Pound overtakes Argentine peso to become 2016’s worst performing currency

The pound posted a third week of declines spurred by the Brexit vote, winning itself the title of 2016’s worst performer among major currencies.

Sterling’s rally on Friday barely dented its 2.7 per cent slide versus the dollar in the preceding four days. The U.K. currency this week overtook the Argentine peso as the biggest loser versus the dollar among 31 major peers in 2016 as investors continued to digest the fallout from the June 23 referendum decision to leave the European Union.

“Sterling’s going to fall considerably further as the effects of that uncertainty on investment and growth emerge from the gloom,” Kit Juckes, a macro-strategist at Societe Generale SA in London, wrote in a note to clients.

The pound rose 0.3 per cent to US$1.2941 at 4:55 p.m. in London, leaving it down 2.5 per cent this week and more than 12 per cent this year. It briefly erased its daily gain after a U.S. Labor Department report showed a bigger-than-estimated jump in June payrolls.


Sterling advanced 0.5 per cent to 85.30 pence per euro, for a 1.7 per cent weekly slide.

1985 and 2007

On Wednesday, Britain’s currency touched a 31-year low of US$1.2798 after the closure of a number of property funds echoed the real-estate tremors at the start of the financial crisis in 2007. U.K. consumer confidence plunged the most in 21 years in a special post-referendum survey conducted from June 30 to July 5, data showed Friday.

That the pound surpassed the Argentine peso as the world’s worst performer is all the more remarkable given that the South American nation’s economy shrank in 2014 and that President Mauricio Macri has removed most of the currency controls that had been propping up the exchange rate. It’s only in December that the peso was devalued.

Financial Post

Konga Engineer, Celestine says he builds his portfolio by developing church websites for free

Celestine Omin, is a Software Engineer at Konga Online Shopping Ltd, whose job is to write computer programs for a living.

Here's what he had to share in a recent interview with Emmanuel Ogunsola, a Lead Product Strategist at Techpoint.ng.

''What I used to do when in University was to build and maintain websites for churches for free and I was using that to build my own portfolio so that when I met a potential employer I could show the things I had done,'' Omin told Ogunsola. '' Nobody cares if you are paid or not, they just need to know you can do it. This gives you an extra step through the door as opposed to someone just looking for a job.''

His role at Konga:

I work as a Software Engineer at Konga. Basically I work with the Software Oriented Architecture SOE team. My team is responsible for taking out all the huge applications at Konga and turning them into micro services. The motivation behind is the fact that formulative applications, large applications if you make a change in one part irrespective of whatever part that you make that change in, you have to deploy the entire application. Which is time consuming, very tricky and quite risky. But if you work with micro services, it allows you break these applications into chunks and when you are deploying, it allows you deploy the parts you made the changes to. So it is easier to monitor, do quality assurance and deployment is easy.

Interestingly, I wasn’t coding when I first joined Konga. For obvious reasons Konga outsourced it’s tech to an external company. My first job at Konga was doing content upload. So I organised people to help upload products on the website and I did that for about a month until Konga created a team that later handled content upload.

On Awards:

After University, Google’s Day 2011 which was held at the Civic centre, Lagos. Google had this chrome extension challenge and I came first winning a Nexus device. Then I also entered for a competition organised by the US Department of States, it had to do with building software to combat things like climate change. My application didn’t win but I got an honourable mention. I also entered for the Apps for Africa competition organised by US Department of States and I came third.

His engagement on personal or commercial projects while in the University:

No I didn’t do any paid projects as an undergraduate, my choice of studying Computer Science was pure hunger, passion and love as compared to most kids. I wasn’t quite interested in what most of my peers were interested in; football wasn’t my thing and the only sport that got me was table tennis. I still like playing table tennis till today. The next natural thing after table tennis for me was computers. I felt I was pretty good at it and it something that came to me naturally, there was no motivation required. It wasn’t about making money out of it, tech at the time wasn’t as sexy as it is now. Choosing to write programs was just me following my passion.

More from Omin, visit, Techpoint

Alibaba unveils its first smart car — and it’s available for pre-order now

Alibaba has officially announced its move into the automobile space after it unveiled its first “internet car” in collaboration with SAIC, one of China’s big four state-owned automakers.

The RX5 is available for pre-order now, it’s priced upwards of RMB 148,800 ($22,300) with deliveries scheduled to start in August. The sports vehicle has been developed over the last two years as part of a joint venture between Alibaba and SAIC, which put a combined $160 million into the 50-50 project. It includes a new version of Alibaba’s Yun operating system to enable the car to connect to and tap into various internet services.

Alibaba raised a few examples of what that could mean in practical terms. It ranges from personalized greetings, music and preferred destinations based on settings that can be configured from a smartphone or wearable, to the ability to use Alibaba’s Alipay payments service to pay for parking spaces, fill up with gas or buy a coffee. It’s logical that Alibaba’s own services are a core part of possibility functionality, but the company said it wants to open YunOS to third parties, too.

On the entertainment side of things, the RX5 includes three LED screens and space for up to four detachable 360 degree cameras to record video and take photos — because IN-CAR SELFIES — and a smart rear view mirror. As you might expect, there’s support for voice controls while an onboard “intelligent” mapping system, the companies claim, will work without GPS or WiFi.

There’s no crazy, next-level ‘smart’ car features like autopilot, instead Alibaba is putting the focus on a shipping a connected car.

“What we are creating is not ‘internet in the car’, but a ‘car on the internet’. This is a significant milestone in the automobile industry. Smart operating systems become the second engine of cars, while data is the new fuel,” said Dr. Wang Jian, who is chairman of Alibaba’s ‘Technology Steering Committee.’

“Going forward, cars will become an important platform for internet services and smart hardware innovation. We will be embracing a world where everything is closely connected,” Wang added.

Alibaba is far from the only Chinese internet firm to get into cars. LeEco, formerly LeTv, is backing ambitious U.S. project Faraday Future and building a car of its own, while Baidu is one the front runners testing self-driving vehicles in both China and the U.S..

Alibaba is also a major shareholder in Didi Chuxing, the company that is beating Uber in China which recently landed a $1 billion investment from Apple as part of a gargantuan $7 billion round. It is unclear whether Alibaba will use that relationship and work with Didi to provide smart cars.

Source: Techcrunch

Shares slide as Brexit fears take hold

UK and European stock markets fell and the pound hit a fresh 31-year low as worries over the UK's vote to leave the EU continue to rattle markets.

The UK's FTSE 100 share index closed 1.3% lower. US shares initially followed suit but closed higher.

Earlier, the pound fell to $1.2798, its lowest since 1985, before rebounding.

Analysts blamed warnings from the Bank of England that Brexit risks were "crystallising" and fears about the UK commercial property market.

In late trade, the pound was at about $1.29. Sterling has dropped by about 14% against the dollar since hitting $1.50 ahead of the referendum result.

Against the euro, the pound was down 0.9% at €1.1656, having earlier hit its lowest level since 2013.

"Pessimistic predictions for sterling are coming true," said Andrew Edwards, chief executive of ETX Capital. "The pound is the chief proxy for the post-Brexit mood in the markets."

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