Albrata finance

Oil prices suffered a drop of nearly 5% Thursday, marking their lowest finish in a more than a week, as traders showed disappointment with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ decision to extend production cuts by nine months.

An extension was widely expected, but traders had started to speculate that the cartel would make deeper reductions to output or extend the out limit deal by 12 months.

July West Texas Intermediate crude CLN7, -0.67% dropped $2.46, or 4.8%, to settle at $48.90 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was the lowest price a front-month contract since May 16 and largest percentage decline since May 4, according to data from Dow Jones.

July Brent crude LCON7, -0.51% the global benchmark, lost $2.50, or 4.6%, to $51.46 on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

WTI oil finished below both it's 50 and 200-day moving averages. Oil’s 50-day moving average is $49.59 a barrel, while its 200-day moving average is $49.55, according to FactSet data. Technical analysts use trading averages to help assess an asset’s short and long-term momentum

The market is sending a signal that they were looking from more out of the [OPEC] meeting, maybe a 12 month extension,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago.

At the conference, Saudi Arabia oil minister Khalid al-Falih said the oil market “is on its way to recovery” but “more time is needed” to bring oil supplies back to their five-year average.

The extension of the supply pact “was signaled well in advance by the Saudi and Russian oil ministers,” Bhushan Bahree, senior director at IHS Markit, said in a report from Vienna.

The extension “reflects the alliance’s concern that a large inventory overhang continues to weigh on prices and is taking longer to whittle down than expected”—in part because of “fast-rising output, notably from shale developments in the United States,” said Bahree.

More than 20 OPEC and non-OPEC countries in November last year agreed to collective cut production by 1.8 million barrels a day in an effort to reduce the global supply glut that kept a lid on prices.

The accord came into effect on Jan. 1, but didn’t immediately affect global oil inventories. However, the impact of the lower production has become more evident recently, with U.S. crude supplies, for example, falling for a seventh week in a row, according to data out Wednesday.

The inventory drawdown in the U.S. “may have helped convince some OPEC members that supply cuts have had a delayed impact and should be given more time to accomplish the goal of draining crude stocks to levels around the five-year average,” said Geoffrey Craig, oil futures editor at S&P Global Platts, in a note.

Back on Nymex Thursday, July gasoline RBN7, -0.10% lost 4.3 cents, or 2.6%, to $1.609 a gallon and July heating oil HOM7, -0.32% fell 5.5 cents, or 3.5%, to $1.551 a gallon.

Natural gas for July NGN17, +0.24% fell 2.5 cents, or 0.8%, at $3.184 per million British thermal units.

Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration Thursday showed that domestic supplies of natural gas rose by 75 billion cubic feet for the week ended May 19. That was more than 67 billion-cubic-foot build expected by analysts surveyed by S&P Global Platts.

Oil price drops nearly 5% as OPEC’s 9-month output-cut extension disappoints

By world movie list Friday, 26 May 2017

5 facts that prove most of Americans don’t know anything about managing money

By world movie list Monday, 22 May 2017

If your new year’s resolution for 2017 is to spend less and save more, it’s worth taking a look at the Pension Village website maintained by financial services company LV. Its calculators allow you to work out the long-term impact of making even very small savings today – and the figures are remarkable. Give up your daily cup of high street coffee, for example, and invest the money instead, and you could generate a pot of cash worth more than £100,000 over the next 35 years, assuming an annual investment return of 5 per cent. Cut down on one restaurant meal a week and the long-term dividend could be £96,000.

These numbers are realistic for two reasons. First, what seem like trivial sums of money in isolation add up to very substantial sums over long periods of time, as long as you’re disciplined enough to keep putting them aside, week-in, week-out. Second, you get the benefit of compound interest – the fact that you’re continually earning returns on the returns you’ve already earned as well as the savings you’re making; again, over the long term, the effect is dramatic.

Regular saving in practice

How, then, do you turn theory into practice? That is, what’s the best way to put, say, your £2 daily saving on coffee towards long-term savings?

Well, the first point to make is that this idea isn’t going to work unless you’re consistent, so you need some form of regular savings vehicle into which you can sweep your savings – on a monthly basis, say. Ideally, the sweep should be automatic, so that you don’t have to remember to do it.

At the same time, you’ll also need to think about where this money is invested. The safest option is a bank or building savings account, but the returns on such accounts look unattractive in the current low-interest rate environment. Moreover, over very long term periods, stock market investments have in the past outperformed cash savings. In the short term, these investments can fall in value as well as rise, but if you’re investing to produce a return over many years, or even decades, you can afford to take this risk.

Investment companies offer a solution

Investment companies are collective investment vehicles that pool savers’ money to invest in particular assets – some funds offer a broad exposure to the UK stock market or to global markets, while others are more specialist. Many funds offer regular savings schemes that allow you to contribute as little as £25 a month via a direct debit. You also have the option of holding your funds within a tax-free individual savings account.

Investing in the stock market this way has another advantage too: you get to benefit from a statistical quirk known as pound-cost averaging. Very simply, the idea is that in months when the value of the fund has fallen, your fixed cash sum investment buys more shares in it – so when the price recovers, you’ve got a larger holding. This can help smooth out some of the ups and downs of stock market investment.

Investment company regular savings plans aren’t for everyone – you must be prepared to take a long-term view and be comfortable with your money falling in value as well as rising. But if you’re looking for a disciplined way to channel even small amounts of cash into a long-term savings plan, they offer a convenient and attractive option.

Small savings get big

By world movie list Wednesday, 17 May 2017

The pull of dividend income has become a very powerful one and there is no sign of any decline in its popularity. In this short guide, we explore why companies that pay dividends are in such demand, why investment trusts are such a great way to tap into them, and what to look for when you’re investing for income.

Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, income-seekers have had a tough time as their low-risk sources of income have been eroded. With the base rate slashed to 0. 5% in 2009, bank savings accounts offered increasingly derisory rates; meanwhile, the Bank of England’s programme of buying government bonds pushed prices up and bond yields right down.

Many people, including cautious investors who would previously have felt uncomfortable with the added risks of equity investment, found themselves looking instead to the stock market and the dividends paid out by listed companies.

Dividend-paying businesses have therefore been highly sought-after over recent years – and all the more so in the prevailing environment of sluggish, uncertain growth in most developed economies. After all, once you’ve been paid a dividend, it’s yours to keep, a real return – unlike a rising share price, which could slip back again.

But equity income has other, inherent, attractions. Not only do these businesses provide a regular income stream, but they have historically been the better-established, well-run, profitable companies with cash to spare for shareholders.

Moreover, with inflation now on the rise (CPI inflation hit 1.2%, a 25-month high, in November) people are once again thinking about how to ensure their money will hold its real value over the years. Stock market investments are very attractive in that respect, as companies tend to raise their own prices to maintain their profits when costs are rising.

Even for investors who don’t currently need an income from their investments, dividend-paying companies can work brilliantly, as reinvested dividends boost total returns enormously over the long term. That’s because those dividends are used to buy more shares, which themselves pay dividends.

To put that into perspective, according to the London Business School, since 1990 UK equities with dividends reinvested have returned 5.4 per cent a year on average. When dividends are stripped out, the average annual total return falls to just 0.8 per cent a year.

And with companies that focus on growing their dividend payouts each year, the power of compounding is even more impressive. A company that raises its dividend by just 3% a year can double its payout in less than 25 years.

So it’s hardly surprising that dividend paying companies, and the funds and trusts that invest in them, have been so popular over recent years.

Why do investors love equity income?

By world movie list Wednesday, 17 May 2017

This is one reason why the rich will get richer

Your credit score can make your life cheaper, but not in the way you might think.

Many people are aware that credit scores are important for scoring lower rates for loans. But there are other benefits. Consumers with excellent credit scores have about 7.7 times as many credit cards available to them as those with poor credit, according to an analysis released by the personal finance company NerdWallet on Tuesday. NerdWallet analyzed its database of more than 1,200 cards to find out how many more options people with excellent credit have.

Having a high credit score “makes your overall life a whole lot cheaper,” said Nick Clements, the co-founder of personal finance company MagnifyMoney, who previously worked in the credit industry, including as a director of risk management at Citi. And having more credit cards may also keep your credit score high, he added, because having more credit available to you is beneficial to your credit score. So once you’re in that higher bracket for credit scores, you’re more likely to stay there if you avail of the perks available. “Excellent” credit, when using the Fair Isaac Corporation’s (FICO) scoring model, is a score of 800 or above. “Poor” credit is a score of 579 or lower.

why the rich will get richer

By world movie list Wednesday, 17 May 2017

Equity markets have been the choice for retail traders for decades. It makes sense. Every night we see the movements for the Dow, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 on the local news. The big companies we know so well, like Apple, IBM or General Motors, are also traded as stocks. It’s familiar.

What many traders do not know is that futures markets can be just as familiar, and just as easy to access through the same online brokerages they are already using to trade stocks. Futures can actually complement a trader’s existing trading portfolio and strategies. For serious traders, that’s great news.

Advantages of Futures

There are many reasons to add futures to your portfolio, but I’ll highlight our top three.

The first is a capital-efficient way to get short-term protection. We believe that in every trading portfolio, there’s a place for futures. There’s a time and a market environment where trading futures contracts may be beneficial. For example, if you’re long a basket of stocks and think the market is going to drop, you can sell your stocks. If you’re long 10 different stocks, that can be time-consuming or costly to do. You can also sell exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but that short-term play may force you to tie up a substantial amount of available trading capital to execute. Using futures can be a more cost-effective way to hedge your portfolio using products such as E-mini S&P 500, Nasdaq or Dow.

Everyone has a limit to the amount of trading capital available, so the more efficient you are with your capital, the more opportunities you can participate in.

If you’re a long-term buy-and-hold stock trader, futures may not be the best play, but for short- to intermediate-term strategies, they can provide valuable capital efficiencies and protection.

The second advantage is expanded opportunities. When equity markets aren’t moving much, many traders have a tendency to force trades. It might be quiet in the equity markets, but if you’re still looking for something to trade that is not directly correlated to stocks, you may want to look at futures markets like gold, soybeans, crude oil or a host of other commodities.

Finally, futures offer round-the-clock trading that allows you to protect assets when the stock markets are closed. As we so often say in the futures industry, futures are a great way to mitigate your risk.

Why Retail Traders Should Learn Futures

By world movie list Wednesday, 17 May 2017

Lately, gold and silver prices have been on the decline, but lower prices for the metals aren’t likely to last long, according to one bullish strategist. David Beahm, president and chief executive officer of precious-metals retailer Blanchard and Company, makes the case that now may be the appropriate time to scoop up metals that have been dinged in recent trade. “With all of the uncertainty out there, now is the time to add gold and silver to a portfolio,” said Beahm.“ Both metals performed exactly as they should have during the 2008 financial crisis and they will do the same during the next crisis, wherever it comes from,” he said. Gold futures prices GCM7, -1.15% which settled at one-month low of $1,248.50 an ounce Wednesday, scored a gain of 1.4% in April, but lost 1.6% last week, according to FactSet data tracking the most-active contracts. Meanwhile, silver prices SIN7, -0.55% finished Wednesday at $16.546—the lowest since early-January. They’ve suffered from two-straight monthly and weekly declines. “There are a number of economic, political and military events that Blanchard feels serve as the trigger for the next leg up in gold, and the current price consolidation for metals, while equities are pushed to all-time highs, serve as a great buying opportunity for diversification-seeking investors,” Beahm said. He warned, however, that “the end of the buying opportunity comes when the crises that are happening all over the globe resolve themselves.” Beahm highlighted a number of “hot spots” for geopolitical tension, including Syria and North Korea, where President Donald Trump is engaged in a testy face-off with Pyongyang’s leadership. “Any of these simmering situations could boil over at any time, which would attract another round of safe-haven investment into the gold market,” he said. Meanwhile, investors continue to monitor the “uncertain fate of [European Union] stability and upcoming elections there,” he said. In France, a presidential election win by populist candidate Marine Le Pen would be viewed as “potentially disruptive to the global economy and financial markets as she is expected to push for a French exit from the European Union,” said Beahm. That would create “another Brexit-like situation that would be a supportive factor for the gold market.” Over in the U.S., the Federal Reserve is “in hiking mode,” but official interest rates remain “historically low, which is gold-positive,” he said. And U.S. stock investors are pricing in “expectations of a significant economic and corporate-earnings boosting tax relief package,” he said. “If that tax package does not produce faster economic growth to cover the significantly lower revenues independent experts believe the plan will create, the U.S. deficit will rise significantly, and that is bullish for gold” too.Beahm also pointed out that even as U.S. equities tap record highs, gold has managed to outperform stocks year to date. Year to date, gold futures have gained more than 8%. Comparatively, the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.13% has climbed less than 7% so far this year. The equities market is “overbought, overvalued and vulnerable to a cycle turn or correction lower at any time,” said Beahm. “Gold would benefit from a downturn in equities.” He said gold is likely to trade in the $1,250 to $1,350 range during the second quarter of this year, and moves to the downside should be seen as “buying opportunities.” He added that the same holds true for silver, which is likely to trade in the $16.80 to $19 range for the period. Gold prices may rise to $1,400 by year-end, and test all-time highs at $1,900 in the long term,