Download PDF In the previous article of our series, we highlighted the questionable use of cross currency swaps and concluded that this kind of window dressing techniques are a manifestation of the larger issue of problematic debt management on the sovereign entity scale. In this article, we delve deeper into Read more…
Download PDF There’s a Yiddish proverb fittingly saying: “interest on debts can grow without rain”. How can this be? In an ultra-low-rate environment, debt has become ubiquitous to sail through the COVID-19 pandemic and so has the fear related to its sustainability. Countries have taken the center stage in the Read more…
Greek Banking Sector The Greek banking system is built around four large systemic banks, whose summary statistics you can see in the table below. All four banks have undergone a significant restructuring process, whereby both the asset value and the market capitalization went down a lot. In addition, a number Read more…
Macro Environment 2018 is bound to be the point of inflection for the Greek economy. The Bank of Greece reports that GDP will grow 2.5% over the next two years, while the European Commission expects a 1.6% growth in 2017 – the economy’s best performance in a decade. Greece’s 10-year Read more…
United States The S&P 500 closed the week at $2,399.29, a record high and up 0.63% when compared with the close of the previous week. During the week several important announcements have been released; first of all the Federal Reserve decided to leave interest rate unchanged at 0.75%-1.00% following the Read more…
Market Recap 05-03-2017 United States Despite experiencing a downward correction towards the closing of the week, US equity indices reached new record levels. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a new record level by breaching the 21.000 mark. On Wednesday, it peaked at 21.115, to close the week at 21.005, Read more…
Greece has returned in the spotlight again. Since the hard left government of Alexis Tsipras took office in January, tough negotiations on structural reforms, between the new government and Greece’s international creditors, began and they are still ongoing. Fresh worries are now driven by the risk of a partial default Read more…
US US equities climbed to new heights as the week drew to a close with the Nasdaq Composite surpassing its previous peak of 5048.62 points from the year 2000 that marked the height of the dot-com era. The tech-heavy index advanced 3.2% over the last 5 days to close Friday’s Read more…
This week the market division wrote about US, UK and EU, with a particular focus on what is happening in Greece. US The market mover this week in US was the inflation figure – consumer prices fell 0.1% in March with respect to last year, but the core measure of Read more…
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…
1. What’s Going On In Greece 1.1 Global Financial Crisis, Sovereign Debt Crisis and the Troika Greece is a country that witnessed big changes in the last years. 2008 was the year when the Global Financial Crisis exploded, changing the world for all of us. 2009 saw the burst of Read more…
The first point is that the Greek equity index level is very stretched: RSI is now over 70 and price levels already reached the upper Bollinger band. Although this would already be enough to short the index, a closer look at historical data corroborates this feeling. The true driver seems Read more…
How big is Cyprus’ economy? GDP of €18.0bn as of 2011 (latest official figure) Why does Cyprus need a bailout? Did Cyprus have an irresponsible/spendthrift Government? No, it is its banks that are the problem. Cyprus’ Debt/GDP ratio stood at 49% in 2008 and rose to 71% by 2011 Read more…