| Wall Street rallies on optimism about rate cuts
Earlier in the day, U.S. oil futures set an intraday record above $101. In contrast, Tuesday's record high in oil, however, caused a late-day sell-off in stocks. Shares of Chevron Corp <CVX.N>, which began trading as a Dow component on Tuesday, rose 1.8 percent to $86.34 on the New York Stock Exchange. Chevron was among the major advancers in both the Dow and the S&P 500. Shares of HP, which reported quarterly profit that beat Wall Street's estimates late on Tuesday, climbed to $47.44, while IBM shares rose to $107.85. On the Nasdaq, shares of mobile phone chip maker Qualcomm Inc <QCOM.O> led advancers with a gain of 3.4 percent to $43.37. Minutes from the Fed, which cut the target for its benchmark rate by half a percentage point to 3 percent at the January meeting, said it had lowered its growth forecast for 2008.
Mother Earth Mother Board
During the decades after Morse's "What hath God wrought!" a plethora of different codes, signalling techniques, and sending and receiving machines were patented. A web of wires was spun across every modern city on the globe, and longer wires were strung between cities. Some of the early technologies were, in retrospect, flaky: one early inventor wanted to use 26-wire cables, one wire for each letter of the alphabet. But it quickly became evident that it was best to keep the number of individual wires as low as possible and find clever ways to fit more information onto them. This requires more ingenuity than you might think - wires have never been perfectly transparent carriers of data; they have always degraded the information put into them. In general, this gets worse as the wire gets longer, and so as the early telegraph networks spanned greater distances, the people building them had to edge away from the seat-of-the-pants engineering practices that, applied in another field, gave us so many boiler explosions, and toward the more scientific approach that is the standard of practice today.
Australian stockmarket down on Wall St, BHP fears
THE Australian sharemarket has closed weaker amid fresh jitters over a massive drop on Wall Street and BHP Billiton's first-half profit slump. At 4.15pm (Sydney time) the benchmark S&P/ASX200 was down 183.5 points or 3.17 per cent to 5609.4, while the broader All Ordinaries was down 174.5 points or 2.98 per cent at 5677.6. On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the March share price index futures contract was down 214 points or 3.71 per cent to 5576 points on a volume of 28,669 contracts. Investors punished BHP, which posted a dip in first-half net profit, after exchange rate movements and higher input costs affected its bottom line. BHP's result was overshadowed by the company's announcement of a formal $US147.4 billion ($A164.5 billion) 3.4-to-one share bid for rival Rio Tinto Ltd.
Filed under: MLB
Sure, sure, it's all been done before, but now I get to do it. Without further ado, here is my all-name team. 20 - Rod Smart - Who the Hell is Rod Smart you ask? Well he is none other than the fool who called himself "He Hate Me" and pretty much epitomized the debacle that was the XFL. 19. Elbert L. "Ickey" Woods - Running back his entire carreer for the Bengals. Hey, how many guys not named Humpty Hump have a dance named after them. The Ickey Shuffle remains high on the all time celebrations list. 18. "Chocolate Thunder" Darryl Dawkins - Perhaps more appropriate for wrestling or porn, but still has a nice ring to it. 17. "Pistol" Pete Maravich - LSU grad was a known practicioner of yoga, a part time ufologist, and could also play a little basketball. Died of a heart attack in 1988 at a young age.
Oil price hits new record
WORLD oil prices hit a new record of $US101.32 ($110.48) a barrel in Asian trading today on renewed concerns over global crude supplies, dealers said. New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March, closed overnight up 73 cents at an all-time high of $US100.74. The latest price spike burst Tuesday's record price of $US100.10 and record close at $US100.01. In London, Brent North Sea crude for April delivery settled 14 cents lower at $US98.42, after striking a record $US98.70 Tuesday. Prices have soared amid growing speculation OPEC, which supplies about 40 per cent of the world's oil, may cut output at its March 5 meeting in Vienna, anticipating a fall in demand at the end of the northern hemisphere winter and a US economic slowdown, analysts said. "Supply worries and comments by some OPEC members that the group might not raise output at their March meeting provided the catalyst for the sharp rally," said Barclays Capital analyst Kevin Norrish.
ICICI Ventures to pick up 5% stake in MCX
MUMBAI: ICICI Ventures is close to picking up a 5% equity stake in Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX). Earlier this year multinationals like Merrill Lynch and Citigroup had bought 5% each in the exchange.
According to sources, talks with ICICI Ventures and a couple of other investors have been going on for the past couple of months. An announcement on the same is expected soon. Earlier this year when Financial Technologies (FT), the promoter of MCX, sold its stake to Citi and Merrill Lynch the exchange was valued at slightly over $1 bn. The stake sale to ICICI Ventures is also likely to be around the same valuation.
ICICI Ventures may buy the stake from Financial Technologies. FT currently holds 49% in the exchange. The other major stakeholders of the exchange are HDFC Bank, SBI and other public sector banks holding a total 27%, FID Fund (Mauritus) — an affiliate of Fidelity International has a 9% stake, both Citi and Merrill Lynch have a 5% stake each, Passport India Investment (Mauritius) has 3% stake while GLG Financials Fund has another 2% stake.
Bill Gates - You Asked The Questions
I've just emerged from the Microsoft machine, shaken but unscathed. I've interviewed Bill Gates three or four times over a 12 year period, and each time I come out impressed by the sheer professionalism of the Microsoft PR operation but wondering whether we've been successfully spun. This time we tried a new tactic - getting BBC viewers, listeners and readers to ask the questions. We had thousands, covering every aspect of Bill Gates and Microsoft - past, present and future. Over two hundred were seeking jobs, one gentleman was proposing himself as the next CEO of Microsoft, and another wondered whether the secrets of Windows software had been recovered from a crashed UFO. We did not ask that one, but managed to get through around fifteen questions during our allotted fifteen minutes.
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MEN'S CLUB SNOOKER: February 11 results Fred Martin Cup Match at home v LWMC: Neil Griffin 57 Gus Bayrum 21, Henry Woolmer 20 J Richardson 53, Peter Stewart 10 Paul Scorer 61 (31 break), Tony Deakin 38 Steve Whitebourne 59. Barcombe lost 1-3. STOOLBALL CLUB: The AGM is on Tuesday at 7.30pm in the fire station. New players always welcome, just turn up. For more information contact Kelly Thomas on 07762 287433. BISHOPSTONE SPRING SHOW: The Bishopstone Horticultural and Home Produce Spring Show will be held on Saturday March 29. Schedules, with full details of the various classes, and entry forms will be available at the beginning of March, but it might be safe to assume that daffodils will be on the menu. REMINDER: Don't forget to come out of hibernation for the Tea Dance, in aid of the parish hall roof repairs, on the afternoon of Wednesday March 12.
Bad news belts CME
CME Group Inc., owner of Chicago's two globally dominant futures exchanges, is back at war with its biggest customers. The resumption of hostilities pushed its stock price down Wednesday by more than $100 per share, or 18 percent, wiping out more than $5 billion in market value. The Justice Department triggered the decline with a letter to the Treasury Department suggesting futures exchanges should not be allowed to clear, or guarantee, the trading within their systems. In-house clearing, the department said, chokes off competition by making it harder for exchanges to cut in on another's established turf, where the clearing function enjoys a low-cost advantage. The letter aligns with the view of Wall Street investment banks that have long wanted to take out the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade and keep for themselves the fees they pay the exchanges.
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