The economic data released from China earlier this morning has been the most talked about economic topic across almost every trading desk today. China’s Q3 GDP resulted in a small beat at 6.9% (expected 6.8%), and the September Retail Sales also slightly better at 10.9% (expected 10.8%) and then finally September Industrial Production released 5.7% against an estimated 6.0% expectation. All rather disappointing really – well, as […]

Strong equity rallies all across the globe today with most markets returning between 1.5 and 2.5%. In Europe it took time for both the FTSE and CAC to follow suit but by the end of the day made Europe a clean-sweep. The US markets performed well especially after FED comments. There is growing speculation that the FED […]

Globally, it has not been a pretty day for equities. Asia and U.S. indices are down with the worst being the Nikkei (off 2%) and that carried into the U.S. session losing another 1%. It appears the world has finally awoken to the fact that the economy is on life support with little to no sign of a recovery anytime soon. Today’s sell-off […]

COMMENT: “The system is collapsing. It is not because of some derivatives bubble. It is not because of fiat. This is because of the debt gone wild” Sure! And you don’t see the connection with the lack of a gold standard? This would never have happened during a gold standard, without someone having gone out […]

The import numbers released from China early this morning was the last thing the commodity based countries wanted to see, especially after having found some decent optimism in recent trading. The Nikkei suffered the most, losing 1.1% on the day, and that carried forward into late U.S. trading where the futures are currently down a further 0.95%. […]

The latest economic news from China shows that, in dollar terms, imports collapsed 20.4% in September from a year earlier to $145.2bn. This is one of the sharpest declines ever, and it is far beyond what was expected. This has had a further impact upon the raw commodity sector and metals. This latest drop in Chinese imports was down […]

In Europe, despite the positive Asian market with the Shanghai Index exceeding 3% (on the back of weekend government vocal support), we had a lack luster session with no clear direction. The same could really be said for the U.S., but at least there the indices finished in the positive. Oil was probably the most talked about asset of the […]

Malaysia is becoming the poster-child for the crisis in emerging markets. The rising tensions between the people and government are clearly demonstrated by this story developing within the emerging markets. In Malaysia, we hear the central bank is recommending criminal prosecution in connection with the controversial investment fund 1MDB, the BBC reported. 1MDB was a sovereign wealth fund that was set up by Malaysian […]

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Thank you for coming to Athens. After the presentation, there were so many questions that the moderator did not have time for. You answered some for the crowd afterwards that I had never heard anyone ever explain. You said Quantitative Easing was not money printing nor did it really increase the money […]

Asia was indifferent; Europe was small positive, but it was not until we saw the Fed minutes and McCarthy announcement did stocks decide to make a definite move higher. The Dow closed above 17k for the first time in a while, with the talk of no rate move (for 2015) and the likelihood of continued uncertainty. The Fed minutes […]