Economic and Market Update - Week Ending 21st March

March 21, 2014 - PRLog -- Hexagon Capital Management is a privately held wealth management company that manages hundreds of client assets in a wide range of products and services with a non biased, client orientated program that is tailored to each individual or corporate requirement.

This week has seen positive data out of the United States, Crimean citizens vote to repatriate themselves back with Russia, MH370, a Malaysian Airlines plane still missing for almost 2 weeks, finally may have been located almost 2,500km off the coast of Perth. The news out of both China and Japan confirming their economies are not growing as steadily as predicted and in fact are cause for concern, positive news out of the Bank of England with regards to its restructuring and the announcement of possibly the largest IPO for 2014 in the listing of Alibaba.

Despite all of this the markets have remained relatively level with very little in the way of gains across the indexes. As each days has started Asia has led the way with negative responses to data out of China and Japan seeing the major indexes closing roughly 1.5% down for the week:

Nikkei 225  at 14,224.37   (-1.65%)          Hang Seng at 21,241.13 (+0.28%)

SSE Comp at 1,993.47 (-1.40%)

As the United States and Europe consider further sanctions against Russia European and US indexes are expected to continue they way they have over the past few weeks. With very few European indices staying in positive territory it is in no doubt related directly to the crisis and what possible outcomes could happen should the West impose further penalties for Russia's indiscretion and the retaliation they might face. Concerns over energy supplies have been voiced and the exposure of Europe to Russian business is now being fully expressed. Sanctions may be the official route to a resolution however their effectiveness is already being called into question.

European and US Indexes need to show an improvement and there is optimism that Friday should be a good day. Considering their closes as of Thursday, there is room for improvement:

FTSE 100  Closed at 6542.44 (-0.47%)        Dax Closed at 9296.12 (+0.21%)

CAC 40 Closed at 4327.92 (+0.44%)          Dow Jones Closed at 16331.05 (+0.64%)

NASDAQ Closed at 4319.29 (+0.27%)

Technology Sector - Major News Weekending 21st march

The technology sector has been awash with news this week. Ranging from updates on acquisitions to announcements of major IPO's. Here is a brief rundown on what made the headlines:

It didnt take long for regulators to have complaints over the proposed purchase by Facebook Inc. (FB) of the mobile messaging service WhatsApp. At least one complaint was filed with the SEC regarding the privacy of WhatApps client data and what FB planned on doing with it. The reported $19bn deal looks set to continue as both Zuckerburg and his counterpart confirmed that the current users had nothing to fear and that the service would continue in the same vein.

MtGox, the Bitcoin exchange that lost 850,000 bitcoins found 200,000 in an old wallet from 2011. The find, equivalent to $116m has now been moved to an offline account. The company that filed for bankruptcy after losing almost 7% of the entire supply of the digital currency is still investigating how and where the bitcoins have been moved.

Twitter is facing another issue as another government looks to block its service. Turkish  PM Erdogan threatened to wipe out the site as news of possible images and documents were reportedly about to be released ahead of coming elections. With over 10m Twitter users in Turkey the documents outlined corruption within the politicians inner circle and after there was no response from Twitter regarding the Turkish governments request to remove the offending material they forced the national ISP to close the site down.

After confirming reports of its proposed IPO in the US, Alibaba continued to stoke up the hype of its listing with the announcement it plans to purchase mobile messaging company Tango. The $280m deal will see the E-commerce companies first foray into the mobile sector and shows their intentions quite clearly. Valued at $140bn the Chinese giant is touted to be the largest IPO in 2014.

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DISCLAIMER  The views, opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed on this service are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Hexagon Capital Management. All market data within this release is for your general information and enjoys indicative status only. Hexagon Capital Management does not accept any responsibility for its accuracy or for any use to which it may be put. All share prices and market indexes delayed at least 15 minutes. 52 week high and low values are calculated from close price data.