Weekly Wrap

World gold prices surged strongly on Monday, leaping back over $2,100 an ounce on Comex in New York. Silver prices also rose sharply as analysts struggled to pinpoint a driving factor for the strong gains.

Home building has begun 2024 weakly. According to January approvals figures from the ABS released on Monday, they dropped to their lowest monthly level in 11 years.

Investment by the private sector is now at eight-year highs, with projections indicating further acceleration in the 2024-25 financial year starting July 1.

In the interim results of Ramsay Healthcare (ASX:RHC), while the sale of its Asian private hospitals joint venture provided a substantial one-off profit, the broader business faced significant challenges over the past six months.

In 2022, America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) blocked the proposed $40 billion merger between Nvidia, the AI chip powerhouse, and ARM, the Japanese-owned UK-based chip infrastructure company.

It's almost official: Warren Buffett has all but anointed (verbally) one of his two senior managers, Greg Abel, as his successor at the top of Berkshire Hathaway, likely Vice Chair (to replace the late Charlie Munger in that role).

Shares in Nvidia surged nearly 8% in the minutes after the AI chip giant released better-than-expected fourth-quarter figures and forecasted a stronger-than-expected March quarter. The post-close surge came after the shares lost 2.8% in normal trading ahead of the release of the results on fears that the company’s performance would not match the hype.

Now here’s something requiring a bit of counterintuitive thinking: Did US retail sales really fall as much as reported by the government, or were there factors that added to a bit of weakness after solid rises in the closing months of 2023?

In the final quarter of 2023, Britain joined Japan and Germany in recession, marking a downturn for three of the world’s top eight economies.

The $9.1 billion bid for Altium from Japanese giant Renesas Electronics sent the ASX’s tiny tech sector sharply higher on Thursday.

The recent uptick in Australia's unemployment rate to above 4% in January, the first such increase in nearly two years, might seem like cause for concern. However, similar to the previous year, figures can be misleading.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has trimmed its renowned investment portfolio to its lowest level in nearly a decade, with only 41 companies remaining after divesting four holdings entirely in the last three months of December.

In a strategic move reflecting its formidable financial position, Barrick Gold, the world's second-largest gold miner, has announced a buyback program worth $US1 billion.

Biotech companies in the United States are witnessing a surge in fundraising activities, marking the fastest pace since the peak of the mid-pandemic market boom.

As central bankers navigate the confusion of an easing rate path, investors may still look to gold as protection against sticky inflation.

After 15 years of exceptional global growth it is believed the global economy is heading into a more difficult decade of economic trade.

Maybe it will be a goer down the track, but green steel is about to start a long journey to eventually replace the carbon (coal)-based production methods that account for most of the near 1.9 billion tonnes a year of steel produced globally.

2024 outlook could be bullish for an Australian Dollar resurgence as the Fed cuts rates and commodities lift.

Google has announced a significant rebranding of its AI chatbot and assistant, formerly known as Bard, unveiling it as Gemini. The rebrand comes alongside the launch of a new app and subscription options for users. Gemini, a key competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, shares its name with the suite of AI models powering the chatbot.