Oil futures fell over 4% on Monday morning as worries mount that economic growth is slowing around the world.
In the U.S., WTI futures expiring in February fell over 4% to $46.41, while Brent futures fell 4.5% to below $48. Oil futures have fallen 20% in the past month, after WTI futures fell to less than $60, which many analysts said was unsustainably low.
Experts suggest that Australia’s 2015 economy will be at a critical stage. The country has been struggling consistently with the negative impact of a slowdown in mining development, declining commodity prices, and renewed fiscal restrictions. According to Goldman Sachs, Australia could be heading towards the perfect storm in 2015.
The mutuality of Asia’s economic interests centring on deepening economic integration is a potential foundation for building an Asian economic community that encompasses the ASEAN 10 plus their six neighbours, Japan, South Korea, China, India, Australia and New Zealand.
The mutuality of Asia’s economic interests centring on deepening economic integration is a potential foundation for building an Asian economic community that encompasses the ASEAN 10 plus their six neighbours, Japan, South Korea, China, India, Australia and New Zealand.
The US State Department’s analysis of China’s nine-dash line, which it released in advance of China’s Position Paper on the South China Sea arbitration case with the Philippines, is in part conceptually and legally flawed.
EM is starting the week facing several familiar cross-currents. The dollar is strengthening again, oil prices are still falling, but equities are moving higher. This constellation seems to suggest a continuation of our call further weakness in EM, but for Asian assets to outperform in the short-term.
In thin Asian trading, with the Japanese markets closed for holiday, the US dollar’s pre-weekend losses extended. However, European participants took advantage of that pullback to buy more dollars. A similar reversal of sentiment was evident in the equity markets. The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index, excluding Japan, was off 0.2%, while European shares are broadly higher. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is up 1% near midday in London. Utilities are lagging, but the only sector down in Europe is energy.
The greatest risk to the divergence theme is not that the BOJ and ECB would abandon their unorthodox monetary policy. It was that the consensus would swing against ideas that the Federal Reserve would raise rates near mid-year.
On the usual measures of economic prosperity, Singapore went from strength to macroeconomic strength in 2014. Real economic growth was between 2.5 and 3.5 percent for the year. The IMF forecast the world economy in October to have grown at 3.3 percent. Singapore continued to grow in importance as an ASEAN hub for RMB-denominated financial services, named for the ninth year running, the best global location for business and enterprise.
A higher employment rate in the United States is encouraging more aggressive growth expectations from economists, while global growth expects to lag.
Economists are becoming more aggressive in their GDP targets, with several investment banks raising growth forecasts after the Commerce Department announced GDP growth rose to 5% in the United States in the third quarter of 2015.
