A strong opening for all core Asian markets, but not all could maintain the opening strength. The Nikkei had a great morning session up over 1.3% then was hit after lunch but still managed a +0.5% gain for the day and a +1.4% on the week. Nerves ahead of the US non-farms tended to restrict […]

  Markets breathed a sigh of relief yesterday, having heard US trade tariffs may well be targeted rather than blanket and this lifted both US and global indices. We saw a 1.5% return from the Hang Seng as energy, resources, financials and real estate sectors all helping to recover ground lost earlier in the week. […]

  Asia was very happy to see the US markets rally yesterday and responded with a strong performance themselves. News that the fear of trade wars may have faded helped sentiment and confidence. The Nikkei and the Hang Seng both added 2% which also pushed the Yen back out to the mid 106’s. This currency […]

  Putin’s address on March 1st to the Federal Assembly seems to have sparked a lot of crazy emails with people talking nonsense about things they do not even come close to understanding. Yes, the headline grabber was Putin’s statement about a new invincible cruise missile. I will address that in a moment. Overlooked, however, […]

The Italian election results are in and once again it demonstrates that correlating economics with voting, you end up with a far more accurate forecast. Trying to predict based upon samples of calling people appears to be not merely questionable, but also prone to human bias. We have been warning that this trend toward nationalism […]

Although at the National Peoples Congress meeting, China announced an estimated annual growth rate of 6.5% – it was the Hang Seng that took centre stage as far as conversations were concerned! It appeared as though the market finally realised it was supposed to be declining and that led financials to push the index down […]

The British Government forecasters have issued the first red snow warning in five years as the UK braces for potentially the worst blizzard in more than 50 years. Britain has seen as much snow as the Bizzard of 1962 and of course, they are blaming Global Warming. If it gets hot it is caused by man. […]

  The largest public pension fund in the United States is the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) for civil servants. California is in a state of very serious insolvency. We strongly advise our clients to get out before it is too late. I have been warning that CalPERS was on the verge of insolvency. I […]

Mainland China market stood out again today but only because it did not fall as much as other core indices. Shanghai saw its days low just after the opening bell and even looked to trade positive at one stage just ahead of lunch. However, ahead of Italian elections, BREXIT discussions and President Trump’s tariff announcement […]

Canada is the largest exporter of steel to the United States. The decline in the Canadian dollar has helped this trend in particular. Trump is clueless when it comes to the impact of currency on foreign trade. If he wants to do tariffs, they MUST be indexed to the currency. Failure to do that will […]