U.S. crude stocks rise to 18-month high… U.S. data at 1330 GMT expected to show more job losses… OPEC signals it may cut output further…
Sky-high crude oil prices are threatening global growth for the first time in decades, according to Thomson Reuters, and are “spurring a desperate surge in interest in energy alternatives and new technology to keep conventional oil flowing.”
“The richest investment opportunities can be found in the fast-emerging alternative energy sector,” says Mike Burnick in The Offshore A-Letter.
Yesterday’s Penny Sleuth was all about the UK’s evolving taste for exotic food… and what’s the thing you always have with it? Wine. Cue a fantastic opportunity! But this is no ordinary company making ordinary plonk you buy in the supermarket.
Gen X wonders if it can ever retire. As Wall Street waits for Citi and Merrill shoes to drop, Goldman issues gloomy forecast. As if write-downs weren’t enough, here comes another $250 billion problem. A 17% first-quarter loss…When hedge funds don’t hedge. Coal prices shoot skyward… The sector ideally positioned to benefit.
The oil market is supplied with enough crude.
This is the view of the group’s secretary-general, Abdullah al-Badri, expressed on Saturday during a visit to Iran.
“Oil supply to the market is enough and high oil prices are not due to a shortage of crude but rather it is because of the decrease in the dollar’s value, shortage of refinery capacity and some political tensions in the world,” said a-Badri, according to the Iranian state news agency.
US employers slashed 80,000 jobs in March — the biggest monthly job decline in five years.
From Reuters:
The Labor Department revised the first two months of the year’s job losses to a total of 152,000 from a previous estimate of 85,000. The March unemployment rate jumped to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, the highest since a matching rate in September 2005.
The March job report was bleaker than expected. Economists polled ahead of the report forecast a decline of 60,000 in non-farm payrolls and a rise in the unemployment rate to 5 percent.
Developing Asian countries will churn out solid 7.6% growth this year, but the region is at risk from spiraling inflation and the global credit crisis, a new report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said.
Megabank announces $19bn write-down, a rights issue to shore up its balance sheet and its chairman resigns. What does the stock market think? It marks the shares up 12%.