The second quarter has now closed and after some fairly volatile currency movements in the closing week, it is a good point to take stock of the potential impacts to company forecasts. As markets should be already aware, Sterling reporting groups will benefit from a not insignificant fx translation tailwind from the Q3 on […]
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If unplanned outages from Canada and Nigeria (of approx -2mb/d) have provided the supply side contraction behind the rebound in crude prices, China’s PBOC credit injection of $1tn in Q1 has helped to deliver the demand side component, which along with ECB and BoJ NIRP, have also helped keep the record levels of global inventories […]
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Behind the incessant background noise of Yellen’s ‘will she won’t she raise rates’ discussion, the closing of the Q1 results season provides a good opportunity to take stock of the broader earnings and more importantly OpFCF yield basis on which equities are priced. Relative to expectations at the start of the year, there have been […]
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Economics is proving to be a little like a tube of toothpaste. Squeeze it one place and the toothpaste is just displaced elsewhere. When the Fed adopted what was already a failing Japanese experiment in QE in 2008/09, it provided a much needed liquidity fix for the credit crisis, but a dangerous temptation that […]
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Is the Fed that junkie that keeps on promising to kick the habit because they know the dire consequences if they don’t, but just want that last fix because it feels so good and they’re frightened of cold turkey? How many times has the Fed now signalled it will come off the QE juice but […]
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How should we interpret this week’s volte-face by Tsipras and the Syriza government in approving austerity concessions to the Troika that had been specifically rejected by Greek voters in a referendum less than a week before? Short term, this would seem to provide an opportunity for celebration for creditors and financial markets in that the […]
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Greece votes a resounding 61% “No†to the Troika debt proposals, yet financial markets remain largely unfazed, with European equity markets declining initially by less than 2% and 10 year bond yields for Italy, Spain and Portugal harden by less than 10bps. With traders having been weaned on a succession of last minute resolutions to […]
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Was the Friday rebound in equity markets another BTFD opportunity, or a possible suckers rally? Certainly, the wall of central bank liquidity over the past five years have reduced the market’s pricing mechanism to little more than a pavlovian response to the next turn of the central tap and where bad news can be good […]
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