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…
US US equities continued to trade sideways in the last week due to the lack of news catalysts. The only major pieces of news out were the number of initial and continuing jobless claims diffused on Thursday and the retail sales figures released on Friday. The anticipation of the former Read more…
On normal market days, the (positive) correlation between gold and silver is quite high. Looking at the chart below, it looks like silver gives chase to the movements in gold and follows them quite closely. One thing we can observe though is that downside changes in gold reflect more heavily Read more…
US It has been a busy week for US markets, filled with plenty of data and the outcome of the midterms on November 4th. The result of these was a Republican takeover of the Senate, and in all the expression of dissatisfaction or anger at Mr Obama’s performance. The S&P Read more…
There’s a famous saying among financiers : either stress tests are done correctly and banks fail miserably, either they are poorly done in order to make them a success. It is very likely we are in the second situation. Victor Constancio, vice-president of the ECB, declared that not only the Read more…
Oil has been completely crushed after peaking this summer: much has changed since our last article earlier this year (https://bsic.it/oil-quo-vadis/). Weakness in the price of crude was triggered by fear of a global slowdown: China growing at its lowest rate since 2009 (only 7.3%), together with cuts in economic forecast Read more…
US After turmoil in the recent weeks US equities are back to all-time highs. Very solid data on consumer confidence and a Q3 GDP growth rate print of 3.5%, above a lower forecast of 3%, propelled the S&P 500 to 2018.05. Not even the completion of tapering on Wednesday stopped Read more…