Swen Lorenz

One of the themes that I’ve been reiterating over the past few months has been my concern over the potential for growth in corporate earnings. While companies in the S&P 500 have reported extremely strong corporate earnings over the past few years, we might be reaching a peak in the cycle.  As you know, businesses…

Risers: Tate & Lyle, up 2% Ingredients firm Tate & Lyle has announced that its performance in the second quarter was broadly in line with expectations through adjusted operating profit for the first half is expected to be slightly lower than the comparative period due to softness in the US drinks sector. The colder weather…

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European futures are indicating a lower open this morning as US budget talks continue. US House Speaker John Boehner is trying to unite Republicans around a plan to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. Boehner remains under pressure from his own part to put an end to what has been a four day…

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By Zak Mir. Over the last 20 years I must have amassed dozens of books about markets and technical analysis. I’ve always adopted a simple guiding principle to help me chose, which, of the many hundreds (or even thousands) of titles out there, are best for me. Is the book too complicated or too simple…

  The U.S. government shutdown has highlighted two unavoidable and predictable events. The first is pretty obvious, the other maybe not so much.  For starters, the U.S. government shutdown means as many as 800,000 of the country’s 2.1 million federal workers could end up being furloughed (temporary, non-duty, non-pay status). Not surprisingly, members of Congress—those…

Risers:  Aviva, +2.58% Climbing the most amongst FTSE 100 shares, Aviva has surged after the insurer announced the sale of its US life and annuities business to Athene Holding. The sale reaped £1.6 billion in total, surpassing the December 2012 estimate of £1.1 billion. The additional £493M represents estimated earnings and other improvement in statutory…

President Obama met congress for the first time since the shutdown last night in an attempt bring an end to the US government shutdown.  This generated optimism in the markets with Asian stocks performing well overnight combined with a 6-month high for the Chinese Service Industry.  The meeting however proved futile with both sides unwilling…