Asian markets opened lower with markets continuing the slide as the day progressed. The Nikkei took the trophy for being the weakest component with a daily loss of 1.6%. With declining energy and commodity prices coupled with poor economic data was enough to take the market lower and the immediate effect was a strengthening […]

The Yemen Civil War is an ongoing conflict that began in 2015 between two factions. Each is claiming to constitute the Yemen government. This is really a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthi forces control the capital Sana’a who are allied with forces loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh backed […]

The turmoil in the Middle East has been instigated in part by fiscal mismanagement. When the money was rolling in with high oil prices, it was assumed, as always, that whatever trend is in motion will remain in motion. Consequently, the government expanded their spending assuming money would continue to flow in. When oil broke, […]

  The Nikkei (+1.75%) had the strongest session in Asia today, helped by the continued rally in oil (+3% on Monday) prices and strong earnings. The Nikkei reached new 26 year highs earlier on optimism of growth, mergers and fresh international investment. The index moved stronger from the opening, eventually closing at the highs of […]

Not that much to get excited about in Asian markets today, but with not much fresh news to go-on indices closed mixed. The Nikkei opened better after their long weekend but with other regional markets drifting weaker, the index did well just to close in the positive. Bank of Japan minutes released relatively smoothly with […]

QUESTION: Dear Mr. Armstrong, I had stopped watching TV a decade ago. Then one late night in August 2015, for no particular reason, I switch on some Swedish channel, and voila! I see The Forecaster. It shattered me… I’m your faithful follower ever since. If anyone deserves a Nobel in Economics – or Peace – it is […]

‘ The Shanghai core index traded heavy in todays trading as concerns over the amount of IPO potentially coming to market start to take their toll. Shanghai closed down -0.8% with the Hang Seng losing -0.3%. One of the key topics discussed today was HSBC’s $4.6bn earnings figure. Better than previous but shares closed around […]

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong; It appears that politicians are attributing any change in the climate to human activity. They have simply either gone mad or just insane, seriously distorting everything to gain more power and taxes. Now  Christine Lagarde said: “As I’ve said before if we don’t do anything about climate change now, in 50 years’ time we […]

QUESTION: I read your blog about the Saudi’s potentially selling a large private equity position from China in Aramco rather than accessing the public markets. You have pointed out the need for the Saudi’s to modernize their economy to be less dependent on oil income and to monetize that resource for capital improvements/diversification, but how […]

The big event this week will be China which commences its 19th National Congress of the Communist Party on Wednesday. It is little surprise that the Shanghai stock market gave up early gains to close a fraction weaker. The initial rally was based on the expected strong CPI release (+1.6%), but was overshadowed by the […]