The UK house prices rose for the consecutive second month in January 2016. The UK property market demand is growing in the wake of lower interest rates and encouraging job growth rate. The average cost of a house in the UK was up 1.7 percent in January.

Investors are concerned as the US stock index futures turned weaker. The marginal recovery in oil price amid drop in the US dollar puts the Wall Street on cautious note. On the other hand, Asian and European stocks were trading marginally higher on oil price recovery and drop in US dollar.

The retail tech startup Salesfloor closed $3 million seed fund on Tuesday. The fund was led by BDC Capital IT Venture Fund and two London-based investors Jamie True and Jon Claydon.

The Dutch banking major ING Groep's revenues for the fourth quarter were above the analysts' forecasts. ING's exposure to the oil companies is putting pressure on its stock, which suffered 20 percent drop. However, ING is also receiving indirect benefits from lower oil prices.

The Gulf establishment, Adeptio LLC has approached Kuwait's fast-food chain, Americana, for buying out the 66.8% controlling stake held by the Al Kharafi family valued at $1.7 billion. Currently, the investor is conducting the due diligence but the final outcome will be based on the approval of the Americana franchisers.

The US economy encouragingly created more jobs for the past two years and now is set for a slowdown, as economists predict. The prevailing credit conditions the US market indicate tightening of economy. The US private sector added 205,000 jobs in January as against 267,000 in December.

GoPro has represented fourth quarter financials on Wednesday. It has counted a loss of 8 cents per share in Q4 and yearly earning per share has been reduced to 76 cents a share. The yearly earning has been reduced by 42% from 99 cents per share, a year ago. Poor sales during the Q4 have been held responsible for the week financial figures. But the company itself has widened the loss margin through repurchasing own stocks. Not only that, it has allocated $264.4 million funds for further share repurchasing in 2016.

The rise of oil prices had brought positive growth to most of the Asian markets, except for Japan. On the other hand, European market had seen a drop. The oil prices increased overnight due to speculations that U.S Federal Reserve would possibly decide not to increase interest rates throughout 2016.

VirnetX has been in the limelight for its achievement in realizing $223 million from Microsoft in out of court settlements. Now the patent litigation company has won a court verdict that instructs Apple to pay $625.6 million for patent infringement issues. VirnetX has claimed for $532 million initially, but Apple’s deliberate infringement over the patented products has reportedly increased the amount.

Luxembourg has proposed to tap the mineral-rich asteroids orbiting between Earth and Mars for minerals that are scarce in our planet. Its deputy prime minister, Etienne Schneider, has already announced the roll-out of the initiative named SpaceResources.lu, which will be set up with the help of its US and European commercial partners.