the market is on the up

The primary commodity price index, developed by the economists Enzo R. Grilli and Maw Cheng Yang, takes the international cost of a market basket of 24 of the most commonly consumed "renewable and non-renewable resources" -- foodstuffs, non-food agricultural goods, and metals -- and adjusts for inflation.

The nub of it is that the chair must be able to hold the line between the demands of the market-driven telecoms industry and the cultural objectives of broadcasting … The great challenge for the chair will be to keep those two objectives in tension, while having the gravitas to lead a review of media ownership rules every three years.

"Seats on any given flight can be sold in many different markets. The idea of investing in state-of-the-art technology is to better match supply with demand and ensure that each market is allocated an appropriate number of seats, especially when traffic mix and seasonal travel have to be factored in. Ultimately, we want to minimize seat wastage."

Syed Wasimuddin, spokesman for the State Bank of Pakistan, told Dow Jones Newswires that the main difference from last year was the increased purchases from the interbank market compared with the money changers' kerb market. The central bank... purchased $1.068 billion from the money changers' kerb market in the period, compared with $1.561 billion a year earlier, the spokesman said.

Mr Ralph himself described the sale of Sidex as "the privatisation of the decade" and "hugely important in terms of creating the fully functioning free market economy which the European Union has set as a fundamental criterion for Romanian accession to the EU". He recommended the letter be sent since "it would send a strong signal of British government support in the hope that this would stimulate increased British investment in and trade with Romania".

National Power and its partner in duopoly, PowerGen, are the only game in town. Buy from them or buy candles. They can name their price and they do. One recent Friday, for example, generators raised the price bid into the pool at noon by 440 per cent above the sale price at 7am.

Estate agents go around telling people... that the property from which they are hoping to move is incredibly saleable in the present market conditions... What if their present home is snapped up in 20 minutes flat, but they can't find what they want? So they don't put their existing property on the market until they have found what they want - which, with thousands of people doing just the same, could be some time... This encourages gazumping, which is, after all, only the market's way of raising prices to the point where demand meets supply. Hence the silly prices.

Five years ago, the prospect of a 10 per cent profit in the course of a year would not have set investors' pulses racing. However, in the context of the dire performance of the UK stock market in the past two years, and the poor prospective returns from gilt-edged stock and cash deposits, a 10 per cent return from the FTSE 100 in 2002 takes on a new appeal, and would go some way to restoring two years of capital destruction since the index peaked at 6930 in December 1999.

But these problems, together with those seen in the euro switchover, do post a warning. We now know that the far simpler changeover to the euro resulted in large bank payments going astray and a serious liquidity problem in the Euroland money markets, which required large injections of cash.

Despite a red-hot market for venture-backed initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions abounded in the first half of 1999, refuting the notion that the rise in M& A deals in the past several years was in response to a poor IPO market. … And, as the bull market continues to drive valuations of entrepreneurial companies to record heights, M&As have emerged as a more attractive exit option for venture capitalists.

Several billion pounds have been raised on the Alternative Investment Market ( AIM) over the last four years, following the billion-plus invested on its predecessor, the Unlisted Securities Market, over a much longer period. Another half billion has flowed into venture capital trusts (VCTs) which offer 20% income tax relief and other incentives to invest in very small companies.

These legal reforms are "essential to get credit flowing again and to restore the confidence of domestic and foreign investors, without which it will be very difficult to revive investment and growth," she said. Order must also be restored to the foreign exchange market, where reports say the central bank plans continued interventions to help support the weak peso.