It has been a tough couple of weeks for the Euro area and what seemed like a major Euro breakdown turned -temporarily- into a much more stable situation this week. But let us go back in time a little, when Grexit was more likely. Up to just a couple of Read more…
US The biggest event for US markets this week was certainly Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. Indicating that if the US economy improved further, she stated that the central bank could change its language and abandon its “patient” stance (which means not to Read more…
US Big news has struck the US economy this week and in particular the ones oil-related has had a strong effect on the market. The US economy has been once again the main driver of the fall in oil prices this week as the country’s stockpiles of crude last week Read more…
As everyone knows, a commodity is a raw material – fungible by definition – that is supposed to trade in any market of the world for the same price. But when it comes to crude oil, things are not as simple. As it is widely known, the two main qualities Read more…
“Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline.” Philip Roth Introduction As options and other products whose price depends on volatility have become widespread, studying its behaviour is now a key Read more…
US The week ended with a boom for the US economy as the November jobs report was released on Friday. 321,000 new jobs were created in the last month, well ahead of economists’ forecasts of 230,000. This piece of news puts the US economy on track to achieve the best Read more…
The recent OPEC’s meeting amplified the downward trend in Oil price as the counsel decided not to cut Oil supply. The cartel decided – tough not unanimously – to leave the current OPEC supply target at 30 million barrels per day. The target was actually not respected for the last Read more…
US The week just past us was one of slight gains in US equity markets, with most volume on Tuesday and Wednesday due to the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday. The week opened with a soft print of the US services PMI, then trading became jittery for the S&P 500 as Read more…
Inflation is down – again – to 0.3%, far away from the target of the ECB. Source: TradingEconomics, Eurostat Inflation Expectations are also down. The expected inflation in 5 years dipped last months below the threshold of 2%. This is a major issue for ECB: given its mandate to maintain Read more…
Several investors have kept an eye open on oil this week putting all their hopes in the long-awaited OPEC meeting held on Thursday. Opening this week at $80.50 per barrel, the decisions of the OPEC meeting provoked an intraday drop of 6.65 percentage points in Brent crude prices on Thursday, Read more…
Market volatility has increased recently, and also the endless linear trend of the S&P 500 has been marginally affected. Quoting some numbers, the VIX index moved to over 26 in mid-October from a minimum of 10 reached this summer. Volatility is a sign of market nervousness; besides being common during Read more…
US This week we have seen almost only positive data about US economy, which explained dollar strength with respect to all major currencies (EUR, GBP and YEN). Gains were relatively small against Euro and Pound. The substantial advance with respect to the Yen was mainly due to Yen’s weakness during Read more…
I. OPEC and price trends Oil prices have been declining since last summer on concerns about production outpacing demand: the Brent slid by almost 30% from $115 in mid-June to the recent low of $76. Will prices carry on falling? Or have we hit the bottom? Next Thursday’s OPEC meeting will Read more…
What is the Hu-Gang Tong? On November 17, China took another leap in opening its markets to foreign investors with the establishment of the Hong Kong – Shanghai Stock Connect program. The so-called “Hu-Gang Tong” program will for the first time ever enable mainland residents to trade shares in Hong Read more…
The latest weeks have been full of news for the UK economy. Some of the news, like the dovish stance of the Bank of England, were on average expected by the financial markets, whereas others, such as the latest inflation figure of 1.2% for September, were not expected. Actually, the Read more…