MARKETS BECOMING NUMB TO EURO ZONE CRISIS - European shares hit a six-month high yesterday after encouraging economic numbers showed that the manufacturing sector in Germany, China and the US were in better shape than expected. Since mid-December, the DAX in Frankfurt is up almost 1,000 points.
James Hughes, an analyst at Alpari UK, says that strong gains by the DAX in recent weeks is a sign that the major markets are becoming numb to worrying euro zone news, which includes downgrades, inconclusive summits and poor economic figures. He said that in the past, stock markets had reacted with big swings to such news, but they have become immune in recent times. He says this is due to the fact that the markets are not hearing anything different - he points out that there are only so many ways that one can say that Greece had failed to wrap up its debt talks.
Ireland's sovereign bonds have been the best performers in Europe over the past six months. Mr Hughes says that some bonds are being seen for the first time as safe havens and he says the bond markets are yielding up some real surprises. He adds that the way Irish bonds have recovered in recent months is being held up as a way that other euro zone countries could follow.
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MORNING BRIEFS - Facebook - the world's biggest social networking site has announced plans for a stock market flotation. The company said it would try to raise $5 billion - about half the amount some analysts expected. But the initial public offering, or IPO, is still expected to be the biggest sale of shares by an internet company ever. Facebook which is eight years old and was started by students at Harvard University, now has 845 million monthly users and more than 400 million daily users. It made a profit of $1 billion last year. Some high profile Irish investors set to make good money on this include U2's Bono. His investment fund Elevation Partners invested $210m in Facebook shares on the secondary market in 2009 and 2010. That investment is set to be worth about $1 billion. Some private clients of stockbroker Davy are also understood to be in line for a Facebook payout through their investment in Tiger Global Management's funds, which is reported to have a 1% share in Facebook, bought in 2009. Trading in the shares is expected to begin by the end of May.
*** The parent company of American Airlines says it will shed 13,000 jobs - around 15% of its workforce. AA's parent, AMR, wants to cut staff costs by 20% in a bid to reduce spending by $2 billion and raise revenue by $1 billion a year. AMR lost $884m in the first nine months of 2011, and in December alone it lost $904m. It has lost $11 billion since 2001.
*** On the currency markets the euro is trading at $1.3172 cents and 83.14 pence sterling.
