U.S. crude for October delivery fell $1.39 to $68.57 a barrel by 1:32 p.m. EDT (1732 GMT).

London Brent crude dropped $1.38 to $68.27.

U.S. stocks dropped as investors’ confidence in the economic recovery wavered.

“The dollar is strengthening and equities are coming off hard so (oil futures) did the same,” said Tom Knight, trader at Truman Arnold in Texarkana, Texas.

Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar rose as the slide in the U.S. stocks boosted the currency’s safe-haven appeal.

Oil futures had risen earlier in the day as the market focused on a report showing a jump in U.S. manufacturing and pending home sales.

“It looks like the whole complex is failing to sustain the gains … basically, the market’s not done yet on the downside,” said Tom Bentz, senior commodity analyst, BNP Paribas Commodity Futures Inc in New York.

Oil has risen from a low of $32.40 in December, helped by economic recovery optimism that lifted global stocks <.MIWD00000PUS> to 10-month highs last month.

U.S. DATA

Oil traders will look for fresh direction from U.S. weekly crude stockpiles data.

Analysts expect the data to show a 600,000-barrel fall in U.S. crude stocks following an increase in refinery utilization, a preliminary Reuters poll of analysts showed.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) will release its weekly inventory report at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) on Tuesday. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will release its data on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. EDT.

Adding to already high inventories, OPEC has reduced its compliance with agreed production curbs, a Reuters survey on Tuesday found.

OPEC supply in August rose for a fourth consecutive month as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela increased their production, taking overall output discipline to 68 percent from a revised 70 percent in July.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets on Sept. 9 in Vienna to reconsider its output policy.

Sept 1 (Reuters)

• Japan’s economy is once again growing, with its gross domestic product (GDP) rising 3.7% in the second quarter. A rebound in exports to China and a large stimulus program helped Japan bounce back from contraction that, at an annualized rate of 11.7%, was more than double that of the United States’ in the first quarter. Officials at Japanese companies think the nation’s worst recession since World War II is nearly over, according to a survey released last weekend.

• The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo confidence index rose to 18 this month, a one-year high, Bloomberg Newsreported. Still, a reading below 50 means most respondents view conditions as poor. “Inventory is being cleared and that is starting to benefit the new-home market,” Julia Coronado, a senior economist at BNP Paribas SA in New York told Bloomberg. “With a few months’ lag, that will lead to a turnaround in construction activity.”

• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic indexrose to 12.1, higher than forecast and the first increase since April 2008. Any reading above zero indicates that manufacturing is growing. “Inventories were drawn down to such amazingly low levels that companies need to start bringing them back,” said Tom Porcelli, a senior economist at RBC Capital Markets Corp. in aBloomberg News interview. “We are coming out of the recession.It’s probably over at this point.“

• Credit card default rates showed signs of stabilization in July,Reuters reported, citing regulatory filings by multiple large U.S. banks. Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), the bank with the highest default and delinquency rates saw its charge-off rate shrink slightly to 13.81% in July from 13.86%. “It just seems to bear out what we heard in the second-quarter calls, that things seem to be getting marginally better — and I would stress marginally — on the consumer side,” Nancy Bush, founder of NAB Research, said of Bank of America.

• Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) joint venture MSNBC.com has acquired “hyperlocal” news and information Web site EveryBlock. Terms were not disclosed, but in June Time Warner Inc.’s (NYSE: TWX) AOL acquired a similar Web site, Patch for $7 million, The Washington Post reported. EveryBlock offers news in 15 cities. “Joining with MSNBC.com gives us the resources to turn EveryBlock from a cool, useful service into something much bigger,” said Adrian Holovaty, founder of EveryBlock. Holovaty and the company’s staff of five will remain based in Chicago.

• Reader’s Digest Association Inc., whose namesake magazine says it is the bestselling magazine in the world, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a part of a prearranged plan with lenders to cut debt by 75%. If the court approves the deal, Reader’s Digest’s debt would be reduced to $550 million from its current $2.2 billion. “Our deal has already been negotiated and hammered out with a majority of our creditors,” said Chief Executive Officer Mary Berner in an interview with Reuters. The announcement “doesn’t affect our employees, it doesn’t affect the vast majority of vendors, it doesn’t mean we’ll do mass layoffs, it doesn’t mean we’re going to be selling off assets. It’s business as usual.”

• Continuing weak demand, bad weather and charges related to the halting of its expansion contributed to a 19% drop in Lowe’s Cos.’(NYSE: LOW) second quarter earnings. The world’s second-largest home improvement retailer after Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) saw its profit fall to $759 million, or 51 cents a share for the quarter ended July 31. That compares to a net income of $938 million, or 63 cents a share in the same period last year. Sales fell 4.6% to $13.84 billion and same-store sales dropped 9.5%.

Source: Investment News Briefs Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The momentum behind China’s economy is staggering.

“China is increasingly becoming a responsible citizen in the global community,” economist Allen Sinai of Decision Economics told The Associated Press. “No longer lawless, no longer difficult to deal with, much more responsible. It is now a powerhouse among economies and finance. And it’s a rich country.”

In just the past few weeks, two of the world’s key global institutions – the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – and a large swath of investment banks raised their 2009 and 2010 growth estimates for China’s economy.

The OECD said it now expects China’s economy to grow by 7.7% this year and the World Bank boosted its projection to 7.2% growth.  GDP will expand by 9.3% in 2010, according to OECD estimates.

BNP Paribas SA (OTC: BNPQY), Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), UBS AG (NYSE:UBS), Morgan Stanley (MS), Standard Chartered Bank, and RBC Capital Markets all raised their forecasts for China’s economy as well.

So far, BNP Paribas SA is the most bullish on China’s prospective growth, as it boosted its prediction to 8.2% this year. That would top Beijing’s 8% target.  Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan all raised their 2009 forecasts to 7.8% growth.

“The strong acceleration in underlying economic activity is now unmistakable,” Goldman Sachs economist Yu Song told TIME magazine.

China’s Homegrown Growth

China’s $585 billion (4 trillion yuan) stimulus package gave the economy a big kick in the first half of the year, spurring bank lending and driving fixed asset investment. It even stimulated the oft-maligned Chinese consumer, boosting domestic demand while the market for exports remained dormant.

Chinese banks lent about $1.08 trillion (7.37 trillion yuan) in the first half of the year, nearly double the total loans extended throughout all of 2008.  And even though the economy is clearly on the road to recovery, it’s not likely lending will let up for the rest of the year.

BNP Paribas chief economist Chen Xingdong told Bloomberg thathe expects new loans will reach 9.5 trillion yuan by the end of 2009.

“The growth recovery has been even stronger than our anticipation,” Chen said.  “Strong fixed-asset investment growth and retail sales have started to generate real demand for industrial production.”

Fixed-asset investment rose 33.5% in the first half year to $1.34 trillion (9.132 trillion yuan), according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Investment in infrastructure rose 57.4% year-over-year, with spending on railways up 126.5% and highway spending up 54.7%. Property sales were up 53% in the first six months from a year earlier.

Of course, fixed-asset investment has been consistently strong in China for the past decade. The real turnaround in the past six months has been that the frugal Chinese consumer has begun to spend more liberally.

China’s retail sales in the first half of the year rose 15% to $859.6 billion (5.87 trillion yuan).  Retail sales in June also rose 15% from May, said NBS spokesman Li Xiaochao.

“There were two highlights in promoting domestic demand: commercial apartments sales rose by 31.7% in the first half year from the same period last year; automobile sales expanded by 17.7% year on year,” Li said.

Auto sales reached 6.1 million vehicles in the first six months, helping China to supplant the United States as the world’s largest automarket. Sales could easily surpass 12 million this year.

“The rebound has been driven by the domestic economy,” Jing Ulrich JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Chinese equities strategist told Fortunemagazine. “The consumer proved resilient – and the government acted as a catalyst.”

“China can still achieve 8% growth,” she said. “Everything is happening very fast there.”

The One Potential Hurdle for China’s Economy

There’s no question that China’s stimulus package has been an unequivocal success. In fact, the only problem may be that it is working a bit too well.

In the United States concern about inflation prompted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to outline an “exit strategy” for the withdrawal of liquidity from the financial system. Similarly, China’s biggest challenge going forward will be clamping down on lending to keep potentially hazardous bubbles from growing in its economy.

Inflation is a particular concern, as rising commodity prices have crept into imports.

“Commodity markets around the world have bottomed and are rebounding, raising imported inflation pressures,” the People’s Bank of China (BOC) said in a report analyzing second-quarter economic trends, issued by its Financial Survey and Statistics Department. “At the same time, domestic demand continues to rebound, liquidity remains flush and inflation expectations are surfacing.”

However, as in the United States, policymakers in Beijing have said they will remain committed to “proactive fiscal policy” until it is certain a recovery is underway. In fact, some analysts don’t expect to see a significant change in policy until November, when leaders and regulators meet for their annual conference on the economy.

“We must see that the economic recovery is not on a solid foundation, and the negative impacts from the international crisis have not eased,” said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. “An improvement in the economy does not mean the difficult period is over.”

Indeed, stimulus must be maintained until China’s all-important export sector has recovered. And while Chinese exports climbed 7.5% from May to June, they were still down 21.4% from a year ago.

Of course that doesn’t mean Beijing will just sit back and wait for lending to reach excessive levels.

“China has achieved impressive results in reviving economic activities,” Gao Shanwen, chief economist with Essence Securities, told Reuters. “The basic tone of the appropriately loose monetary policy is unlikely to change, but there will be fine-tuning.”

The BOC has traditionally used a quota system to control lending, telling banks not to exceed specific ceilings. It may continue to do so if the central bank does not see a sufficient drop in lending. It may also choose to provide banks with a less stringent lending guidance, or range, rather than an outright ceiling.

“The banks are highly responsive to government policy,” Ha Jiming, of China International Capital Corp. Ltd. (CICC), the nation’s largest investment bank, told The Financial Times.

Punitive bill issuances are another tool in the central bank’s toolkit. In September, the BOC will require banks to buy $15 billion (100 billion yuan) in special bills. The bills will be issued at punitively low interest rates and reduce the amount of money banks have on hand to lend out.

Regardless of what methods it chooses, the BOC is clearly ready to act. But it won’t jeopardize a recovery in a preemptive assault on inflation.

The central bank “will unswervingly continue to apply appropriately loose monetary policy and consolidate the economic recovery momentum,” said Su Ning, vice governor of the People’s Bank of China.

Source: With Its Economy Ignited by Stimulus Spending, China Is Leading the Global Recovery

U.S. light crude fell 95 cents to $65.99 a barrel by 1325 GMT, pulling back from its gains ahead of the release of the economic data.

London Brent crude dropped by $1.43 to $68.68.

U.S. gross domestic product fell 1.0 percent in the second quarter, with consumer spending falling 1.2 percent, the U.S. Commerce Department said.

Although the contraction was smaller than expected the January-March GDP was revised down to a 6.4 precent drop from the previously reported 5.5 percent fall.

With the contraction in the second quarter, U.S. GDP has fallen for four straight quarters for the first time since government records started in 1947.

“The GDP reading did come better than expected, but the stabilisation is coming off a downward revised first quarter number,” Harry Tchilinguirian, oil analyst with BNP Paribas, said.

“Spending is worse than expected so economic activity in the U.S. is still not supportive for oil demand.”

European shares turned negative after the data and U.S. stocks opened weaker.

Oil prices were poised to mark their first monthly fall since January, which is likely to be about 4 percent.

In the United States, the world’s largest energy consumer, crude inventories have risen and oil refinery utilisation rates have remained lower than normal as economics for refining have been poor and fuel demand has been weak.

U.S. crude oil imports in May fell to the lowest level for the month in 12 years. In Japan, the world’s third largest oil consumer, fuel sales fell in June, dropping for the 13th consecutive month.

LONDON, July 31 (Reuters)

By 1306 GMT, the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of top shares was down 0.4 percent at 884.79 points after trading between 879.97 and 888.23 points.

“Morgan Stanley’s operating loss per share looks on the high side, compared to others in the sector. I think Morgan Stanley’s paying back public aid has distorted results; it is not known if this has been incorporated into analysts’ expectations of the results,” said Heino Ruland, strategist at Ruland Research.

Bank shares took the most off the index after Morgan Stanley reported its third consecutive quarterly loss and Wells Fargo reported rising credit losses.

“The continuing decline in asset quality is a worry, and whilst they are making money in other areas it just goes to show that conditions in the consumer segment are still evidencing headwinds,” said Paul Chesterton, senior sales trader at CMC Markets.

Barclays , BNP Paribas , UBS and Lloyds Banking Group were down 1.5-3.8 percent.

Miners were also heading lower. BHP Billiton fell 2.8 percent after the world’s largest miner reported a 10 percent fall in iron ore output to 27.048 million tonnes after its operations were hit by mining fatalities and flooding in Australia.

Energy stocks were down as crude slipped 1.5 percent. BP , Royal Dutch Shell , Premier Oil and Total were 0.8-2.8 percent weaker.

On the upside, drug makers added most points to the index. GlaxoSmithKline gained 0.3 percent after it beat expectations with its second-quarter earnings and said momentum in the second half would pick up on the back of flu vaccine sales.

Across Europe, the FTSE 100 <.FTSE> index was down 0.3 percent, Germany’s DAX <.GDAXI> was down 0.4 percent, and France’s CAC 40 <.FCHI> was down 0.8 percent.

July 22 (Reuters)

This from Bloomberg:

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, for three-month dollar loans declined three basis points today to 0.75 percent, the British Bankers’ Association said, bringing its drop in the past two days to seven basis points, the most since Jan. 13. The rate has decreased in each of the past 35 days.

“The tension has disappeared and we are gradually normalizing,” said Patrick Jacq, a senior fixed-income strategist in Paris at BNP Paribas SA, the biggest French lender. “There’s less stress in the market and banks know they will get liquidity.”

That’s a massive drop from the three-month LIBOR peak of 4.82% back in October.

The TED spread has also dropped. This key credit indicator, which measures the difference between the three-month T-bill interest rate and the three-month Libor, has hit the lowest level since the credit crisis began.

These narrowing spreads are a clear indication that the lending markets are returning to normal. But even with this improvement, the TED spread is twice as high as its historical average. And the Libor is three times higher than its average.

Back in 2001, the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) – eager to push its clients toward emerging markets investment – created the acronym “BRIC” to stand for Brazil, Russia, India and China, the four emerging markets the investment bank’s strategists believed would become a dominant part of the world economy in the years ahead.

Such was the case until the global financial crisis happened. Now, Russia is falling out of investor sunlight and into the pits of recession.

Russia’s Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina projects a 2.2% gross domestic product (GDP) decline for 2009, according to EurasiaNet. But the current global financial crisis is making previous estimates look foolish and impossibly rosy (U.S. GDP was originally estimated to fall 3.2% for the fourth quarter. In reality, GDP plunged 6.2%).

The culprits: A falling ruble, plummeting oil prices, war with Georgia and a gas-export dispute with the Ukraine.

Russia’s economy is heavily reliant on its oil reserves, making the effects of falling oil prices easy to measure. But the silent killer of the Russian economy has yet to be full measured – the money spent in a thus-far vain attempt to prop up its falling ruble.

The ruble recently fell to a level not seen since 1998, a scary statistic because that was the year Russia experienced a nationwide banking crisis – and it was also a period during which world markets were being roiled by the Asian Financial Crisis, also known as the “Asian contagion.”

In an effort to cushion the ruble’s fall, Russia has spent $245 billion since August, as policymakers sold more than a quarter of the country’s gold and foreign-currency reserves. Russia’s reserves, the world’s third-largest, stood at $426.5 billion on Jan. 9, according to BNP Paribas SA.

That has some economists calling for a “free-float” – or a big devaluation – to avoid depleting all of the reserves.

The tactic, and the accompanying effect on investors, is nearly identical to that of 1998, when the ruble fell 71% against the dollar before finally stabilizing after the government defaulted on $40 billion of debt. Investors are fleeing Russia because the government is tapping its reserves to defend the ruble, further eroding investor confidence and undermining the currency.

Brazil, India and China are currently faring far better than Russia currently, but are still dealing with their own unique struggles. That has led analysts to question the viability of the BRIC acronym.

Milton Ezrati, a senior economist and market strategist at Lord Abbett & Co. LLC, recently published a report titled, “Broken BRIC,” in which he questions the notion of lumping those economies together – especially in view of their wealth of differences.

“We, at Lord Abbett, were always skeptical of BRIC,” Ezrati said in an interview with MarketWatch.com, noting that investors should diversify beyond emerging markets. “The whole concept behind the BRIC, that these four countries were leaders, is no longer the case today.”

Ezrati no doubt has his share of dissenters, who can quickly point out that while the stock markets of China, India and Brazil are taking their lumps, they are the only major economies in the world with positive GDP growth.

Effect on Local Elections

Looking at Russia’s recent local election results, the country’s decline into the financial red is having little effect on the popularity of United Russia, the party of former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Elections were held yesterday and preliminary results show United Russia racking up commanding leads in local elections around the country, The Associated Press reported. Of course, allegations of election violations abound.

But the bottom line is that those in power are keeping it. Doing so engraves their names next to the economy’s decline; but it also gives them a chance to take credit for recovery if their policies work.

Source: Russia’s Economic Demise Could Turn “BRIC” to “BIC”

Concerns that Washington might nationalize big U.S. banks — which would wipe out shareholders and add to the fiscal burden — had weighed on stocks and other risky assets.

However, Bernanke said on Tuesday the significant value built up in the country’s banks would be lost if they were government-owned and though there could be a time when it became necessary to close banks down, now is not the time.

U.S. stocks rose more than three percent on Tuesday.

“It’s all about the equity rally we had last night and the U.S. shying away from nationalizing the banks,” said David Keeble, rate strategist at Calyon. MSCI world equity index rose 1 percent while the FTSEurofirst 300 index gained 1.5 percent.

Emerging stocks rose 1 percent. Oil rose 0.2 percent to $40.03 a barrel .

WANING STATUS

The yen fell as low as 97.33 per dollar , levels last seen in November. The Japanese currency also hit its weakest levels in almost seven weeks of 125.17 per euro .

A rapidly deteriorating domestic economy and political uncertainty has been hitting the low-yielding yen’s safe haven appeal, wiping out the inverse correlation between equities and the Japanese currency.

Wednesday’s data showed exports plunged a record 45.7 percent in January from a year earlier, with record slides in shipments to the United States, Europe and the rest of Asia pointing to a deepening recession across much of the world.

“The fundamental case for a weaker yen has become more pressing with Japan reporting its fourth monthly trade deficit in a row, suggesting that the current account surplus will melt down further, reducing commercial yen buying needs,” BNP Paribas said in a note to clients.

LONDON, Feb 25 (Reuters)

Nickel was down all day long, barely coming off its intraday low to close at $4.2502/lb., down more than 17 cents. Zinc fell in the pre-dawn hours, rallied into the afternoon, but then lost it all and ended at its intraday low of $0.4785/lb., down a penny and a half. Aluminum was also a daylong loser, giving up a penny and a third, to $0.5736/lb., while lead plummeted to $0.4553/lb., down 2½ cents.

Copper posted another weekly decline, as skyrocketing stockpiles served as a stark indicator of global economic weakness.

Inventories monitored by the LME surged 17,350 metric tons yesterday, to 545,600 tons, a more than 5-year high.

The build in inventories “took some support away,” wrote Michael Widmer, an analyst at BNP Paribas in London. “In addition, purchasing managers in Europe were very weak. There are also concerns over economies in Eastern Europe.”

Norddeutsche Affinerie AG, Europe’s largest copper refiner, also alluded to the “unwillingness of investors and copper processors to take risks.” No surprise there, of course.

In Shanghai, copper inventories fell 11% from a week earlier to 30,105 metric tons. This was the first decline since mid-January, but back then stockpiles were just half the current level.

The International Copper Study Group said yesterday that the global copper market showed a supply surplus of 47,000 metric tons in November 2008, compared with a surplus of 38,000 tons in October.

The ICSG also reported that, for the first nine months of 2008, the market saw a production surplus of 147,000 metric tons, only slightly higher than the surplus of 143,000 tons during the same period of 2007. World refined copper usage in the first eleven months of 2008 increased by 2.6%, or 421,000 tons, year-over-year.

In company news, Brazilian mining giant Vale (NYSE:RIO) said on Thursday its net profit more than doubled in the fourth quarter as cost controls, production cuts and a weaker local currency helped it offset weaker demand for metals.

But miner Anglo American (NASDAQ:AAUK) suspended its dividend for the first time since World War II and announced job cuts, saying it expects weakness in commodity prices to continue.

Source: Base Metals Bleed

U.S. oil futures rose towards $36 a barrel on Friday, snapping a five-day losing streak ahead of the expected approval of a $789 billion stimulus package by the U.S. Congress to help dig the economy out of recession.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Senate were expected later on Friday to approve the emergency package to create or save 3.5 million jobs and hand President Barack Obama a big political victory.

The United States is the world’s biggest oil consumer and the economic slowdown that started in the U.S. housing market more than a year ago has undermined energy demand, sending shock waves through the oil market.

Oil prices have fallen more than 70 percent from their peak at almost $150 a barrel last year as economic downturn has spread to all regions of the world.

U.S. crude for March delivery rose $1.84 to $35.82 a barrel by 1611 GMT, after falling $1.96 in the previous session to settle at $33.98 a barrel, its lowest since Dec. 19.

London Brent crude for the new front-month of April fell 73 cents to $45.30 a barrel.

The Brent March contract expired on Thursday at $44.65, extending its premium to U.S. crude to more than $10, mainly due to a glut at the main U.S. storage hub in Oklahoma.

But the Brent premium for the April contract was less than $4, and some analysts expect inventories to ease eventually at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the U.S. futures contract, based on West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude.

OIL DEMAND CONTRACTING

“It looks like a bounce on stimulus hopes, but only concentrated on the two front-months,” said Tom Bentz, analyst at BNP Paribas Commodity Futures.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Friday world oil demand would contract more sharply than expected this year due to the economic crisis.

Making a possible case for further supply cuts, OPEC said in its monthly report that global demand would fall by 580,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2009 to average 85.13 million bpd. Its previous forecast was for demand to contract by 180,000 bpd.

OPEC, which pumps more than a third of the world’s oil, has agreed at meetings since September to cut its oil output by 4.2 million bpd, equal to 5 percent of daily world demand, to combat the slump in prices and demand.

The report said OPEC still had more to do in delivering existing output promises, suggesting OPEC met 65 percent of its pledge to lower output, according to a Reuters calculation based on the OPEC data.

U.S. oil prices have lost about 14 percent this week and are languishing at a three-week low, pressured by persistent demand worries and doubts over the efficacy of the U.S. government’s banks rescue plan.

Oil’s losses on Thursday were exacerbated by news that the number of people staying on unemployment benefits in the United States rose by 11,000 to a record of 4.810 million in the last week of January.

In the short term, analysts believe the market’s direction would be influenced by movements in stock markets.

European stocks rose on Friday, supported by reports of the imminent passage of Washington’s stimulus package. U.S. stock futures also signalled that Wall Street would open higher, also buoyed by the plan.

LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters)