Deutsche Bank to withdraw from gold fix amid price manipulation probe

Deutsche Bank will withdraw from gold and silver benchmark price setting, it said on Friday, as European regulators investigate suspected manipulation of precious metals prices by banks.

Germany's largest bank and some of its rivals are taking a battering over a series of other scandals and inquiries regarding manipulation of interest rates and foreign exchange.

Deutsche is one of five banks involved in the twice-daily gold fix for global price setting and said it was quitting the process after withdrawing from the bulk of its commodities business.

"Deutsche Bank is withdrawing its participation in the gold and silver benchmark setting process following the significant scaling back of our commodities business. We remain fully committed to our precious metals business," it said in a statement.

GOLD FIXING CRISIS?

A source close to Deutsche said on Friday it was seeking to sell its gold and silver fixing seats to another member of the London Bullion Market Association.

But Deutsche's decision may foreshadow moves by other fixing banks, a source in the London precious metals market said. "It wouldn't surprise me if the other banks were looking at pulling out as well. Why would they want the aggravation?" said the source, who declined to be named.

"The more worrying point is that, if you don't have the fixing, what do you have? There's a lot of contractual business done on the gold fix, and if you've got no basis for where the price is, someone is going to lose out."

Withdrawal from the fixing was not expected to have an impact on Deutsche's precious metals business, the source close to the bank said. "A very small volume of business is executed on the fix. The majority is outside of it."

Gold fixing happens by teleconference with four other banks: Bank of Nova Scotia-ScotiaMocatta, Barclays Bank Plc , HSBC Bank USA, NA and Société Générale, all of which declined immediate comment on the Deutsche move.

Chairmanship of the gold fixing rotates annually among the member banks. The last time a fixing seat changed hands was in 2004, when N.M. Rothschild and Sons sold their seat to Barclays. Two years earlier, Credit Suisse sold its seat to Société Générale.

At the start of each gold price-fixing, the chairman announces an opening price to the other four members who relay that to their customers, and based on orders received from them, instruct their representatives to declare themselves as buyers or sellers at that price.

The gold price is adjusted up and down until demand and supply is matched at which point the price is declared "Fixed".

The fixings are used to determine spot prices for the billions of dollars of the two precious metals traded each day.

 Source:Reuters

Out of hundreds of Chinese app stores, how Wandoujia rose to the top

Wandoujia  doesn’t even call itself an app store anymore. Founder Wang Junyu and his staff now refer their company as a “mobile content search engine,” of which the app store is just a piece of something greater. That said, it’s second only to the Qihoo’s (NYSE:QIHU) app store in terms of monthly active users and number of Android apps.

“Everyone is trying to do a mobile search engine, but we think the problems they are trying to solve are wrong, because we believe that users’ most important needs in mobile are the content itself,” says Wang.

The company reports 300 million installs for its Chinese software, which includes both an Andoroid and Windows desktop client. Last summer, Wang, a 27-year-old former employee of Google, told us the store was seeinghalf a  millionnewusersaday; that’s about half of China’s daily Android activations. Wang wouldn’t disclose active user numbers or any stats for the international version,SnapPea, but says it’s popularity is growing rapidly. The company just received US$ 120 million in funding led by Japan’s SoftBank.

“We won’t expand our product lines dramatically,” Wang says. “We want to invest that money into our core product offerings.”

So how did Wandoujia, once just one of more than 200 Chinese Android app stores, become one of the most trusted and well-known names in China’s mobile space today? Wandoujia actually started out as a syncing tool between PC and Android. Targeting geeks, it took a Silicon Valley approach with its app store, which also aggregated search results from all the other Chinese app stores. It’s clean, uncluttered interface was a far cry from the existing stores, as were the labels on each app that indicates if it is paid or contains advertisements. Furthermore, Wandoujia has licensed with Tencent's  and Qihoo’s antivirus software to scan every app for viruses.

From SnapPea to snappy

For the last four years, the company has continued to add more functions and features. Wandoujia expanded the scope of its search results to e-books, video, music, wallpapers, themes, and games – all optimized for mobile, and with more than one million results in each vertical. New features are often first tested out on SnapPea, Wandoujia’s English-language international app. Wang says the US is one or two years ahead of China in this space, so SnapPea often serves as a sort of testing ground for what will eventually catch on in China.

“In the long term, all users’ needs are the same, but in the short term, the technical infrastructure, the ecosystems are pretty different between different countries,” he says.

For example, SnapPea has a lightweight browser-based client. In its latest update, a flashy new feature called “Photosnap” was added, in which photos taken on the phone are instantly uploaded and shareable from within the browser. And “instant” truly means “instant.” No need to even refresh the page; each photo appears on screen just seconds after taking it.

Source: TECHINASIA

U.S. Consumer Sentiment falls to 80.4 in January

Consumer Sentiment

Released On 1/17/2014 9:55:00 AM For Jan, 2014 Prior Consensus Consensus Range Actual Sentiment Index - Level 82.5  83.5  80.0  to 88.0  80.4

Highlights A slow start so far this year is the signal from consumer sentiment which is down 2.1 points to 80.4 for the mid-January reading. The current conditions component, which offers an indication on December-to-January activity, is down 3.4 points to 95.2. This suggests that consumer spending, which was solid in December based on retail sales, may not be adding to December's gain. The expectations component of the report is also down, 1.2 points lower to 70.9. This reading has been flat for nearly two years, often hovering in the high 60s area and unable approach 80 which is a level consistent with strong economic growth. Gas prices are tame and so are 1-year inflation expectations which are unchanged at 3.0 percent. Expectations for inflation 5 years out are at 2.9 percent, right in trend. The heavy weather that has hit much of the country so far this year may be behind the dip in this report, or it may be an effect from the weak jobs report early in the month. The Dow is little changed following today's report.

Market Consensus before announcement The Reuter's/University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index was unchanged at 82.5 for final December versus mid-month. But it was the comparison with final November's 75.1 that pointed to an especially good month for consumer spending in December. And there was also some momentum in the comparison between early December and later December, and it was in the current conditions component which rose to 98.6 from 97.9 earlier in the month and from 88.0 in final November. The latest was the best reading since July. Weakness in the latest report came in the less immediate component of expectations, which slipped 6 tenths from mid-month to 72.1. But decidedly favorable was the comparison with November's 66.8.

Source: Bloomberg

Facial recognition is in (the reflection of) the eye of the beholder

Source: Gizmag

The worst has happened. You receive an emailed kidnap demand with a picture of your loved one in dire straits. You contact the authorities, and in a flash (relatively speaking), they have identified the kidnapper and possibly some accomplices, and are well on their way toward recovering the victim. How did this happen? By identifying the faces of the kidnappers caught in the reflection of your loved one's eyes.
The scenario above isn't yet standard practice, but the basic technology for accomplishing the task now exists. Familiar faces can be recognized from a very small number of pixels, as small as 7 x 10 pixels in one study. A very familiar example appears below. The image on the left has 16 x 20 pixel resolution, while on the right the same image is blurred to make recognition easier.

It is now commonplace for digital cameras to have 10-50 megapixel CMOS sensors. There is even a smartphone, the Nokia Lumia 1020, that has a 41-MP sensor. (Although this camera automatically generates an oversampled 5-MP image from the raw data, the raw data is still available for use.)

A 50 mm equivalent lens covers a horizontal angle of about 40 degrees. With a 40-MP sensor (and good optics), each pixel is about one-third of a minute of arc in size, enabling resolution about five times more acute than that of the human eye. In addition, a good picture captures everything within the bit depth of the pixels, whereas our eyes have a very small area of high resolution on the retina, and our brains fill in the details, often incorrectly. A camera captures a lot of information which we cannot "see at a glance," or even by careful examination.

A study just carried out by Dr. Rob Jenkins of the University of York and Christie Kerr of the University of Glasgow, both in the UK, has found that the picture of a high-end camera is capable of seeing images reflected from the corneas of a subject being photographed. The images, which can be of high enough quality to identify people by their faces, cover most of the area in front of the subject, owing to the curvature of the cornea. In essence, a fisheye view of the entire region in front of the subject can be found in the image of the subject's eyes.

The lead photograph provides an excellent example of just how much information can be contained in corneal reflections. One has the definite impression that, if these people were known to an observer, their images would be recognizable.

 The Jenkins/Kerr study has shown quite clearly that there is enough information in a corneal reflection taken under rather favorable conditions to identify people near the camera with a good deal of certainty.There are two remaining pieces of the puzzle to make a routine forensic (or surveillance) tool out of this concept. First, cameras and image processing need to become a bit more capable, as normally the lighting will not be as favorable for capturing corneal reflections as in this study. Second, methods of automated facial recognition  that compare to criminal databases and social media, which have recently achieved remarkable fidelity, must be adapted to the image distortions that appear naturally in the corneal reflections.

Chinese Mobile Internet Users Reached 500 million as of 2013: CNNIC Report

Chinese Internet users reached 618 million as of December 2013 with 53.58 million more added in the year, according to China Internet Development Report released today by CNNIC.

The Internet penetration rate is 45.8%, with a 3.7% increase from one year ago. 28.6% of Internet users (177 million) and 40% of the newly added (21.01 million) are in rural areas.

Mobile Internet users reached 500 million, a 19% increase. That’s 80.09 million users that began connecting to the Internet through mobile devices in 2013.

69.7% of Internet users get online through desktop and 44.1% through laptop. Both saw slight decreases.

93.1% of enterprises have adopted computers and 83.2% use the Internet. 23.5% businesses sell products online, 26.8% make purchases online and 20.9% do online marketing.

There were 3.2 million Chinese websites as of 2013, with 19.4% in increase.

Source: TechNode

U.S. December housing starts fall 9.8% to 999,000 rate

Construction on new U.S. homes fell 9.8% in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 999,000, pulling back after a surge in November, with drops for single-family homes and apartments, the government reported Friday. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected cold weather to take a toll on new construction, and forecast that overall housing starts in December declined to a rate of 985,000 from a prior starts-rate estimate of 1.09 million for November. On Friday, the U.S.Commerce Department revised November's start rate to 1.11 million. Despite December's decline, home-construction starts for all of 2013 hit 923,400, the highest annual total since 2007, pointing to the housing market's continued recovery. Also Friday, the government reported that building permits, a sign of future demand, fell 3% in December to an annual rate of 986,000. For all of 2013, permits hit 974,700, also reaching the highest annual level since 2007. 

Source:  Marketwatch