Earnings season marches on. Two more Magnificent Seven tech companies—Alphabet and Amazon—will report this week, following on the heels of disappointing results from Microsoft that helped send software stocks tumbling.
Earnings season marches on. Two more Magnificent Seven tech companies—Alphabet and Amazon—will report this week, following on the heels of disappointing results from Microsoft that helped send software stocks tumbling.
It’s two decimal digits long, it’s prime, it’s a palindrome and it’s the number of players in a football team. Let’s hear it for “legs” eleven! Today’s puzzles reveal interesting properties about the first number beyond ten. 1. Funny formation You are the coach of a football team, whose players have shirt numbers 1 to 11. The goalkeeper wears 1. You must divide the others into defenders, midfielde...
It’s two decimal digits long, it’s prime, it’s a palindrome and it’s the number of players in a football team. Let’s hear it for “legs” eleven! Today’s puzzles reveal interesting properties about the first number beyond ten. 1. Funny formation You are the coach of a football team, whose players have shirt numbers 1 to 11. The goalkeeper wears 1. You must divide the others into defenders, midfielders and forwards. You would like to arrange your team so that the sum of the shirt numbers in each group (defenders, midfielders, forwards) is divisible by 11? Give an example, or prove it isn’t possible. 2. Pals or not When we first learn our times tables, the 11-times table feels delightfully simple: 11 × 1 = 11 11 × 2 = 22 11 × 3 = 33 … 11 × 9 = 99 All the answers are palindromes (numbers that read the same backwards as forwards). If we carry on, up to 11 x 99, how many more answers are palindromes? [Hint. At least one! For example, 11 × 56 = 616.] 3. Big divide Less well known than other divisibility rules, there is a simple way to test for divisibility by 11. Take the digits of a number and add them alternately with plus and minus signs (starting with a plus). If the result is a multiple of 11 (including 0), then the original number is divisible by 11. For example, for 132 we get 1-3+2 = 0, so 132 is divisible by 11. Using each of the digits 0–9 exactly once, make the largest possible 10-digit number that is divisible by 11. I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solutions. PLEASE NO SPOILERS (Discuss your favourite elevens.) The motivation for today’s puzzles is that eleven is also the number of University Maths Schools in the UK. These innovative schools, each attached to a university, are state state sixth forms for 16–19 year olds who love maths. Students study a specialist curriculum designed for those who want to push themselves further than a standard maths course allows. There are currently nine schools open: King’s and Imperial in London, Exeter, Liverpool, Lancaster,...
06.58 GMT Introduction: Gold and silver slump in 'metals meltdown' Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy. Commodity, precious metals and crypto asset prices are all sliding today, as the record-breaking rally in gold and silver cools. Financial markets have begun the new week in a volatile mood, with analysts talking about a “met...
06.58 GMT Introduction: Gold and silver slump in 'metals meltdown' Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy. Commodity, precious metals and crypto asset prices are all sliding today, as the record-breaking rally in gold and silver cools. Financial markets have begun the new week in a volatile mood, with analysts talking about a “metals meltdown” that is also rattling the equities markets. Gold is falling back after a months-long rally drove it to a series of record highs. It’s slumped by over 8% so far this session, down to $4,465 a ounce, having hit a record high of nearly $5,600/oz just last week. Gold's shed $1000 from Thursday, that is wild pic.twitter.com/VhoeBBovco — David Ingles (@DavidInglesTV) February 2, 2026 Silver is living up to its nickname of the “Devil’s Metal” (for its volatility) – it has slumped by 13% today. Both gold and silver tumbled last Friday, the day in which Donald Trump said he would nominate Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone, says: Certainly, the final trading day of January was anything but calm, being dominated by what can only be termed a meltdown in the metals space. In terms of ‘scores on the doors’, spot gold ended Friday with losses of 9%, bullion’s worst day since 2013, and fourth worst in the last 45 years. Silver, meanwhile, shed as much as 35% at the lows, before trimming losses to end the day a still-chunky 26% lower, the worst daily loss ever, at least per Bloomberg data. Warsh does have a reputation as a more hawkish policymaker than rival candidates, who wants to shrink the Fed’s balance sheet, so investors may be anticipating tighter monetary policy than expected (although Trump is already joking about suing Warsh if he doesn’t lower interest rates). Vivek Dhar, a commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), explains: “A stronger U.S. dollar is also adding pr...
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL - Get Free Report) has earned an average recommendation of "Moderate Buy" from the forty-one ratings firms that are covering the stock, Marketbeat.com reports. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation, eleven have assigned a hold recommendation, twenty-five have assigned a buy recommendation and three have given a strong buy recommendation...
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL - Get Free Report) has earned an average recommendation of "Moderate Buy" from the forty-one ratings firms that are covering the stock, Marketbeat.com reports. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation, eleven have assigned a hold recommendation, twenty-five have assigned a buy recommendation and three have given a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average 1-year target price among brokerages that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $300.4571. A number of brokerages have issued reports on ORCL. HSBC reiterated a "buy" rating and issued a $382.00 price target on shares of Oracle in a report on Wednesday, November 26th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their target price on shares of Oracle from $270.00 to $230.00 and set a "neutral" rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, December 11th. Jefferies Financial Group restated a "buy" rating and issued a $400.00 price target on shares of Oracle in a research report on Monday, January 5th. Robert W. Baird reduced their price objective on shares of Oracle from $365.00 to $315.00 and set an "outperform" rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, November 18th. Finally, JMP Securities restated a "market outperform" rating and set a $342.00 target price on shares of Oracle in a research report on Friday, October 17th. Get Oracle alerts: Sign Up View Our Latest Report on ORCL Oracle Stock Down 2.6% NYSE ORCL opened at $164.69 on Monday. Oracle has a 12 month low of $118.86 and a 12 month high of $345.72. The company has a current ratio of 0.91, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.28. The stock has a market cap of $473.17 billion, a PE ratio of 30.96, a P/E/G ratio of 1.44 and a beta of 1.64. The stock's 50 day moving average is $194.12 and its 200 day moving average is $237.41. Oracle (NYSE:ORCL - Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, December 10th. The enterprise softw...