Download PDF Introduction Swap spreads, which measure the difference between the fixed rate on a swap and the yield on a Treasury bond of the same maturity, have often been negative in recent years, particularly in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. This phenomenon has puzzled market participants, Read more…
Download PDF Introduction After the great years of 2020 and 2021, the cryptocurrency market has been recently going through what many industry analysts believe to be a “crypto winter”, with Bitcoin prices reaching a low of $15,000 in December 2022, falling from almost $60,000 in November 2021. The fall from Read more…
Download PDF Introduction In 2022, rates traders have had to navigate a landscape of deteriorating liquidity in sovereign debt markets. Over the past few years, there have been multiple episodes of severe illiquidity in US Treasuries and related markets. Firstly, US repo rates spiked in September 2019, with intraday secured Read more…
Download PDF Introduction On the 25th of September Italian citizens are going to vote for their representatives in the parliament. Based on the current macroeconomic and political scenario, we analyze the effects that the elections’ results might have on the markets and propose a trade idea based on the BTP-Bund Read more…
Download PDF Conventional economic theory suggests that Central Banks (CBs) should only intervene to influence short-term interest rates and allow the market to set long-term rates. However, in modern economic history, this belief has been put into question: most notably, the US and the Euro Area have reacted to the Read more…
Download PDF Abstract While the literature investigating risk premia driving the cross section of stock returns is extensive, fewer studies analyze corporate bond returns. We set out to understand which factors and firm characteristics command a premium in terms of expected returns on corporate bonds, both in the investment grade Read more…
Download PDF US US stocks went further into top territory this week. S&P was up 14.50% YTD at 3,699.12 points; DJIA up 5.89% YTD at 30,218.2 points, recording the best monthly performance since 1987. Similarly, small-cap Russel 2000, up 13.36% YTD at 1,891.35 points, showed its best gain since inception, Read more…
In a world of excessive liquidity, where open market operations by central banks are ineffective, unconventional and unheard-of monetary policies need sometimes to be applied. In this article we will briefly discuss of the overnight interbank lending market in Europe (and changes in how its respective index is calculated) and Read more…
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc (TOKYO: 8306:JP) – market cap as of 09/11/2018: ¥9.477tn Introduction On October 31, 2018, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation (“MUTB”), a wholly owned subsidiary of the cross-listed Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (“MUFG”), and one of Japan’s leading asset managers, came to an agreement with Read more…
Fed hiking path explained
We are proud to publish a comprehensive report on one of the most promising emerging markets of the year: Mexico. Mexico finds itself in between two different and opposite macroeconomic forces: on one side, reduced cost of power will significantly lower the production costs of Mexican manufacturers; on the other side, Read more…
US The market movers in the week just past us in the US were certainly the news on the labor market; non-farm payrolls soared past estimates at 295,000 and unemployment tumbled at 5.5 per cent. The latter figure is the upper limit of what has been previously defined by the 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…
Two days ago, during its regular policy meeting, the ECB left interest rates unchanged and Mario Draghi said the “council was comfortable acting next time.” He signaled that there was a unanimous belief that the current inflation rate of 0.7% is unacceptable. He also stated that the strength of the Read more…
The investment banking industry is expected to announce lacklustre returns for 2013, despite an improving global economy, soaring asset prices and abundant liquidity. According to Deutsche Bank, the overall revenue pool is forecasted to be down by 6% (FICC down by 18%, Equity up by 28% mostly driven by equity Read more…