MARKETS / FINANCE

Stock index futures rose on Monday after four straight positive sessions for Wall Street, as global stocks hit 10-month highs on hopes that the U.S. economy will soon start to recover from recession.

China will maintain its stimulative policy stance because the economy, far from being on solid footing, is facing fresh difficulties, Premier Wen Jiabao said on Monday.

Oil crept up to near $74 a barrel on Monday within sight of a 10-month high, supported by optimism that an economic recovery will spur a rebound in energy demand.

Stock index futures rose on Monday after four straight positive sessions for Wall Street, as global stocks hit 10-month highs on hopes that the U.S. economy will soon start to recover from recession.

Stock index futures indicated a stronger start on Wall Street on Monday, extending the previous session's gains after stronger U.S. housing data and optimistic comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lifted sentiment.

U.S. stock index futures indicated a stronger start on Wall Street on Monday, extending the previous session's gains after stronger U.S. housing data and optimistic comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lifted sentiment.

A Democrat senator is expected on Monday to ask the Securities and Exchange Commission to review the stock market's structures, Dow Jones Newswires reported, reviving a debate over the market impact of computer-based trading.

U.S. stock index futures indicated a stronger start on Wall Street Monday, extending the previous session's gains after stronger U.S. housing data and optimistic comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lifted sentiment.

Asian stocks jumped more than 2 percent on Monday, lifting world shares to a 10-month high, after upbeat U.S. housing data and optimistic comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spurred buying of riskier assets.

News Corp's Dow Jones & Co Inc is only in the early stages of exploring a sale of its stock market index business and a sales prospectus has not gone out yet, a source familiar with the matter said.

A prominent banking analyst said on Sunday that 150 to 200 more U.S. banks will fail in the current banking crisis, and the industry's payments to keep the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp afloat could eat up 25 percent of pretax income in 2010.

After experiencing some strong selling pressure in Asia on Friday the Aussie dollar held onto support below 0.8220 to bounce back in aggressive fashion.

Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists who accurately predicted the magnitude of the world's recent financial troubles, sees a big risk of a double-dip recession, according to an opinion piece posted on the Financial Times' website on Sunday.

Here's a rare spot of good news for former Lehman Brothers Chief Executive Richard Fuld: the vilified Wall Streeter and his wife, Kathleen, sold their Park Avenue apartment for $25.9 million, according to New York City property records.

If there was one message from central bankers gathered at this mountain retreat this weekend it was this: Don't expect us to raise interest rates any time soon.

Is it game over for the recession? Or will consumers stay in hibernation?

Clients of UBS facing disclosure of their accounts to U.S. tax authorities were not harmless victims and legal cases against former UBS bankers did not affect the bank, its chairman told Swiss Sunday newspapers.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet warned policy-makers from around the world on Saturday not to forget the lessons of the devastating financial crisis now that the worst has passed.

U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said on Saturday there is no inconsistency between the Fed's pledge to keep interest rates low for an extended period while also keeping inflation low.

Central banks may have to find new ways to steer monetary policy and prevent new crises, perhaps changing the ways they look at price levels, the head of the Bank of Canada said on Saturday.

U.S. policy-makers should think twice before pursuing a second economic stimulus package given recent indications of recovery, two top economists said on Saturday.

Exchange-traded funds or ETFs have become a top target in U.S. regulators' efforts to rein in excessive speculation in oil and other commodity markets, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

With an MACD chart, you will usually see three numbers that are used for its settings. The first is the number of periods that is used to calculate the faster moving average. The second is the number of periods that are used in the slower moving average. And the third is the number of bars that is used to calculate the moving average of the difference between the faster and slower moving averages.

n the realm of technical indicators, moving averages are extremely popular with market technicians and with good reason. Moving averages smooth the price action and make it easier to spot the underlying trends. Precise trend signals can be obtained from the interaction between a price and an average or between two or more averages themselves.

According to the Elliott Wave Theory, stock prices tend to move in a predetermined number of waves consistent with the Fibonacci series. Specifically, Elliott believed the market moved in five distinct waves on the upside and three distinct on the downside. The basic shape of the wave is shown below.

Fibonacci retracement is a very popular tool among technical traders and is based on the key numbers identified by mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci in the thirteenth century. However, Fibonacci's sequence of numbers is not as important as the mathematical relationships, expressed as ratios, between the numbers in the series. In technical analysis, Fibonacci retracement is created by taking two extreme points (usually a major peak and trough) on a stock chart and dividing the vertical distance by...

Market trends seldom take place in straight lines. Most trend pictures show a series of zig-zags with several corrections against the existing trend. These corrections usually fall into certain predictable percentage parameters. The best-known example of this is the fifty-percent retracement.

Another price formation is the key reversal day. This minor pattern often warns of an impending change in trend. In an uptrend, prices usually open higher, then break sharply to the downside and close below the previous day's closing price.

The U.S. Federal Reserve's stated intention to keep interest rates exceptionally low for an extended period may conflict with its desire to avoid inflation, an academic economist told central bankers on Saturday.