperative effort of TFFS agencies, as was the case for the 2003 EDS Guide. The TFFS invites external debt statistics compilers and users to provide comments.
view the External Debt Statistics: Guide for Compilers and Users
Source: IMF
HKEx places new shares for LME deal
November 30, 2012--Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) announced the placing of new shares to independent professional and institutional investors to raise about 7.753 billion HK dollars ( 1 billion U.S. dollars).
According to the announcement released on Friday, a total of 65. 7 million new HKEx shares will be issued under the placing, representing about 5.71 percent of the issued share capital of the company as enlarged by the placing.
Source: NZ Week
IMF Working paper-Finance and Development: Catalysts for Change
November 29, 2012--Summary:Financial network analysis is used to provide firm level bottom-up holistic visualizations of interconnections of financial obligations in global OTC derivatives markets.
This helps to identify Systemically Important Financial Intermediaries (SIFIs), analyse the nature of contagion propagation, and also monitor and design ways of increasing robustness in the network. Based on 2009 FDIC and individually collected firm level data covering gross notional, gross positive (negative) fair value and the netted derivatives assets and liabilities for 202 financial firms which includes 20 SIFIs, the bilateral flows are empirically calibrated to reflect data-based constraints. This produces a tiered network with a distinct highly clustered central core of 12 SIFIs that account for 78 percent of all bilateral exposures and a large number of financial intermediaries (FIs) on the periphery. The topology of the network results in the “Too- Interconnected-To-Fail” (TITF) phenomenon in that the failure of any member of the central tier will bring down other members with the contagion coming to an abrupt end when the ‘super-spreaders’ have demised. As these SIFIs account for the bulk of capital in the system, ipso facto no bank among the top tier can be allowed to fail, highlighting the untenable implicit socialized guarantees needed for these markets to operate at their current levels. Systemic risk costs of highly connected SIFIs nodes are not priced into their holding of capital or collateral. An eigenvector centrality based ‘super-spreader’ tax has been designed and tested for its capacity to reduce the potential socialized losses from failure of SIFIs.
view the IMF Working paper-Finance and Development: Catalysts for Change
Source: IMF
ABN AMRO Clearing Implements NASDAQ OMX's SMARTS Broker
November 29, 2012--ABN AMRO Clearing, a business line of ABN AMRO, has implemented NASDAQ OMX's SMARTS Broker solution for surveillance and compliance monitoring across multiple equity, derivative and commodity markets in Europe, Asia Pacific and the United States.
ABN AMRO Clearing will utilize the automated trade monitoring solution to facilitate quick identification of suspicious trading behavior and intuitive detection of potential market abuse. SMARTS Broker will provide the bank's multi-regional compliance professionals with actionable insight and sophisticated alerts for various forms of market abuse, including insider trading, market manipulation, violations of order handling rules and irregular trading patterns by automated and high frequency trading platforms. The ABN AMRO users of SMARTS Broker are then able to utilize the integrated SMARTS data analysis tools, including Spread Graph and Market Replay, which enables them to quickly and efficiently evaluate the alerted trading, against the background of full historical market data.
Source: NASDAQ OMX
BIS, ECB and IMF Publish Third Part of Handbook on Securities Statistics
November 28, 2012--The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today jointly released the third and final part of the Handbook on Securities Statistics, which covers equity securities issues and holdings.
The aim of the Handbook is to assist national and international agencies in the production of relevant, coherent and internationally comparable securities statistics for use in monetary policy formulation and financial stability analysis.
The Handbook is the first publication of its kind dealing exclusively with the conceptual framework for the compilation and presentation of securities statistics. As such, it directly addresses one of the recommendations endorsed by the Ministers of Finance and Central Bank Governors of the Group of Twenty Economies (G20) concerning the need to fill data gaps and to strengthen data collection. Recommendation 7 of the report The Financial Crisis and Information Gaps, prepared by the Financial Stability Board Secretariat and IMF staff, called on central banks and, where relevant, statistical offices, particularly those of the G20 economies, to participate in the BIS data collection on securities and to contribute to the further development of the Handbook.
view the Third Part of Handbook on Securities Statistics
Source: IMF
UK regulator approves metal exchange takeover by HK bourse
November 28, 2012--The London Metal Exchange on Thursday said that British regulators had approved its takeover by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, clearing a key hurdle in a deal worth $2.15 billion (1.65 billion euros).
"The board of directors of LME Holdings are pleased to announce that the Financial Services Authority has given notice in writing... of its approval in respect of HKEx acquiring control over LME Limited through its indirect subsidiary, HKEx Investment," the LME said in a statement.
Source: AFP
