CHINA

German strength propelled the recovery of the euro zone's dominant services economy in November, surveys showed on Friday, after China declared a new prudent monetary stance to help regulate its fervent growth.

Spot Gold jumped over $1400 per ounce in wholesale dealing on Friday in London, holding onto an earlier drop vs. the Euro as the single currency rose sharply on news of weaker than expected US jobs growth in November.

Disparities in the global economy were evident on Friday with weak jobs data underscoring the long road to recovery in the United States while China and Brazil took steps to contain rapid growth.

U.S.-based mining group Walter Energy Inc is to buy Canada's Western Coal for C$3.3 billion ($3.3 billion) to create one of the largest producers of steel-making metallurgical coal.

Jefferies & Co. said in its Wireless and Handsets weekly that tablet and smartphone sell-through has been strong at the start of the holiday shopping season.

Wall Street mostly shrugged off a weaker-than-expected payrolls report on Friday, leaving stocks little changed as the data didn't alter investors' view the economic recovery is on track.

Once yuan becomes fully convertible, countries importing Chinese goods will invariably have to have a reserve of yuan. And they will have to build up a yuan reserve by offloading their dollar reserves. If a major chunk of ASEAN and Latin American countries take this path, it will seriously dent the greenback's status as the global reserve currency.

Economic growth in India will overtake that of China in the next ten years, boosted by huge domestic demand, said noted global economist Nouriel Roubini.

China will switch to a prudent monetary policy from a moderately loose stance, the Communist Party's top leaders decided on Friday, a change that could pave the way for more interest rate increases and lending controls.

Even as food prices shoot up in China, food production remains slow while demand is rising multifold.

Stock index futures fell from more than two-year highs on Friday, pointing to a slide at the open after a weaker-than-expected payrolls report indicated an economic recovery was still shaky.

General Motors on Thursday said its China auto sales in November rose 11 percent, led by strong demand of its Buick and Chevrolet models.

Wall Street's largest two-day rally in three months will be tested by jobs data on Friday, with some in the market predicting a strong report that will push the S&P 500 to a fresh two-year high.

India’s number one software services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has opened a business process outsourcing facility in the Philippines following the path of India-based BPO companies which have operations in that country.

Stock index futures were little changed on Friday, following Wall Street's biggest two-day rally in three months and ahead of key labor market data that will show whether the economic recovery is on track.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 fall 0.1 to 0.3 percent, pointing to a weaker start for equities on Wall Street on Friday.

China will switch to a prudent monetary policy from a moderately loose stance, the Communist Party's top leaders decided on Friday, a change that could pave the way for more interest rate increases and lending controls, the state Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

With the current round of [US quantitative easing] set to end in June 2011, and our US economics team now forecasting strong US economic growth in 2011 and 2012, we expect US real interest rates to begin to rise into 2012, says a new bullion report from former investment-bank Goldman Sachs.

A growing demand for nuclear energy across much of the globe will undoubtedly make uranium a prized commodity, as new power plants proliferate. Investors seeking to capitalize on this evolving energy trend might consider a new exchange-traded fund, the Global X Uranium ETF (NYSE: URA), one of the very few investment vehicles in the world that can be regarded as a pure play on uranium.

The tension in Korean peninsula is unlikely to subside as South Korean intelligence chief Won Sei-hon said the North is highly likely to attack again.

If the ECB lives up to market expectations, the pair could rise further but a strong resistance area is up there, between 1.3266 (key long-term resistance) and 1.3357 (38.2 fibonacci retracement from June 7 lows), between which the 100-day SMA (1.3323) is also falling.