Tag Archives: Featured

Durable and capital goods orders and shipments all increased in December by growth rates consistent with those registered in the months leading up to the big storms Harvey and Irma. We continue to find evidence that accelerated growth in October and November was nothing more than the anticipated after-effects cleaning up after those hurricanes. New orders for durable goods (excluding transportation orders) had...

Many investors are confused, and the official communication only fanned the confusion. Before turning to next week’s key events and data, let’s first spend some time, working through some of the confusion. There was no change in policy last week. The US did not suddenly become protectionist. It did put tariffs on solar panels and washing machines. At the end of last week, unexpectedly the US International Trade...

Stock Markets EM FX closed Friday on a mixed note, but still posted solid gains for the week as a whole. Best performers last week were ZAR, PLN, and CZK while the worst were ARS, PHP, and IDR. The bearish dollar environment remains intact and so we see further gains for EM FX this week. However, we continue to warn that divergences within EM are likely to assert themselves. Stock Markets Emerging Markets, January 27...

Professional Forecasters survey shows a substantial improvement in economic growth and employment, consistent with the ECB’s own assessment. The ECB will be pleased by its latest Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). The headlines are unambiguously positive, fuelled by the uninterrupted improvement in economic data, with expectations of GDP growth and HICP inflation revised higher for the next couple of years,...

Schneider-Ammann (right) is holding talks with various business leaders on the sidelines of this year’s WEF meeting in Davos. Among them was Nestlé Vice President Marco Settembri Swiss Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann has downplayed concerns that Swiss-based American firms might relocate to the United States in the wake of tax reform. Speaking in Davos ahead of a visit by US President Donald Trump,...

Jeffrey Snider Jeffrey Snider, head of global investment research at Alhambra Investments, says China is in fact not growing rapidly, which sounds disheartening for commodity investors. He reckons a crucial investment metric has weakened, pointing to slower economic expansion: https://www.bnn.ca/video/forget-it-china-s-not-booming-money-manager~1310003...

All smiles: Swiss President Alain Berset, right, and US President Donald J. Trump, left, shake hands during a bilateral meeting Swiss President Alain Berset says his meeting with US President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos was productive and frank. Trump took credit for making Switzerland “even richer”. “You have a lot of our stock in the United States so I have helped to make Switzerland even...

Summary Korea policymakers have asked state-owned banks and companies to limit the issuance of global bonds. Malaysia’s central bank hiked rates for the first time in four years. Pakistan’s central bank unexpectedly hiked rates for the first time in over four years. Moody’s raised its outlook on Russia’s Ba1 rating from stable to positive. Argentina’s central bank surprised markets with its second straight 75 bp rate...

ECB President Draghi was unable to arrest the US dollar’s slide and euro’s surge.  But he did not try particularly hard. While many investors are a bit stumped by the pace and magnitude of the dollar’s slump, Draghi seemed to imply that it was perfectly understandable given the recovery of the eurozone economy. The economy is the strongest it has been in more than a decade, but the US is no slouch. The US reports the...

Did US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin signal a change in the US dollar policy? Probably not. As Mnuchin and President Trump have done before, a distinction was drawn between short- and longer-term perspectives. In the short-term, a weaker dollar says Mnuchin, is good for US trade and “other opportunities”. In the longer-term, Mnuchin explicitly acknowledged, “the strength of the dollar is a reflection of the strength of the...