Markets

July 2014 marked the seventieth anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference, which laid the foundation for the post-WWII international financial system. The conference established the IMF to stabilize the world economy and the World Bank to finance post-war reconstruction. Both...

With many major idiosyncratic EM risk events now behind us, the general tone will be almost entirely set by the mood in developed markets and ongoing geopolitical events. Still, we think the recent sell-off in global financial markets may have...

China’s growth outlook is the focus of analysts and economic policymakers all around the world. Nobody can afford now to ignore the scale of the economy and its impact on the global growth outlook. China already accounts for more than...

The key driver of the global capital market is the heightened geopolitical risks ahead of the weekend.  These now include the US air strikes in Iraq, as well as a sense that the situation in the Ukraine is reaching an...

The US dollar recouped some of the modest losses seen in North America yesterday.  The focus is not, though, so much on the US today.  The Bank of England, and even more important for the markets today, the ECB meets....

Instead of championing the EU and the economic benefits of immigrants, Europe’s mainstream parties are moving further to the right. David Cameron’s clampdown on immigrant benefits was one policy designed to win back votes from far-right party UKIP. Instead of...

India has played the spoiler by refusing to sign the global agreement on trade facilitation agreed at the Bali Ministerial of the World Trade Organisation in December 2013. The signing of the agreement would have resulted in the first global...

Most of the capital markets action here at the start of the week fall into one of two buckets.  The first bucket is consolidation.  Through the European morning, the most actively traded currency pair, the euro-dollar--is confined to less than...

The US employment data was disappointing. The short-term market had been leaning the wrong way. The recent data had fanned hopes that the labor market was accelerating, but today’s data suggest the pace of improvement has not changed. It is the...

Unsurprisingly, the BRICS countries sixth annual summit in Brazil once again polarised public opinion. When the proposal for a BRICS development bank and currency swap arrangement was put forward in March 2012, the reaction was already divided. Some believed —...

The US dollar is extending its gains in response to the strong US GDP figures.  There are four elements of the report to note.  First, the economy expanded by 4.0% in Q2, well above consensus expectations.  Second, Q1 was revised...

The experience that Chinese leaders gain in domestic politics has a big impact on how they view and handle international issues. Many China watchers and political analysts often overlook these domestic roots of Chinese foreign policy, particularly in China’s push...

 This is an eventful week, but the economic calendar starts slowly.  The FOMC meeting, first look at Q1 US GDP and the US jobs report, are the highlights.    The capital markets are also off to a slow start.  The...

  With its economy flat lining and being held up by oil and gas exports, Russia desperately needs to increase the scale of those exports. On the face of it the massive $400 billion deal Russia signed with China on...

There have been five important developments today, but price action has been mostly limited.  Confirmation that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is pausing after hiking rates for the fourth consecutive time has sent the New Zealand dollar sharply lower....