Saturday 16 May 2009

Markets 11-15 May 2009

Bad news this week, but not on the scale we became accustomed to over the winter. Below are listed the Friday closing levels of several markets, and a comparison with their levels one week earlier - designed to eliminate "noise" from daily data you might hear on the news).

FTSE: 4348.11 (down 113.98 pts or 2.55%)
DOW: 8268.64 (down 306.01 pts or 3.57%)

£: $1.5179 (down 0.51¢ or 0.33%)
£: €1.1241 (up 0.73¢ or 0.65%)

Oil: $56.07 (down $2.12 or 3.64%)
Oil: £36.94 (down £1.27 or 3.32%)
Oil: €41.52 (down €1.15 or 2.69%)

Gold: $929.50 (up $22.50 or 2.48%)
Gold: £612.36 (up £16.82 or 2.83%)
Gold: €688.35 (up €23.26 or 3.50%)

In italics is the only measure that doesn't match the glum mood. Stock markets rise with good news, as does the pound (perceived as more vulnerable to a struggling world economy) and so does oil (implied increased demand) whereas gold falls (implied decline in instability).

Below is a graph which I hope demonstrates the correlation between oil and the pound. See how, especially over the past two months, the oil price as measured in pounds is more stable than the others.

No comments:

Post a Comment