Diamond News Archives

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury said on Monday it expects to borrow $29 billion less during the fourth quarter than previously estimated.

The department said in a statement it expects to issue $352 billion through credit markets during the October-December period, assuming an end-December cash balance of $410 billion.

Treasury also expects to issue $389 billion in net marketable debt in the January-March 2020 period. In the third quarter of this year, Treasury borrowed $440 billion through credit markets.

Additional details of Treasury’s quarterly refunding will be announced at 0830 EDT (1230 GMT) on Wednesday.

Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.^[1]...

(IDEX Online) - AIM-listed mining company BlueRock Diamonds plc has sold a 20.72-carat gem-quality stone recovered from the Kareevlei Diamond mine for $236,000 ($11,389/carat).

The company said this was a record price achieved for a single stone. The previous

record sale was the 24.8-carat stone sold in June 2019 for $190,000 ($7,862/carat).

BlueRock executive chairman Mike Houston said the sale continues to underpin the increasing potential of the Kareevlei mine. The mine is located in the Kimberley region of South Africa.

The company will announce the full tender results and production numbers for the quarter in the Q4 update....

Cracks have formed in the roughly $1.2 trillion leverage loan market that could bring the sector closer to a “point of no return” should conditions in this corner of corporate finance further deteriorate, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts warned.

Debt-laden U.S. companies have turned to the leveraged loan market in droves over the past decade for easy credit with fewer strings attached, but the past 12 months have seen a sharp drop in appetite for this type of debt and more recent indications point to the potential for long-feared defaults to spike.

“We are seeing numerous new signs of tightening credit conditions just in the past few weeks and months, ranging from wide market bifurcation, to prevalence of downgrades, to rising distress, to lower availability of capital for the lowest rated names,” wrote a team of Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts led by Oleg Melentyev, in a Friday note to clients.

“We believe these are very important developments that deserve our full attention; their further deterioration from here could indeed move us closer to the point of no return, where the forces of a cyclical turn become irreversible”, they said.

Red flags have been raised in recent years by credit rating agencies, regulators, the International Monetary Fund, and even by bankers in the business about dangers of the leveraged lending boom ending badly.

Jes Staley, chief executive officer at Barclays, in a bid to address fresh concerns about the market told Bloomberg TV in an interview Friday^[1] that recent struggles by banks, including Barclays, to offload some $2 billion of leveraged loans to buyers has “opened people’s eyes that it’s not a free ride right now.”

That wasn’t the case a short time ago when...

(IDEX Online) - Younger consumers are feeling flush this holiday season and look set to increase their spending this year, according to the latest consumer survey from the National Retail Federation.

"Younger consumers are helping drive the spending increase this year," said Phil Rist, Prosper Insights executive vice president of Strategy. "They're not just spending on their immediate family members, they're also treating their larger circle of co-workers and friends to gifts." More than half of shoppers between the ages of 25 and 34 (52 percent) plan to purchase gifts for co-workers, and 82 percent of those between 18 and 24 plan to purchase gifts for their friends.

Consumers plan to spend an average of $1,047.83 this holiday season, up 4 percent from the $1,007.24 they said they would spend last year. Shoppers between the ages of 35 and 44 plan to spend the most at $1,158.63.

"Consumers are in good financial shape and willing to spend a little more on gifts for the special people in their lives this holiday season," said Matthew Shay, NRF president and CEO.

Shay said retailers are expected to import near-record volumes of merchandise ahead of the tariffs that are scheduled to take effect on a wide range of consumer goods from China on December 15. 

Shoppers plan to use multiple channels and types of stores to make sure they get all their shopping done. More than half (56 percent) say they will shop online. Among online shoppers, 92 percent plan to take advantage of free shipping and 48 percent will use buy online, pick-up in store or ship to store services, and 16 percent plan to use same-day delivery, which has doubled since 2015....