Contrarian Investor UK

Not the finest hour for business tonight. Barclays has agreed to pay a fine of £290 million after investigators determined that since 2005 Barclays had been attempting to manipulate Libor (the London Inter Bank overnight rate), a key borrowing rate meaning that those paying off mortgages have potentially paid millions in unnecessary extra interest payments.…

Strong pending home sales data and good durable goods orders from the US have given Wall Street and European markets a boost today.The FTSE is currently up 68 points to 5,514 and the Dow Industrials are up 80 at 12,615. The Dow is at its highest level in a month or so. Contract signings on…

More pain for AIM oil and gas investors. Rockhopper -6% 245p (52 week range 141p-393p) Investors continue to wait with baited breath for an update on its farm-in agreement which is due some time in Q3 this year. In the meantime, the shares have had a rough time over the last few weeks. Gulfsands Petroleum…

It really is a crazy world! For stock market investors, global equity indices are ebbing and flowing as expectations change in relation to new rounds of stimulus by the world’s central banks. Growth seems to have been forgotten and now we need the heroine induced high of central bank intervention. But we all know that…

After a botched IPO, Facebook shares fell as low as $25.50 earlier in June at which point we recommended a swing Buy trade. It has sprung back to life with a vigour to close at $33 on Friday – within sight of the company’s initial floatation price if $38 in which 421 million shares were…

Kazakhstan focused oil producer Max Petroleum is currently down 53% to 4.1p after falling as low as 2.5p earlier today on news that it may have to significantly reduce or even abandon its exploration programme if it does not get additional funding. Back in March it was over 14p and the company is now currently…

Following the huge disappointment of the 80p placing a couple of weeks ago, Xcite Energy has pulled the reserves based lending deal out of the bag to largely fund phase 1b of the Bentley heavy oil field development programme. Huge relief for long suffering share holders! 22 June 2012 Xcite Energy Limited Signing of US$155…

Brent crude oil prices have had a rough time of late. Now trading at just under $90 a barrel, it is down from around $124 in late February and is close to its 52 week low. It peaked at just over $128 in 2008. A combination of worries about global growth, mitigation of supply worries,…

After a two day long meeting the US Federal Reserve FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) decided to extend “Operation Twist” where short dated Treasury bonds are sold in exchange for longer dated bonds. No additional quantitative easing was announced for now, despite worries about slowing US economic growth and so holding the size of the…

Chariot Oil and Gas has spurted 15% higher to 99p on plenty of rumours of stake building and even a potential take over. No news for some time yet from its next drill. Plenty of volume at over 3 million traded which is somewhat outsized per the chart below. Interesting!