Profitshop

Shares of energy producers led global equities lower after oil tumbled to a four-year low on OPEC’s refusal to ease a supply glut. Bonds advanced, setting record-low yields from Japan to Germany , and the dollar gained. The MSCI All-Country World Index fell 0.2 percent at 8:06 a.m. in New York as the Stoxx Europe 600 Index lost 0.4 percent. Total SA and Royal Dutch Shell Plc lost more than 2 percent as Brent crude headed for its biggest weekly decline since 2011. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index  futures  dropped 0.1 percent as U.S. markets reopen after the Thanksgiving holiday. Treasuries rose, Japan’s two-year rates turned negative for the first time and Germany’s 10-year  yield  declined to 0.694 percent. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index climbed to a five-year high, while gold and silver slid for a third day. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries kept its production ceiling unchanged, underscoring the price war in the crude market and challenge to U.S. shale drillers

Mitsubishi Estate Co. (8802) ’s 159 ($1.34 billion) sale of a building in  Tokyo ’s most expensive business district shows that commercial property prices have surpassed their 2007 peak, according to Credit Suisse Group AG. Mitsubishi Estate said yesterday it will sell the former Mizuho Bank headquarters in Marunouchi to Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (8411)  The price Mizuho is paying is estimated to be 77.4 million yen per tsubo, Credit Suisse analyst Masahiro Mochizuki said. That is higher than 69.3 million yen per tsubo  Sumitomo Mitsui (8316)  Banking Corp. paid for an adjacent building in March 2007, he said. A tsubo, a standard measure of area in  Japan , is 3.3 square meters or 36 square feet. Tokyo’s real estate prices have risen about 20 percent since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office two years ago and introduced measures to end deflation and boost economic growth. Overseas buyers are prepared to pay even higher prices for Japanese real estate than domestic purchasers

Citigroup Inc. (C)  is counting on fees from managing bond sales and share offerings to drive revenue in Spain after selling dozens of branches in the country as part of a wider retreat from consumer banking. The bank expects its revenue in Spain to increase five to 10 percent in 2015, Country Officer William Van Dyke said in an interview. Spain is one of the five biggest sources of income for New York-based Citigroup within Europe, the Middle East and  Africa , according to a spokesman for the bank, which gets more of its revenue outside its home market than any other U.S. lender. It doesn’t provide a breakdown by country. “Large market capitalization companies always had access to capital markets, but medium-sized ones and companies with lower than investment grade rating needed access, and this has started to change in recent years,” he said. “Equities will also have a good year in 2015, mainly through capital increases and accelerated equity offers.” Citigroup is pulling ba

Labor agency said that demand for workers on the way now. German unemployment fell and the jobless rate reached a record low as businesses and investors become more confident that  Europe ’s largest economy will keep growing. The number of people out of work fell a seasonally adjusted 14,000 to 2.87 million in November, the Federal Labor Agency in Nuremberg said today. Economists forecast a decline of 1,000, according to the median of 34 estimates in a  Bloomberg News survey . The adjusted jobless rate  was 6.6 percent, matching the revised number for the previous month and marking the lowest level in records going back more than two decades. Germany’s economy returned to growth in the third quarter and business confidence and investor sentiment both improved in November as the  European Central Bank  added stimulus to the euro area. Even so, the Bundesbank says momentum will be lacking until at least the end of the year. “The German labor market is running very close to full

Chilean  unemployment  unexpectedly fell in the three months through October, the first month of a quarter that Finance Minister Alberto Arenas forecasts will see a “small and moderate reactivation” in the economy. The jobless rate slid to 6.4 percent from 6.6 percent in the month earlier period, the National Statistics Institute said on its website today, compared with the 6.7 percent median forecast of 17 economists polled by Bloomberg.  Retail sales  fell 0.2 percent in October from the year earlier, while  manufacturing output  gained 1 percent, the institute said in a separate report. Policy makers have cut interest rates by more than any other country in the past 14 months as the economy grows at the slowest pace since the 2009 recession. While Arenas forecasts the beginning of a pick-up this quarter, central bank director Enrique Marshall told El Mercurio over the weekend that growth would remain weak into the first few months of next year. “The report provides a certain

Luxembourg, home to equity funds with about $1.2 trillion of assets, gave its first approval to trade through the Shanghai- Hong Kong  exchange link as international investors seek greater access to Chinese shares. Luxembourg’s financial regulator granted the authorization to a fund yesterday, Patrick Hommel, a member of the secretariat general at the  Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, said in an e-mailed reply to questions without naming the beneficiary. Funds domiciled in the country that aren’t yet invested in the Chinese market should refrain from using the link until they get regulatory approval, he said. Overseas money managers have been working to finalize trading and compliance systems since Chinese authorities gave them a week’s notice for the program’s start date on Nov. 17. While foreigners bought the  maximum  daily amount of mainland shares allowed on the link’s debut, inflows have since slowed and Mirae Asset Global Investments (HK) Ltd. said last wee

U.S. oil production has risen to 9.077 million barrels a day, the highest level in weekly data from the Energy Information Administration going back to 1983. Output will climb to 9.4 million next year, the most since 1972, it forecasts. Middle Eastern exporters including Saudi Arabia,  Iran  and  Iraq  can break even at about $30 a barrel, while some U.S. producers need more than $80, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. said in a report last month. OPEC’s policy will spur a crash in the U.S. shale industry,  Leonid Fedun , a vice president and board member at OAO Lukoil,  Russia ’s second-largest oil producer, said in an interview in London before the group’s decision. “In 2016, when OPEC completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again,” said Fedun. “The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish.” The share prices of U.S. oil producers including Exxon Mobil Co