Financial News

The ongoing struggles of the US retail sector have again prompted a slump in trading in Europe, new statistics show.

With the latest figures coming out of the retail sector on the other side of the Atlantic once again casting doubt on the degree to which the world's biggest economy is getting back on its feet, trading across Europe has hit a mid-week slump.

Indeed, shares on the FTSEurofirst 300 index were seen to fall by 0.2 per cent at the close of trading on Tuesday, while shares in Germany were also down, as was the STOXX 600 eurozone Banking Index.

Commenting on the situation to Reuters, City Index chief market strategist Joshua Raymond said: "Worse-than-expected retail sales data out of the United States Shares in Europe have suffered on the back of the latest poor figures from the US retail sector.forced stocks lower in afternoon European trading and countered much of the support gained from better than expected German ZEW sentiment data."

The latest figures from the US show that retail sales rose by just 0.4 per cent over the course of January, around half the amount anticipated by many economists.

At the same time, however, official figures recently pointed to a drop in the number of Americans out of work.

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. shares have slumped after the company reported lower-than-expected profits for the final quarter of last year.

According to the latest figures posted by the Ohio-based tyre manufacturer, sales volumes fell by five per cent over the final three months of 2011, thanks in no small part to relatively low demand from existing markets as well as the challenges posed by flooding in Thailand.

And, while the company still enjoyed a 19 per cent rise in revenue per tyre sold, fourth quarter net profits came to just $18 million, lower than many market analysts had been expecting.

On a more positive note, Goodyear's chief financial officer Darren Wells has confirmed that production at its plant in Thailand, which was hit by the recent flooding, should soon be back to normal.

"We've begun restoration of our factory and we will restart production of aviation and consumer tyres over the next few weeks, ramping up the full production during the second quarter," he told the Wall Street Journal.

The world-renowned firm was set up in 1844 by Charles Goodyear, an American inventor who developed a process for vulcanising rubber.

Trading on markets across the planet slows down during the World Cup, new research carried out by analysts at the European Central Bank has revealed.

According to the newly-published paper entitled ‘The Pitch Rather than the Pit’, trading in 15 separate markets dropped significantly during the 2010 World Cup, which was held in South Africa.

Notably, whenever a national team was playing, trading in that country was seen to drop by around 50 per cent, while if their team scored a goal, that country’s traders would do even less work.

In comparison, trading in those countries that weren’t represented at the tournament stayed relatively stable, the analysts also found.

Summing up their findings, the team concluded: “Markets are following developments on the soccer pitch, rather than in the trading pitch.”

Similarly linking sports activity and market trends, the owners of Madison Square Gardens have just reported a rise in share prices on the back of recent victories by the New York Rangers and Knicks.

Markets across Europe have been hit by the news that Moody's could be about to downgrade its assessments of several leading economies, among them the UK.

At the very start of the week's trading, the value of shares was seen to rise on the back of the Greek government's acceptance of a new package of austerity measures.

However, this optimism has proven to be relatively short-lived as the credit agency has placed AAA-rated France, Austria and the UK on a negative outlook list while also downgrading the ratings of Italy, Portugal and Spain.

This development has caused trading on the FTSE 100, France's CAC-40 and Germany's DAX to remain relatively subdued, with analysts anticipating several days worth of relatively low trading as the full implications of Moody's views are considered.

As well as market trading, the news has also hit Europe's currencies, with both the euro and the pound losing value.

Meanwhile, the German government has stated that Greece may still have to wait a little while more before it receives its next batch of bailout funding, with the money now not likely to be passed on until the start of March at the earliest.

The booming global cloud computing market has helped push the value of shares in Rackspace Holding up by around six per cent over the space of just a few days.

Posting its latest figures, the web-based data centre operator revealed that net income was up by 85 per cent over the past year, hitting $25 million, with revenues up by 32 per cent.

With these figures exceeding those predicted by market analysts, the value of shares in the American firm rose markedly at the start of the week's trading.

Announcing the news, Rackspace chief executive Lanham Napier explained that the company's ongoing success can be attributed to the fact it is now able to sell more profitable cloud computing services to existing customers.

"The longer we serve them, the more valuable and profitable they become," he told Bloomberg.

"The installed base climbing is a tailwind for profitability."

This comes as the Irish government invests heavily in cloud computing, with a new cloud computing innovation centre expected to slash public sector IT costs by as much as 50 per cent over the next few years.