Formula 1 is a sport that needs no introduction. It is the pinnacle of the motorsport world and its Grand Prix races are amongst the biggest events in all of sport. The global audience for Formula One in 2021 stood at 445 million viewers worldwide. F1 teams make the most of this exposure by striking sponsorship deal with major companies, who pay hefty fees for the right to place their…
Fundamental Analysis: What is it? Why do you need it? For traders, there are several tools or resources that can help with the decision-making process. Knowing the right time to buy and the right time to sell is what makes a telling difference to the success of your trades. Technical Analysis is one of arguably two main methods used by a lot of investors to work out what position to…
What Is An Inverted Yield Curve? An inverted yield curve is a situation in which yields on shorter-term U.S. Treasury securities are higher than on longer-term bonds, a reverse of the traditional state of affairs, where yields are higher the longer the bond's maturity. Many economists and analysts view an inverted yield curve as a signal that the U.S. economy may be poised to go into recession, because lower yields…
Copper is one of the most ubiquitous, versatile and abundant metals. The red metal, as it's known, is corrosion-resistant, a good conductor of both heat and electricity, and can be molded into any number of shapes, sizes and thicknesses. As a result, people use copper in coins, jewelry, pipes, electric wiring, and musical instruments, among other things. Copper's use by humans dates back about 10,000 years. When combined with tin,…
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is the world's largest derivatives marketplace, offering the public a vast array of options and futures contracts. Several of the CME's featured products face the equity, debt, agricultural, energy and metal asset classes. Among these listings is a softwood industry staple known as random length lumber futures. What Are Lumber Futures? Lumber futures are financial derivatives that furnish participants with leveraged softwood market exposure. Hedgers…
Yes it does and the phenomenon is now more impactful than ever. We have seen numerous examples in 2021 of celebrity billionaires, retail chat forums and social media influencers affecting the performance of various financial instruments. As mobile trading apps have provided easier access to the markets than ever, we have seen a coming together of social media and financial markets and the formation of communities and influencers who can…
Governments utilise a mix of spending and taxation to meet economic objectives. This is typically referred to as fiscal policy and is used to affect the level of aggregate demand in an economy. Governments will also use fiscal policy to aid in with wealth distribution and to allocate resources to the various sectors of an economy. Fiscal policy may be expansionary or contractionary and depends on the goals and objectives…
What Is A Bank Stress Test? Bank stress tests are administered by some of the world's major central banks to assess the ability of the largest commercial banks they oversee to withstand a major crisis in the economy and financial markets. Stress tests were largely instituted following the 2008 global financial crisis and have become a regular annual exercise in developed economies. In the U.S., for example, annual stress tests…
Market observers have repeatedly thrown around the word "depression" to describe a severe economic downturn. However, when it comes to pinning down a specific definition of this term, there is no consensus. This article will explore the aforementioned concerns, reviewing varying definitions and the different ways to measure the severity of a downturn. What Is The Difference Between A Depression And A Recession? One good way to explain a depression…
What Is A Black Swan Event? A "black swan" is a rare and nearly impossible to predict event that has deep and wide-ranging consequences for the global economy. Because black swan events have generally not happened previously, they are hard to plan for. Nevertheless, some people believe that, in hindsight, the event could have been foreseen and expected. The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is a good example of a black…
What Is The Dotcom Bubble Of 2000? The "dotcom" bubble refers to the rapid rise and subsequent freefall in the price of internet stocks and the broader NASDAQ market that took place in the late 1990s. The collapse in 2000 prefigured the overall sharp drop in stock prices and the recession that followed, exacerbated by the terrorist attacks on 11th September 2001. NASDAQ, which to this day is heavily weighted…
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