Markets

29 August 2014

US Dollar Consolidating in Month-end

The US dollar is consolidating, largely within yesterday's ranges.  Month-end and quarter-end hedge and portfolio adjustments are notoriously difficult to predict.  There is also large option expires today.  Given the EU Summit this weekend, a holiday in the US on...

28 August 2014

Blowing the lid off food safety in China

In July, Shanghai’s Dragon TV exposed illegal food handling practices by Shanghai Husi Food Co., a major meat supplier to multinational corporations such as McDonald’s and KFC. The story, which was the result of months of undercover investigative journalism and...

20 August 2014

Coal Tax Increase Scales Up Indian Renewables

India needs economic growth for sustainable development, which in turn requires access to clean, convenient and reliable energy. An estimated 400 million people still lack access to electricity, and blackouts are still common across the country. A combination of rapidly...

18 August 2014

Firmer Dollar Against Most Currencies Except the Sterling

Amid light new, the US dollar is slightly firmer against most of the major currencies, except sterling.  Carney's comments over the weekend, suggesting that the BOE will not necessarily wait for wages to rise before hiking rates, helped lift sterling...

12 August 2014

NDB and AIIB Initiatives Sound Global Finance Wake Up Call

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...

11 August 2014

Weekly Preview: Emerging Markets Set the Tone

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...

11 August 2014

Slower Growth for China on the Horizon

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...

7 August 2014

Counting Down the Hours, Waiting for Draghi

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....

6 August 2014

European politics dances to the drum of the far right

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...

4 August 2014

Markets Seek Direction at Start of the Week

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...