Stocks calm, dollar in demand, gold slips

It has been a lacklustre session in equity markets today as it seems that some dealers are keen to sit on hands ahead of the Jackson Hole Symposium, which kicks off tomorrow. Towards the end of last week, stocks tumbled due to concerns the Federal Reserve might look to taper its bond buying scheme later this year. To a lesser extent, the worries about tighter regulation in China also weighed on stocks, but the Fed story remains on traders’ minds. Even tough indices are not making much headway today, the S&P 500 is within a whisker of retesting its all-time high, and the DAX 30 is less than 0.5% from its record high, so that says a lot about how traders are feeling ahead of the Jackson Hole event.

The US dollar has handed back most of its earlier gains, but it is still up on the day. On Friday, it hit a new nine month high due to speculation the Fed might look to trim its bond buying scheme sooner than expected, but the...

A swimmer who was rescued off the coast of Co Kerry on Sunday night has been identified as Ruairí McSorley, who previously went viral online for a TV interview he gave in 2015 in which he became known as “Frostbit Boy”.

Mr McSorley (24), who is originally from Co Derry, was released from University Hospital Kerry (UHK) on Tuesday.

Fenit RNLI and Rescue 115 were requested to launch by the Irish Coast Guard at 11am on Sunday after clothes were discovered at Castlegregory beach by a dog walker.

Volunteer lifeboat crew with Fenit RNLI spotted a head above water hours later at 8.30pm and took the swimmer onboard an all-weather lifeboat.

Mr McSorley told the Irish Independent he was feeling “100 per cent” after the incident with “no long-term damage”.

“The only thing was my kidneys needed to readjust, so there has been no serious harm. It was only a matter of going into the hospital to heat up a bit. Other than that, I was fine,” he told the...

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Wall Street outperforms Europe, Kiwi flies

Stock markets in Europe started out on a positive note as there was a bullish session in Asia overnight, but only the DAX is set to close in positive territory. Yesterday, optimism ran through the markets as a whole, and US stocks notched up a record close following the announcement from the Food and Drug Administration, who fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Some of that positivity is still doing the rounds as fresh records have been posted in the US, but most benchmarks on this side of the Atlantic are in the red. Volatility is low as it has been a relatively slow news day.

This morning it was confirmed the German economy grew by 1.6% in the second quarter, revised up from 1.5%. Germany is the largest economy in the eurozone, so its recovery bodes well for the bloc. The DAX is the outlier for Europe as it is up 0.35%, while the FTSE 100 and the CAC 40 are down 0.05% and 0.0.25% respectively.

The...