European gas prices surpassed $900 per 1,000 cubic meters on Monday, following reports about Gazprom’s decision not to book additional capacities for gas transit through Ukrainian territory.
The price of October futures on London’s ICE jumped to $908 per 1,000 cubic meters after falling below $800 on Friday.
The rally follows Russian energy giant Gazprom’s decision not to book additional capacity for the transit of natural gas through Ukraine for October. Ukraine’s gas transportation operator offered transit capacities amounting to 15 million cubic meters per day for October at an auction on Monday. But according to the auction results, they remained unclaimed, TASS reports. In September, Gazprom booked only 4.3% of the proposed capacity.
The gas market rally subsided later in the day, however, with the TTF hub in the Netherlands trading $881 per 1,000 cubic meters as of 11am GMT.
This change could stem from the news that Europe’s key gas supplier, Norwegian Equinor, received long-awaited permission to boost gas exports from its offshore Oseberg and Troll fields.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, dropped below the $44,000 level on Monday as concerns over global equities spilled over into crypto markets.
The digital asset lost as much as 10% during the day’s trading, falling to $43,692.57, according to Coin Metrics. Other cryptocurrencies were also in the red, with ether losing 9% to $3,038.74 and XRP becoming the worst performer, down 14% on Monday.
“This sell-off is the continuation of a well-established pattern where traders cash in their riskier assets to cover margin calls or sit on the sidelines until markets calm down and they feel more comfortable going back into riskier positions,” Leah Wald, CEO at crypto asset manager Valkyrie Investments, told CNBC. “If ever bitcoin had the opportunity to establish itself as a safe haven or as digital gold, with US companies also signaling their earnings calls are going to reveal poor results, now feels like the time.”
The decline of cryptocurrencies comes amid a broader sell-off in the global equity markets due to fears from the mounting problems at China’s embattled property giant Evergrande.
“Investors look to be taking risk off the table on fears that [a] crisis at China Evergrande Group may become a systemic problem to global markets,” Pankaj Balani, CEO of Delta Exchange, told CoinDesk. “Markets will also be looking at the Fed commentary later this week to make sure that there are no changes in liquidity from the central bank.”
Speculation that the US government may declare stablecoins as a risk to the financial system could be adding to uncertainty in the cryptocurrency market, experts say. The president’s Working Group on Financial Markets is currently advancing a report on stablecoins. The Fed is also expected to issue a report on central bank digital currencies this month that could touch on stablecoin risks.
Meanwhile, El Salvador used the cryptocurrency slump and bought 150 additional bitcoins. “We just bought the dip. 150 new coins! El Salvador now holds 700 coins,” the country’s President Nayib Bukele tweeted on Monday.
Despite the slide, bitcoin has risen almost 50% so far in 2021.
With European natural gas prices hitting record highs in recent weeks, French consumer organization UFC-Que Choisir has warned of an unprecedented rise in electricity prices for the country.
On the basis of the official methodology for calculating the regulated tariff for the sale of electricity, UFC-Que Choisir has estimated electricity prices in France will increase by 10% at the start of 2022.
Data by Le Parisien shows that costs for a household of four using electric heating have already skyrocketed by almost 50% in the last decade, from €1,072 in the summer of 2011 to €1,553 in August 2021. With the projected 10% increase for 2022, it will represent a 25% increase in electricity bills since January 2019, according to UFC-Que Choisir.
Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said last week that France is considering plans to offer subsidies to help minimize the impact of rising gas and electricity prices for low-income households. The minister said that while prices have increased steadily this year, they should stabilize in 2022. He added that there was no risk of “systematic inflation.”
Meanwhile, statistics showed that household gas prices in France grew by 8.7% so far in September, while fuel prices even reached €2 per litre in some French petrol stations.
UFC-Que Choisir has called on the government to lower consumer taxes on electricity.
With Indian start-ups raising $10 billion through IPOs so far in 2021 and some 150 private firms lined up to list on the country’s stock market, India could soon increase $400 billion in market value, Goldman Sachs predicts.
India’s stock market has already raised more money so far this year than it did in the last three years, the investment bank said in a report. Analysts predict investors’ interest to stay firm, propelling the country’s market capitalization to $5 trillion by 2024 from the current $3.5 trillion. This would effectively make India’s the world’s 5th largest stock market, throwing the UK out of the top five.
A number of India’s major technology start-ups recently announced plans to go public. Indian insurance company Life Insurance Corp (LIC) is preparing for an IPO next year with a listing value of over $250 billion, the country’s largest initial public offering so far.
A major Indian tech company MapmyIndia is also looking to launch an IPO in the coming months. The mapping company, which provides data to Apple Maps and Amazon’s Alexa, is aiming for an IPO valuation of about $825 million.
Among the big names already listed are food delivery firm Zomato, payments giant Paytm, ride-hailing start-up Ola, and e-commerce firm Flipkart.
Goldman Sachs’ analysts expect so-called “new economy” sectors, such as e-commerce, internet, internet retail and media to join India’s stock market in the coming years, while commodity and software services firms would be less noticeable.
Meanwhile, India’s domestic benchmark S&P Bombay Stock Exchange index, Sensex, has more than doubled since last year, with record high gains in August and an equity market capitalization of around $3 trillion. The gains put Sensex at the top of the list of the globe’s best performers among primary indexes of nations.
The debt fallout from China’s major real estate developer Evergrande hit global equity markets this week, spilling over into the cryptocurrency sector.
Boom Bust’s Ben Swann analyzes the situation as bitcoin’s hedge status comes into question.
