Back to geopolitical risks again today after North Korea spooked markets with yet more missile test, but this time flying over Japan. All Asia markets were hit as a result of this, with a rush into safe-haven assets such as gold, oil and treasuries. Interesting that oil traded heavy even as the news hit the […]

When a major market contributor is away the markets are always quiet but today with the UK off, there really was very little action anywhere. China continued its constructive roll with the main Shanghai adding an additional 1%; with the Hang Seng little changed. Australia suffered a touch (-0.6%) with the decline of financials. SENSEX […]

Main talking point out of Asia this morning were the continued strong earnings reports and the subsequent buying conviction. In Hong Kong the Hang Seng gained over 1.2% whilst the domestic Shanghai index rallied near 2% after earnings beat expectations to finish the week well bid. We saw solid gains in Financials, energy, communications and […]

Governments first imposed taxes on alcohol and cigarettes under the claim that they were trying to make people stop for their own good. But as always, as the governments became addicted themselves to the tax revenue. Now they have taken the same theory and applied it to tax soft drinks in Philadelphia naturally because they care […]

We have seen yet another weaker day with the Nikkei declining once more. It had the opportunity to perform but was dragged lower by Industrials, Metals and Manufacturing. The yens strength throughout the week has seen no retracement and remains close the 109 big figure. Core China and Hang Seng both off-set each other with […]

  A quiet and mixed session for Asia as we watched the only real move and that was in the USD. Given all the uncertainty we are seeing a steadier run for the US Dollar, with possibly an arguable underlying bid for gold. The Nikkei did retrace a little of yesterdays decline, closing up +0.25% […]

Asian markets loved the fact that the US managed to turn around yesterday and so we opened with an air of confidence for this mornings trade. After an initial sell-off in the Nikkei early session we saw a bounce that unfortunately failed. By mid afternoon we had slipped back to the days lows and watched […]

Kenneth Rogoff,  the Professor of Economics at Harvard University, is stuck in a time warp where he cannot think out of the box even once. He is telling the central banks that the next recession they will have to resort to negative interest rates and they should prepare now. Despite the fact that negative rates have […]

The biggest conversational topic today was the recent USD bounce, as well as the oil price decline. Japans Nikkei held-in as the nervousness returned, but it was the JPY trading back close to 111 that had people talking. Given the US Retail Sales number was so above expectation the market now assumes the FED are […]

It has taken almost 10 years for the ECB’s controversial government bond purchases to finally reach the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be reviewed as to their constitutionality. There have always been serious questions whether the PSPP (Public Sector Purchase Program) was compatible with the ban on monetary budgetary funding that has been imposed […]