Oil was blamed for the majority of today’s equity weakness but there was no new news and the reason was a little baffling! The Nikkei broke the 16k level and then fell another 300 points quite sharply. In late US trading, it lost an additional 150 points and is currently trading around the 15,500 level. […]

A lot of emails have been coming in with regard to the Panama Papers. Let me say this from the outset — Panama has been the key place to establish offshore accounts for decades. This was not a government hack. The German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung obtained the stash of records from an anonymous source and shared […]

Trump’s latest comments over the weekend regarding the economy are interesting but still fall short of reality. He argues the unemployment number is really in the 20%+ zone, and the number that was provided was deliberately contrived to make politicians look good. That is basically true, but his number is a bit high. He says the […]

After an initial opening surge in the Nikkei, briefly topping 17k, sellers appeared and drove prices lower to close the day -0.7%. The JPY was weaker throughout the morning session but had also turned stronger to balance the Nikkei swing. With the 10yr JGB having turned negative recently, this will squeeze banks and foreigners in […]

Asia followed the bullish tone provided by the Federal Reserve with a gap higher opening of around 1%. Mainland China and Hang Seng managed to build upon this enthusiasm, eventually closing up almost 2.5% each. The same could not be said of Japan when the Nikkei had problems holding the 17k psychological level. Tomorrow being […]

Janet Yellen signaled that the Fed is grappling with the problem I have been warning about: the dollar has become the de facto currency and the Fed is indeed becoming the world’s central bank. Yellen has admitted that everyone is lobbying the Fed to surrender its domestic policy objectives for international ones. This is precisely […]

Goldman Sachs is at the center of a probe into the rigging of U.S. Treasury Auctions, which was the same allegation that resulted in the Treasury shutting down Salomon Brothers in 1991. I wrote about this incident when Salomon was caught. The fact that such rigging in commodities markets was standard for decades was common knowledge. When […]

Shortly after the European open news broke of the Belgium terror attacks and we saw the usual flight to quality. Treasuries rallied, as did Gold and the US Dollar while stocks fell and in particular airlines and travel companies. At one stage we saw the DAX down over -1.5% with CAC, IBEX and FTSE not […]

The strong Yen continues to weigh on the Nikkei even though other core Asian Indices performed. Minutes from the Jan BOJ meeting were released which showed that additional stimulus were discussed, including the possible expansion of QE. However, having opened unchanged and after a long week the Nikkei closed down -1.25% on the day and 2.5% lower […]

With both Asia and European markets were in pretty much a waiting station ahead of the FED, so it is probably worth us heading straight to where the action started! Even the events of the UK Budget were almost removed with talks of,  “It could all change come June 23rd anyway” so why get too hot under the […]