Federal Reserve’s selfishness triggered emerging markets chaos January 28, 2014 IF you want to know what old fashioned, hard-core monetary policy used to look like – the kind that those readers who lived through the UK’s European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) humiliation will remember – look no further than what happened to Turkey, a country at the epicentre of the growing emerging market crisis, last [...]
London Report: FTSE buoyed by fall in emerging market worries January 28, 2014 THE UK’S blue chip share index picked up yesterday from five-week lows after finding strong technical support in the face of easing tensions in emerging markets and prospects of mergers and acquisitions. Emerging market assets steadied after a three-day slump, reviving confidence in global risk assets and reassuring investors worried that companies will be hit [...]
The grave crises facing Putin’s Russia lay bare its fundamental weaknesses January 28, 2014 CHAOS in Kiev must feel uncomfortably close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian parliament yesterday annulled laws that sought to clear the streets of protesters against Ukraine’s increasingly authoritarian pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine’s prime minister and government have quit, and the country stands perilously on the edge of deeper conflict – prompted initially [...]
Nearly 80pc of economists believe that Bernanke’s QE1 will be seen positively by the history books January 28, 2014 It's often said that it's hard to find agreement among economists. That's taken to be especially true when you approach the more heavily politicised areas of the discipline – such as macro policy. So that 78 per cent of economists agree with this statement is quite a surprise: Informed postmortems of Ben Bernanke’s Fed chairmanship [...]
India hikes interest rates again. Will Turkey be next? January 28, 2014 As markets jitter from the tumult seen in emerging markets over the last few days, India has made the surprise announcement that it’s raising interest rates in a bid to quell inflation and respond to a vulnerable rupee. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) has raised the benchmark repo rate – the amount at which it [...]
What you need to know before the open – 28/01 January 28, 2014 A mixed open for European markets today – slightly less jittery after Asian counterparts showed some signs of stability in Tuesday trading. Today’s UK GDP numbers are expected to show that the economy grew 0.7 per cent in the fourth quarter – that’s 2.8 per cent when annualised, which would be the best number since [...]
New York Report: US stocks down but Caterpillar climbs higher January 27, 2014 US STOCKS extended recent losses yesterday, with the S&P 500 falling for a third straight session as concern grew about the Federal Reserve’s plans for withdrawing stimulus. The losses, which picked up late in the session after the S&P 500 briefly traded in positive territory, followed a steep selloff late last week tied to emerging [...]
Emerging markets need a structural overhaul before they can return to favour January 27, 2014 PEOPLE talk about emerging markets as if they were one homogenous group, but nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing that really links Argentina, Turkey and Indonesia is that they all look vulnerable to further volatility in their currency, bond and equity markets. The diversity of the emerging market universe is such [...]
CNBC Comment: Mexico can withstand current volatility January 27, 2014 DAVOS is done, and chief executives are returning home to further volatility after last week’s emerging market-led sell-off. In December, the US Federal Reserve announced that it would start tapering its monthly asset buying from $85bn to $75bn. And tomorrow, its rate setting committee will inform us of both its latest rate decision (no change [...]
What you need to know before the open – 27/01 January 27, 2014 After Friday’s falls, European stocks are expected much lower this morning, bracing themselves for another day of volatility. US markets posted their worst daily declines since 2011, as emerging markets felt the full force of economic instability in Argentina, Ukraine and Turkey. Selloffs picked up apace, dragging down Europe and the US. Investors have been [...]