Author : Marc Chandler

A new phase in the markets began this month.  The Federal Reserve ended its QE3+ purchases.  The Bank of Japan unexpectedly and dramatically stepped up its asset purchases under...

Official comments have injected volatility into the foreign exchange market.  As we anticipated, Japanese officials pushed back against the seemingly free-fall in the yen sparked by the aggressive BOJ...

1) Peace talks in Colombia are becoming more tenuous  2) Brazil still doesn’t have an economic team, but there is a frontrunner  3) Center-right candidate Klaus Iohannis won the...

There is plenty of data out today and it is generally reinforcing our three main thematic points: divergence, weak commodities, especially energy, and the slowing of the Chinese economy....

The FOMC minutes were not very surprising. The FOMC is not in any hurry to raise interest rates before the middle of next year at the earliest.  The FOMC...

The run on the yen continues.  The US dollar and euro are at new multi-year highs against the yen.  The BOJ confirmed its JPY80 trillion monetary base target unexpectedly...

Oil prices have declined for the better part of the past five months.  The unexpected contraction in the Japanese economy in Q3 underscores that the strong supply growth is...

The overall theme today appears to be one of consolidation, encouraged by European data, which included a slightly higher than expected UK CPI and a considerably better German ZEW...

There were few notable developments out of the G20 meeting that would directly impact EM markets.  However, the escalating tensions with Russia made evident in the meeting have increased...

The US dollar is mostly higher to start the week, with two exceptions. The first is the yen. The unexpected contraction in Q3 GDP triggered a stock market slide...