VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Wall Street hits the record high in 2016. The market reacted positively after the Fed chairwoman's speech in the Economic Club Of New York on Tuesday.

On Monday, Andrew Caspersen, a previous partner of PJT Partners, was arrested for committing a Wall Street fraud. The US prosecutors accused Caspersen of defrauding $95 million from investors.

Deutsche Bank expressed its skepticism on the hype created around Apple’s shift to Google’s Cloud Platform from Amazon’s AWS. The bank believes that the move will not have a significant impact and that Apple is just trying to reduce its reliance on just one service.

S&P 500 index began this week by slide below closely watched threshold. However, on Wednesday as Asian stock continued raising for third consecutive day, indexes began to recover.

Led by energy and banking stocks, equities on Wall Street surged after the latest data buoyed investor confidence. Crude oil price was nearing $35 per barrel. Wall Street is waiting for jobs data to be released on Friday.

A research conducted by JP Morgan analysts revealed that global investment banks would suffer a fall in profits this year. The fall could differ between regions, but average earnings are estimated to be down by 20 percent and revenues by 21 percent. Challenging economic environment is believed to negatively affect the global investment markets.

SolarCity Corp. has been displaying a tremendous growth during the last couple of years. The largest solar plant provider in the US has disclosed fourth quarter earnings during late hours on Tuesday. The earning scenario has disheartened the investors and its share prices have been decreased by 33.59% in the after hour trading on Tuesday.

The rise of oil prices had brought positive growth to most of the Asian markets, except for Japan. On the other hand, European market had seen a drop. The oil prices increased overnight due to speculations that U.S Federal Reserve would possibly decide not to increase interest rates throughout 2016.

The Wall Street took a second plunge on Wednesday in the first two weeks of 2016 after trading failed to pickup after Tuesday. This sent ripples to global markets especially Asian markets which all closed sharply lower predicating on growing concern for China's slow growth, stability of its currency, and slump in oil prices.

Oil price fell below $30 a barrel on international market for the first time since 2004. The $30 mark is both a psychological and financial threshold. Brent crude, used as an international benchmark, fell as low as $29.96, but bounced back to trade at $30.22

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has finally agreed to pay $5.1 billion on Wednesday to resolve a seven years’ pending dispute over faulty mortgage securities. The penalty amount remains lower compared to those counted by other Wall Street competitors. Fourth quarter profit of the firm may be hit by the penalty counting. But investors welcome the settlement and its share price rises by 1.5% on Thursday.

The overnight gains on the Wall Street have boosted the market sentiment on Asian bourses ahead of the US Federal Reserve's meeting. The trading on Wednesday registered positive momentum in equities across the Asian markets.

Taking positive cues from encouraging gains on Wall Street, Asian stocks with an exception to China moved up on Tuesday. Chinese stock market dropped following the jitters emerging from adverse developments in forms of corruption and illegal trading that dampened the market sentiment.

The internet radio services provider Pandora's stock plummeted owing to increased competition in the global market. Pandora shares dropped 35 percent on Wall Street in just one session eroding $1.4billion market capitalization of the company. The emerging competition in internet radio services from global majors such as Apple is impacting the Pandora's performance. Adding to this YouTube has also introduced a subscription plan for music and video.

There are mixed opinions coming from the US Central Bank in the past few weeks, but the Federal Reserve policymakers aren't really as divided as they seem as they work under the same framework in determining when to increase interest rates.