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BT's superfast broadband network will be completed in time for the 2012 Olympic Games, the firm has announced.

Customers based in towns and cities will be able to download at speeds of up to 100 Megabits per second (Mbps), supporting high-definition video. Only around 40% of homes will receive the £1.5bn fibre-optic network, which equates to 10 million homes by the time the games begin on the 27 July 2012.

BT had originally said the programme would be completed by March 2013 but said the rollout was now ahead of schedule. "Given the progress we're making, four million homes will have access to fibre by the end of next year", said Ian Livingston, CEO of BT.

Customers will be able to access the highest speeds where BT runs fibre-optic cables all the way to their home. However, the network will still offer speeds of up to 40 Mbps in areas where the fibre cable is run to BT-owned cabinets. In these fibre-to-the-cabinet areas, homes will still be connected to the cabinets by slower copper cables.

Extending the coverage would "inevitably involve support from the public sector", Mr Livingston added. The UK government has said it wants super-fast broadband available to 90% of the country by the end of 2017 and everyone in the country to have access to broadband speeds of 2 Mbps by 2012.

Indeed the recent budget applied a levy on all telephone lines to support 2Mbps broadband, giving an interesting definition to the phrase "superfast broadband".

Mr Livingston called for further clarity from the UK government. "If you look around the world, several governments are pro-actively supporting the roll out of fibre broadband", he said. "There's still a debate in the UK - which is fine - but we need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is".

With the BBC iPlayer proving remarkably popular and its service remit about to be expanded, plus demands of YouTube and other bandwidth intensive applications, the 100 Mbps mark should be the minimum target set.

Which? Warn Online Retailers

Thousands of internet retailers may be breaking laws that protect customers, claims the Which? consumer advocacy group.

The organisation is warning firms to obey the law, or risk being reported to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and face the threat of prosecution. Many online sites were ignoring the rules and not complying with the Distance Selling regulations.

A Which? survey last month claimed that several well-known names, including Marks & Spencer and Game, didn't fully comply with regulations. Both companies have since altered the wording on their websites, although both deny that they ever broke the law.

The Distance Selling regulations apply to anything purchased via the telephone, catalogues, the internet or television. "If you are an online store, it is your duty to stick with the legislation", said Matt Bath, the technology editor of Which? magazine.

The most common mistake made by retailers concerns the amount of time that customers have to return unwanted goods. The regulations state that customers have seven working days from receiving the goods, in which to cancel the order. They then have a reasonable amount of time to return them.

Providing cancellation was within that period, consumers are entitled to a full refund, without the imposition of an administration or re-stocking fee, unless the purchase was cancelled outside the seven-day period.

Retailers are also bound to refund any postage and packing fee on the original delivery. However, depending on the conditions, the retailer may not be liable for the costs of sending the goods back.

Andrew McClelland of the The Internet Media in Retail Group (IMRG) says it is probably "a fair assumption" that at least 1,000 sites may be breaking the law, though not IMRG members, he added.

It is his belief that few website owners will be breaking the law knowingly. "A lot of retailers new to the business, whilst not deliberately wanting to break the law, probably don't understand the requirements of the legislation", Mr McClelland said.

Which? is warning that it will now be hunting out other offenders. "We will be keeping a firm eye on the big name stores and those smaller independents to make sure shoppers are getting a fair deal", said Matt Bath. Any sites found to be breaking the Distance Selling regulations will be reported to the Office of Fair Trading, who could decide to prosecute.

One problem is that the regulations are not clear, nor are they well publicised, so site owners are often not aware that there are regulations they should follow. WNW Design would always advise you contact a solicitor to have your Terms and Conditions written specifically for your website. Please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to put you in touch with a local specialist legal advisor.

WNW Design Link with West of England School

On 1st January 2010 WNW Design celebrates our 10th birthday. We would like to say a big thank you to all our customers, suppliers and friends for your support over the past decade and we hope for many years to come.

In order to mark this landmark, we have linked up with local children's charity The West of England School and College for Children and Young People with Little or No Sight.

We will be donating £100 to the School for each new web hosting client during the whole of 2010. So if you know anyone who is looking either to start a new website or is looking to change their website hosting provider, help us help the School and contact us for a quotation.

If you would like more information about this offer or the work of the School, please visit www.wnwdesign.co.uk/WESchool

NB. WNW Design is not responsible for the content of any external websites, nor do the views expressed represent those of WNW Design. www.wnwdesign.co.uk/

The FTSE fell in the run-up to the pre-budget report, amid mounting concerns about our financial health. Halifax reported that average house-prices in Britain rose 1.3% in November. Retail sales grew by 1.8% year-on-year in November. Ofgem reported that average household energy bills could rise to over £2,000 annually, despite a new initiative to install ‘smart’ meters in households, which should help lower energy use. askten.co.uk

Rupert Murdoch's plan to generate revenue from News Corporation's online newspaper content has taken a new twist with news that Microsoft has reportedly offered to pay newspaper websites, including those owned by Mr. Murdoch, to remove their content from Google.

The plan, first reported by the blog TechCrunch, comes after News Corp said it was preparing to block Google from accessing content from newspapers including The Times, The Sunday Times, the Sun, the News of the World and the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft and News Corp refused to comment.

Apparently the aim is to give Microsoft's Bing search engine an advantage over rival Google. It would also benefit newspapers struggling to find a way of profiting from readers accessing their content online for free.

Recently James Murdoch, News Corp's head of Europe and Asia, said: "We invest quite a lot in our journalism and we are proud of it. We think we should charge a fair price for it."

James Harding, editor of The Times, has said the newspaper will start charging readers to access its digital content from next spring. The Wall Street Journal began charging for access to its content via iPhones and BlackBerrys last month.

And Johnston Press, one of the UK's biggest newspaper firms has announced it is to charge for access to online content from six of its titles. The websites will either ask users to pay £5 for a three-month subscription to read the full articles, or direct them to buy the newspapers.

Johnston is the first regional publisher in the UK to trial asking readers to pay for its online news. Sites in the pilot scheme include the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley and Heanor News and the Whitby Gazette.

Hamleys Fails to Renew Web Address

Hamleys, the famous toy shop, forgot to renew its domain name www.hamleys.com, allowing a third-party company to take over its website.

Internet customers visiting the website were met with a web page displaying adverts for rival toy companies. The site is now managed by a company called Network Solutions, a company that helps businesses market themselves on the internet, including helping register their domain name.

Links from the Hamleys site takes customers to John Lewis, Amazon, Argos and other rivals toy retailers. A spokesman for Hamleys admitted its site was inaccessible for at least 36 hours. She said: "Yes, the domain name was not renewed. It was an extremely big oversight, and yes, the timing of it was very unfortunate."

The November run up to Christmas is a key time for toy shopping and it is understood that Hamleys lost thousands of pounds worth of sales as a result of its website not being accessible.

A spokesman for Network Solutions, based in Virginia in the US, insisted it had not seized or bought the Hamleys domain name. "We've been helping Hamleys renew their domain name. We are the registers for Hamleys and we reached out to them the moment they did not renew their domain name."

He added that the Hamleys website only changed to a Network Solutions holding page, featuring rival company adverts, a full 6 days after the expiry of a company's domain name.

Not renewing your domain name is the online equivalent of not renewing the lease on your business premises. Except that rather than having an irate landlord, you come in to work to find your entire business has vanished and your rival trading from your premises.

I would reassure customers of WNW Design that we auto-renew client domain names and only de-register them on the explicit instruction of our clients.

Things Move Fast Online!

Earlier this year, Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, was asked what he thought of Twitter. In response he said the microblogging site and similar services were "poor man's email systems".

In November Google proudly announced a partnership with Twitter, which will enable the search engine to add 'tweets' to its search index, in a bid to make its user experience more real-time.

Bing, Microsoft's search engine, has also signed a deal with Twitter and Facebook to include tweets and people's public status updates in its results. And this week rumours have surfaced about Yahoo! signing a similar deal with OneRiot, a real-time search engine, which indexes updates posted across Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed and several others sites.

So why the rush to incorporate social media into search results? According to a paper produced by OneRiot 40 per cent of all searches are "browse queries". These searches are performed in the hope of finding out the latest news about a topic. When you type "Barack Obama" into Google, chances are you are not looking for the President's Wikipedia entry or the White House website but want the latest gossip or news about him.

The remaining 60% of searches are "navigational" and "informative", people searching for a particular website or specific information such as a dentist's telephone number. These searches have always been well catered for but in the fast moving news arena the results are often badly outdated.

Stefan Weitz, director of Bing, thinks real-time results highlight the best of the web. "The web was designed to be this tool which people could use to contribute ideas. It was a way for people to share knowledge," he explains. "Now with tools such as Twitter and Facebook, there is a lower barrier to entry. Anyone, anywhere, can post a small piece of information online and it can be shared around the world in minutes and really helps people."

All the search engines have to do now is work out how to display the information in a user friendly format and separate the valuable information from the rubbish, both of which get regularly posted in real-time on sites like Twitter.

Digital Advertising Overtakes TV Ad Spend

Online advertising spending in the UK has overtaken television expenditure for the first time, a report has said. The digital spending grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn.

Overall advertising fell 16% compared with the same period in 2008, said the study by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The recession had accelerated the migration of advertising spending to digital technology , moving from more traditional media such as print, radio and television advertising to online, according to the report.

Whilst not entirely comparing like with like, E-mail campaigns, classified adverts, display ads and search marketing are all classed as online advertising, this is still a significant milestone.

Justin Pearse, editor of industry website New Media Age, said the tough economic times had led to a significant fall in TV advertising spending, which saw it being overtaken about a year earlier than most had expected.

However, Thinkbox, the marketing body for the main UK commercial television broadcasters, took a different view. "Online marketing spend is made up of many things including e-mail, classified ads, display ads and, overwhelmingly, search marketing. They should be judged individually," said Lindsey Clay, Thinkbox's marketing director.

"The internet is a fantastic technology and home to many different marketing activities that do different things. As such, it is interesting but meaningless to sweep all the money spent on every aspect of online marketing into one big figure and celebrate it."

Both views seem to overlook the fact that TV advertising is overwhelmingly done by large companies, who appear to have been hardest hit by the economic downturn. Smaller companies, who have proved more effective at reacting to the downturn, can target niche markets on the web, either by market or geography, but still operate within their smaller marketing budgets, which do not stretch to TV advertising.

AND FINALLY

With less than a month until Christmas I issue my annual plea. Look at your website and compare your contact and delivery information to your holiday opening hours.

When is your last posting day for guaranteed Christmas delivery? When will you respond to emails sent at 1am on New Years Day? When will you re-open the office and what emergency contact details have you set?

Make sure this information is clearly displayed on your website. And if you need help updating your website, please contact us ASAP. Calling us at 7.30pm on Christmas Eve to update your contact details might be too late!

 NB. WNW Design is not responsible for the content of any external websites, nor do the views expressed represent those of WNW Design.

Dear 2day Reader

Below is a photo of myself tearing up a cheque for hundreds of pounds at our Chillaton bonfire party.You may remember that we have to do this in order to comply with current (manic) government event regulations. But for the regulations, which would have required us to have prohibitively expensive insurance plus a Temporary Events Licence etc… the event would have raised £529 for the local church. However compliance with all the government regulations and licenses would have cost more than we would have made. The only way to make the event legal was to ensure that no charity benefited from it.

I have been running bonfire parties safely for 30 years - and nobody has been injured yet. The only contribution the current regulations make is to ensure that charities don’t get any of the money. Charities are estimated to lose tens of million pounds a year as a direct results of events ‘not’ being held for them – due to government regulations.

This is all part of an ongoing campaign to run useless events around the country. The first was launched this summer by our MP, Geoffrey Cox, in a vintage Tiger Mother plane when he tore up a £500 cheque – necessary or the organizers would have faced a £20,000 fine or 6 months in prison. The only way the event could proceed legally was to ensure that no charity benefited – by tearing up the cheque.

Please see www.communityevents.2day.ws for full details and to sign our petition on the 10 Downing Street website. Our objective is to get our legislation into the Conservative Parties election manifesto

Please feel free to ring me any time for more information.

All good wishes,

Richard

Richard Searight

East Quither Farm

Milton Abbot

Tavistock

Devon PL19 0PZ

Telephone 01822 860148 or 01822 600001

• Get ready for the next phase of the house price crash

• Recommended article: One clean energy stock to buy now

• Yesterday's close: FTSE up 0.6% at 5,092... Gold down 0.32% at $1,062.85... £/$ - 1.5586

It seems this correction has legs.

After a sharp last-minute rebound saved US shares from closing lower on Friday, the Dow Jones lost another 100 points yesterday.

As my colleague David Stevenson pointed out yesterday, this isn’t just about Greece. The state of that country has merely reminded everyone that there are plenty of other debt time bombs scattered around the global economy, just waiting to go off.

And one is located smack bang in the middle of the UK property market...

What caused the house price surge?

Remember the subprime crisis? A quick recap. Banks used to make home loans using the money that savers deposited with them. The savers got one rate of interest, the borrowers paid a higher rate, the banks made a profit in the middle, and everyone was happy.

Then banks realised they could parcel up the loans and sell them to other people. So rather than having to attract savers, they wrapped up home loans and sold them to investors. Demand for these packages (home loan-backed securities, or MBS) was so high that banks couldn’t write loans fast enough.

Hence borrowing costs and standards plunged, house prices surged, lots of people got home loans who shouldn’t have, and it all went pear-shaped when some particularly dodgy debtors in the US started defaulting before they’d even made a single payment.

Fine, we all know the story. But what happened next? The securitisation market dried up completely. Demand for MBS shut down everywhere. That was a problem for British lenders. Because between 1999 and 2007, according to the CML, new lending for house purchases outstripped retail deposits by £180bn. In other words, that £180bn didn’t come from savers, it came from investors.

So when investor demand for MBS vanished, lenders were left in a fix. They didn’t have anything like the amount of money they needed in order to write the sorts of quantities of home loans they’d been writing before.

So the government stepped in. Two schemes were introduced to prop up lending for home loans, and by extension, the housing market and house prices. One was the Special Liquidity Scheme. This effectively allowed banks to swap MBS with the Bank of England for gilts, then swap the gilts for cash at very cheap rates. A full £178bn has been borrowed by the banks in this way.

The other scheme is a Credit Guarantee Scheme whereby the Treasury has guaranteed banks’ fund-raising. £134bn has come through this route. As Robert Peston points out on his blog on the BBC website, “that is £314bn of credit provided to lenders by us, the taxpayers.”

Why house prices will fall again

Trouble is, the bill is coming due. The £178bn has to be paid back by the end of 2012. Meanwhile, most of the debt guarantees also expire in 2012, or by the latest, 2014. As Peston says, 2012 might seem far off at the moment. But not if you’re writing 25-year home loans. If you know that you’re going to have to repay all that debt in a couple of years’ time, you’re not going to be keen to keep writing new loans.

If the banks had to raise that kind of money privately to repay the loans to the government, then they’d be competing for capital with lots of other institutions and companies. What happens when demand for something (investors’ money) goes up while the supply remains the same? You guessed it – it gets more expensive. So the banks will have to pay more than they currently are to get their hands on that money.

Lloyds Banking Group recently raised £4bn via an issue of MBS, reports Norma Cohen in the FT. The bank had to pay more than 1.85 percentage points above 3-month Libor (one of the key rates at which banks lend to one another) to get private investors to buy the stuff. What happens when all the banks try to do the same, particularly when the MBS market is still very fragile?

And of course, if the cost of funding for the banks goes up, then the cost goes up for consumers too. So you’ll have to pay more for your home loan (not to mention personal loans and small business loans). And as the price of credit goes up, prices of houses will fall again.

The trouble is, the banks can’t really afford for that to happen either. They’ve only just got to a stage where they can pretend that their loans aren’t massively underwater, because prices have ostensibly rebounded so sharply.

So the CML is clearly hoping for some sort of extension to the lending schemes. “We are not suggesting that government pour vodka in the punch bowl. We are asking how government can get the patient to sober up without too much shock therapy,” said the lobby group’s Rob Thomas.

The last thing Britain can afford right now is more debt

But can the Government afford to extend the schemes? This is where Greece comes back into the picture. Investors are starting to look at us, then look at Greece, and wonder where exactly the difference lies, beyond the climate. Both countries have hugely over-extended public sectors. And at least Greece is talking about cutbacks. In Britain, neither party is willing to talk tough before the election.

Sterling tanked against the dollar yesterday while gilt yields rose. It’s as if investors had suddenly thought: “Wait a minute. Greece is implicitly backed by Germany. Who’s propping up Britain?”

In short, the last thing Britain can afford right now is the spectre of even more debt being piled onto the books. As US economist Simon Johnson, formerly of the International Monetary Fund, put it: “Unless you [Britain] can persuade the markets you’re really going to bring the budget under control in the foreseeable future, you’re going to have big trouble.”

The time for open-ended bail-outs is passed. Governments can’t afford to take on any more dodgy debt from the private sector. That almost certainly means that the price of credit is going to go up. And the price of everything else will go down.

 

Until tomorrow,

John Stepek

Editor, MoneyWeek
New Business Editor of the Year, BSME Awards 2009

Our recommended article for today...

One clean energy stock to buy now
- Technological improvements and government stimulus money has given geothermal energy a boost in the US. Here, David Fessler picks one stock that stands out from the rest of the sector: One clean energy stock to buy now.

And for yesterday’s market update, see below...

Market update

Click here for the latest stock market news and charts.

The FTSE 100 rose yesterday as commodity and defensive stocks lifted the markets. The index closed up 0.6% at 5,092.

Among miners, precious metals miner Randgold Resources led the risers with a climb of 6.3% after announcing a 79% increase in profits, while Xstrata climbed 3.6% after reinstating its dividend. Kazakhmys, ENRC, and Anglo American all added between 2.3% and 2.6%.

Oil stocks also rose, with Royal Dutch Shell rising 1.2% and BP up 0.5%.

Pharmaceutical and tobacco stocks were also among the day's climbers. British American Tobacco rose 2.3% and Imperial Tobacco gained 1.7%, while AstraZeneca and GSK climbed 1.7% and 1.1% respectively.

In Europe, the Paris CAC 40 rose 44 points to 3,607; and the German Xetra Dax was 50 points higher at 5,540.

In the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 10,000 for the first time since November after concerns about the eurozone's debt issues. The index lost 1% to close at 9,908. The S&P 500 lost 0.9% to 1,056; and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.7% lower at 2,126.

Overnight in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 and the broader Topix index both fell 0.2% to 9,932, and 881 respectively. In China, the Shanghai Composite rose 0.5% to 2,948; and CSI 300 index gained 0.6% to 3,169.

Brent spot was trading at $70.34 early today, and in New York, crude oil was at $72.22. Spot gold was trading at $1,070 an ounce, silver was at $15.20 and platinum was at $1,487.

In the forex markets this morning, sterling was trading against the US dollar at 1.5597 and against the euro at 1.1353. The dollar was trading at 0.7282 against the euro and 89.68 against the Japanese yen.

And today, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) says Britain's high street saw the slowest January sales growth for 15 years, as poor weather led customers to stay at home. Sales rose just 1.2% compared to the previous January, while like-for-like sales fell 0.7%. Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, said: "It's an awful start to the year."

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• Forget Greece - the real debt crisis is still to come

• Recommended article: Profit from the world's defence spending

• Friday's close: FTSE 100 down 1.5% at 5,061... Gold up 0.2% at $1,066.70... £/$ - 1.5641

Last week was just like 2008 again. The FTSE 100 was up 2.5% on the week by mid-Wednesday, only to fall by almost 5% before Friday’s close.

There were plenty of things to blame the poor performance on. We had some poor jobless figures in the US. Then of course there’s the fast-growing eurozone debt crisis. Greece might be in the biggest mess, but other borrowers in the region are also coming under the microscope.

But the bad news is that this isn’t just about a few peripheral eurozone countries, or some dodgy unemployment stats. There are plenty more global debt time bombs primed and ready to explode.

The ultimate damage to the financial system could make 2008 look like a walk in the park. Don’t touch government bonds with a bargepole. Here’s why...

Bad debts are set to hammer British banks

The economic boom that ended in 2007 always seemed too good to be true. That’s because it was. It was built on borrowing, much of it personal. In the UK, the ratio of household debt to disposable income hit its highest-ever level of 160% by mid-2008, according to the Office of National Statistics.

Now the game’s changed completely. Incomes have been squeezed by rising job losses and the economy going wrong. Apart from at Christmas times, consumer loan growth has been declining in almost a straight line for the last two years. In fact, credit is now contracting.

But there are still millions of over-indebted Britons. And many are now finding it too difficult to make ends meet. In 2009, 134,000 people in England and Wales went into some form of personal insolvency. That’s the highest-ever recorded figure and up 26% on 2008. “The huge number demonstrates the real effect the recession is having on the average person in the UK”, says Pat Boyden at accountancy group PwC.

British banks had to double their credit card write-offs in 2009’s third quarter. And things could be about to get much worse. “Expect to see growing numbers of personal insolvencies over the next 12 months”, says Steve Rees at debt advisers Vincent Bond. That will mean banks facing bigger bad debts, and even less credit card lending.

In short, it’ll be very nasty. But this is small beer compared to some of the debt time bombs that are ready to go off around the rest of the world.

Greece's problems are nothing compared to the global picture

It isn’t just British consumers who’ve taken against debt. Private borrowing is slowing everywhere. US consumer credit has shrunk for a record 11 months in a row.

But governments round the world have been aggressively picking up the slack. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the G20 – the 20 largest industrialized countries – has spent more than $2.2 trillion to try to get global growth going again. Much of this money has been borrowed. That’s just adding to the debt pile those governments had built up earlier.

Sure, financial markets are fretting that within two years, Greece will have racked up public borrowings equal to more than 120% of GDP. But that’s nothing compared to the global picture. Dylan Grice at Société Générale has crunched the numbers for the whole of the EU, the UK and the US. He’s found that the average total net liabilities - including unfunded pensions, social security and healthcare - of these countries’ governments emerged at a terrifying 400% of GDP.

“After the stimulus binge, it’s a debt hangover”, as William Pesek puts it in BusinessWeek. Even if governments stop overspending now, they’ll have to compete more for cash with the private sector. So they’ll have to pay much higher rates on the bonds they’ll need to sell.

This will drive up the cost of capital for everyone. That in turn will curb private sector investment. Without that investment, we won’t get the levels of economic growth required to generate the taxes that governments need to keep debt at manageable levels. Life will also get even harder for heavily-borrowed individuals. It’s a truly vicious circle.

So things look bad, even if governments stop overspending now. But the trouble is, they won’t stop over spending. Paul Farrell at Marketwatch has been digging deeper into America’s debt mountain. He spotlights a range of areas, such as homeland security, defence and local government, where spending is fast overshooting. The only way the US authorities will be able to plug the financial gaps will be to borrow even more money.

“Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children”, says Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan (which showed how history is littered with rare and unpredictable events). “They can get out of control very quickly”. No wonder he’s urging “every single human being” to bet on US Treasury bond prices falling – which would happen automatically if yields are pushed up.

You must avoid government bonds

The same applies to UK government bonds – gilts. Tim Price of PFP Wealth Management recently wrote in The Price Report: “It is possible that what we are seeing in Greece may ultimately trigger an escalation of the sovereign debt problems facing much of the west. If Greece were to default (we cannot presume that Germany, for one, will have a limitless appetite to bail out its European neighbours, given the lengthy pain it suffered after unification), bond market pressure would then be applied to the other weak links in Europe, such as Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Spain and from there in turn to the UK and the US.” Even if Greece is bailed out, “we would likely see a resumption of problems in Eastern Europe and other emerging but fragile economies.”

So what’s the bottom line?

Keep well clear of UK, US and European government bonds. And remember that soaring bond yields will be very bad news for the prices of cyclical shares that depend on economic growth. That’s why we keep suggesting defensive stocks, which don’t.

Farrell believes “the third great Wall Street meltdown of the 21st century is coming, which will ignite the Great Depression that has been simply delayed by the stimulus bonanzas and bailouts”.

Maybe that’s a bit of an apocalyptic view – we’ll see. But there’s no doubt the markets will soon be facing some vastly bigger debt problems than just those of Greece.

 Until tomorrow,

David Stevenson

Associate editor, MoneyWeek

PS. Tim Price doesn’t like gilts, but he does have some suggestions for what you should be buying instead to protect your wealth right now. If you want to find out more about his Price Report newsletter, then click here.

Our recommended article for today...

Profit from the world's defence spending
- Most of the world's governments may be cash-strapped, but their spending on weapons keeps on rising. And in those countries where cash isn't constrained, arms buying is set to soar. Here we look at the defence sector, and pick the best company to invest in now: Profit from the world's defence spending.

And for Friday’s market update, see below...

Market update

Click here for the latest stock market news and charts.

The FTSE 100 slipped another 1.5% on Friday to 5,061, its lowest close since early-November last year, after big downward revisions in US employment numbers.

ICAP, the world’s biggest inter-dealer broker, was the worst FTSE 100 faller, down nearly 20% after saying that full-year earnings would miss analysts’ expectations.

Energy stocks fell back, led down by a 3.2% dip in BG Group whose fourth-quarter earnings were also below expectations. BP and Royal Dutch Shell, both of which had announced results during the week that had disappointed the markets, lost 0.9% each.

Banks continued to drop, with HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Standard Chartered and Lloyds Banking Group easing between 1.2% and 5.7%.

Amongst miners, Xstrata plunged 5% ahead of today’s results.

Markets in Europe were also hit hard again, with the Paris CAC 40 dropping 3.4% to 3,564 and the German Xetra Dax down 1.8% at 5,434.

But in the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell back in early trading, but staged a rally towards the close, eventually ending 0.1% up at 10,012. The S&P 500 nudged up 0.3% to 1,066 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.7% to 2,141.

Overnight in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 1% to 9,952, while the broader Topix index dipped a similar percentage to 883. In China, the Shanghai Composite dropped 0.1% to 2,935 and the CSI 300 index also slipped 0.1% to 3,151.

Brent spot was trading at $69.21 early today, and in New York, crude oil was at $69.45. Spot gold was trading at $1,069 an ounce, while silver was at $15.16 and platinum was at $1,495.

In the forex markets this morning, sterling was weak, trading against the US dollar at 1.5571 and against the euro at 1.1384. The dollar was at 0.7312 against the euro and 89.46 against the Japanese yen.

This morning, following Wall Street’s rebound on Friday, the FTSE was firmer, as commodity prices recovered. Xstrata reported a 41% profit decline as coal prices weakened.

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