“Rates will stay low, very low, for a long period of time and well past the horizon of our purchases,” Draghi declared. “From today’s perspective and taking into account the support of our measures to growth and inflation, we don’t anticipate that it will be necessary to reduce rates further.” The ECB cut its main interest […]

The man who made Wall Street famous was John Gutfreund, which he always pronounced as GOOD-friend, has died at the age of 86 who became known as “King of Wall Street” back in 1985 for building the Investment Bank and bond trading house of Salomon Brothers into the number one underwriter in the world, the […]

The surprise rate cut by the New Zealand Central Bank earlier this morning spooked a few markets especially ahead of the ECB later in the day. The Nikkei liked the news which resulted in a +1.3% rally but that has been reversed after the wests reaction to the ECB this evening. In late US trading […]

All core Asian markets closed down but off their lows. Shanghai was down almost 4% in the morning session and so a -1.3% close almost felt like an up day! All eyes still seem to be concentrating on the RMB against the USD, fixed on every daily move. It is worth monitoring the RMB against a basket […]

  Weaker than expected trade data ($32.59bn v Expected $50.15bn) from China saw equities open around 3% down, but that created the day’s low and the market steadied from that point. The Shanghai spent much of the day struggling to recover but recover it did and closed up on the day +0.1%. In Japan, consumer confidence fell […]

Asian equity markets open with lots of talk around the Chinese National Peoples Congress and the idea that GDP will now be an indicative target range (6.5 – 7%). The Shanghai opened over 1% firmer but did lose that as we headed into the afternoon session, only to recover and close up +0.85%. The PBOC […]

“A confident close for the week” that was how one trader expressed the Asian markets today. A good solid recovery, from the morning sessions, ahead of the weekend and also the NFP. The PBOC fixed the Yuan rate at  6.5284 which was slightly firmer against the USD compared to Thursday’s fix (6.5412). A dramatic dip in the Shanghai index […]

In Asian equity trading today, only the Hang Seng that disappointed investors after closing negative -0.3% whilst the others recorded gains. Shanghai posted a small gain of 0.3% as the PBOC set the Yuan mid-rate at 6.5412. Earlier we saw the (Caixin) PMI was marginally weaker than previous at 51.2 versus a previous 52.4. Meanwhile, […]

  Technically, the Dow Jones Industrials almost set up to make a “Channel Move” between two channels, but they interestingly overlapped instead with no gap between. This is one reason the S&P 500 could break last year’s low, but not the Dow. We made a new high for the month on Friday closing at 16639.97. […]

We saw healthy performances across all Asian Indices amongst the G20 headlines. There is much talk about additional fiscal stimulus coming from China whilst Germany takes the opposite view (expressed by Wolfgang Schaeuble) stating that easy monetary policy “risks serious side effects.” Core indices closed higher on the day (Nikkei +0.3% and Shanghai +1%) but […]