The European Central Bank (ECB) announced it will decide in the coming months whether monetary policy should be eased any further. Clearly, Draghi is completely losing control for he cannot entertain the remote possibility that negative interest rates will only cause hoarding and capital flight, and not stimulation. People only borrow when they see an […]

Japan finally saw a down day (-0.25%) that could be allocated to the individual performance of Nintendo shares, which declined over 12% today due to the delayed launch of the “Pokemon Go” app in Japan! However, the Hang Seng did return a nearly 1% gain today with Shanghai having a small loss, which was a […]

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, why are Italian banks in worse shape than most other countries. What happened to the bail-in program of the ECB? Can you explain why Italy is threatening the entire banking system of Europe? ANSWER: The bail-in policy of the IMF and ECB was directed at the idea that the rich would pay, […]

Despite weekend press of Turkey, BREXIT and a small early CPI miss for New Zealand (0.4% against an expected 0.5%) and with Japan on a national holiday, all of this resulted in a rather lacklustre start to the week. Shanghai saw a fairly tight trading range (<1%), closing off the days lows but still down […]

Asian markets finished small mixed but is the end of what has been an impressive week for the Nikkei. Japan closing the day +0.7% and on the week closes +9%. From China we saw a host of economic data from marginal better growth (+6.7% against an expected +6.6%) and Retail Sales (for June) up 10.6% on […]

Asia resumed its charge with a strong open in the Nikkei and never really looked back from there. Throughout the day the Nikkei made steady progress finally closing +1%. Hang Seng was also strong closing over 1% higher on the day. Shanghai was the lag index for the core closing down 0.2% but was off […]

The world financial crisis that is unfolding post-2015.75 is different from that which followed the 2007.15 peak in the ECM. As stated countless times, each event is a crisis in a different sector. The 2007.15 crisis was the over-leverage in real estate that the bankers created. This time, we are looking at the demise of […]

After Abe’s comment this was an awesome day for the Nikkei and laid the ground for Asia markets combined. A 4% rally for Japan with a 1.5% improvement for the Shanghai whilst Hang Seng made just a marginal improvement. The Upper House elections saw Japan’s Abe party secure a landslide victory in the Sunday election which promised […]

  We are looking at the collapse of Europe unfold much faster than anyone suspected. I have been warning that the Continental EU banks are in serious trouble. The negative interest rates have devastated Europe. While trying to stimulate borrowers who are not interested without an opportunity to make money, the ECB has wiped out […]

A quiet day in Asia is a bit of a relief after all the recent fun and games and that is what we saw today with global markets having behaved themselves and a FED that was more than compensated for, there was really not much to play on and so we saw one of the […]