Author: Lucas

Silver (XAG/USD) struggles to capitalize on the previous day’s positive move and oscillates in a narrow trading band during the Asian session on Thursday. The white metal, however, holds above the 100-hour Simple Moving Average (SMA) and currently trades just above mid-$76.00s, down 1.0% for the day.The XAG/USD holds above this average, signaling a tentative recovery attempt. Moreover, the overnight breakout through a short-term descending channel resistance, which coincides with the said SMA, favors bulls. Meanwhile, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) sits at 55, neutral, after easing from earlier overbought readings.However, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram has slipped…

In the year to September 2025, there were 399,000 thefts from vehicles in England and Wales, according to Office for National Statistics figures. If you come back to your car to find a smashed window and your bag or laptop gone, will your insurer cover the loss? In our most recent survey of car insurance customers, one in 10 claims involved burglary or theft. Our analysis of policies suggests that while you can usually assume the car itself is covered, it’s far less clear-cut when it comes to possessions left inside. Here, we explain which personal belongings are covered, how much your…

Upstart stock is way down from its 52-week high, but the sell-off might be overdone.Banks have relied on Fair Isaac’s FICO credit scoring system for over 30 years to help determine the creditworthiness of loan applicants. It considers five factors, including their repayment history and their existing debts. However, Upstart Holdings (UPST 1.44%) believes the FICO score is far too simplistic, causing banks to potentially pass over some high-quality customers. Upstart has developed an algorithm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to rapidly analyze over 2,500 data points for each applicant, providing what it claims is a better sense of the…

How do government bonds work? When you buy a government bond, you lend the government an agreed amount of money for an agreed period of time. In return, the government will pay you back a set level of interest at regular periods, known as the coupon. This makes bonds a fixed-income asset. Once the bond expires, your original investment amount – called the principal – will be returned to you. The day on which you receive the principal is called the maturity date. Different bonds will come with different maturity dates – you could buy a bond that matures in…

Rice University scientists have fabricated a durable catalyst for high-performance fuel cells by attaching single ruthenium atoms to graphene. Catalysts that drive the oxygen reduction reaction that lets fuel cells turn chemical energy into electricity are usually made of platinum, which stands up to the acidic nature of the cell’s charge-carrying electrolyte. But platinum is expensive, and scientists have searched for decades for a suitable replacement. The ruthenium-graphene combination may fit the bill, said chemist James Tour, whose lab developed the material with his colleagues at Rice and in China. In tests, its performance easily matched that of traditional platinum-based…

From 1 April, some parts of your energy bills are changing. At the moment, the government is partly funding the Warm Home Discount scheme through electricity and gas standing charges. Standing charges are the fixed amount you have to pay just for being connected to the grid. This varies depending on where you live and your supplier but for a dual energy household, the average is around £330 a year. Of that, MoneySavingExpert says around £39 goes towards the Warm Home Discount scheme, which is a government programme that offers low-income households £150 off their electricity bill. But from April, these costs will shift to…

Soft money is considered through two different concepts. Firstly and generally speaking, it’s a type of money, like paper currency or fiat money, that stands in contrast with hard money. Hard money has physicality, like gold, silver or any other metal-coined money, or it is hard coded to be scarce, like bitcoin. Soft currency is often used instead of soft money, they are interchangeable in the economic sense as they both refer to a currency that is not backed by a tangible commodity and whose value is based on government regulation and public confidence. The only nuanced difference is that…

U.S. equities ended modestly higher yesterday, reversing early-session weakness as sentiment improved throughout the day. Stocks came under pressure early on after concerns that advances in artificial intelligence could disrupt some business models, leading to a pullback in several software stocks. The market stabilized as the session progressed, allowing major benchmarks to recover from their intraday lows. By the close, the S&P 500 edged up 0.10% to 6,843.22, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.14% to 22,578.38. The Dow Jones Industrial Average posted a 0.07% gain, ending at 49,533.19.Even though the major indexes only moved slightly, the market action hints at a…

Sygnus boss seeing opportunities for greater expansion of financing outside traditional sources THE alternative investment space in the Caribbean is growing considerably fast with the proliferation of opportunities for investors and company to access capital outside of the traditional banking sources. An alternative investment is a financial asset that does not fall into one of the conventional investment categories. They can include private equity or venture capital, hedge funds, managed futures, art and antiques, commodities, and derivatives contracts. Berisford Grey, co-founder of the Sygnus Group, one of the Caribbean’s foremost players in the alternative investment space, sees considerable growth in…

After the US captured Venezuela’s president at the start of 2026, Donald Trump promised to “unleash” the country’s oil supply. He wanted companies to invest US$100 billion (£74 billion) to get hold of it. Big oil though, seems less than keen on that idea, appearing to consider Venezuela too expensive or risky. Exxon Mobil’s unenthusiastic response, describing Venezuela as “uninvestible”, even earned a personal rebuke from Trump. So maybe Trump misunderstood how big oil works, and thought of oil firms as the quintessential risk takers – the ultimate exploiters of uncertainty. Perhaps he had in mind Daniel Day Lewis’s character…