United States Disappointing earnings from Apple and Amazon heavily weighed on the Nasdaq, falling 1.3%. Positive surprises from large companies, such as Procter & Gamble, helped to offset some disappointments in the tech sector, resulting in the S&P 500 falling 0.7%. So far, the earnings seemed solid, as this is Read more…
United States The main news in the United States this week was the job report published on Friday which revealed that job gains of 156,000 jobs were slightly below consensus estimates of 175,000 in September. The key takeaways of the report are that the job growth is healthy even though Read more…
United States The S&P 500 rose 17.14 points, or 0.8%, to close at 2,168.27 on Friday although the index was down 0.1% in September, the Nasdaq Composite closed at 5,312.00, adding 1.7% in September. Moreover, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.9% but fell 0.8% for the month. Analysts have Read more…
Today we are living in a period of ultra-low and in many cases negative interest rates. This has been caused by strong expansionary policies by most central banks, especially in developed countries. In fact, in Japan and Eurozone central bank deposit rates are negative, in the UK and other European 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…
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…
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…
US This week has been really quiet for the US. Two main issues arise: the initial jobless claims surprise on the downside (actual 316K vs expected 330K), and the decline in the durable goods orders. (-2%) in October. With regard to the first data, although it is clearly good for Read more…
There seems to be a consensus in the market that the Fed will gradually start tapering in the next few months (our guesses at BSIC is in December). Therefore it is time to understand what could happen to markets and get prepared. What could happen on the equity market in Read more…
Panel 22|11|2013 US This week Bernanke surprised the markets outlining the chance of early tapering of QE (December meeting). For us this is quite surprising, as we still believe the US economy is not performing as well as it was believed this spring. Three main reasons have worsened our outlook Read more…
Since the crisis hit, interest rates have been kept artificially to the lowest level the world has ever seen. This launched what was called the ‘hunt for yield’. As many investors ran for high-yield junk bonds, risk-averse investors who were uncomfortable with that level of risk turned to quality stocks, Read more…
When first appointed in 2006 by President Bush, Ben Bernanke probably didn’t expect his two terms as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to be the most decisive ones of the past century. First denying an housing bubble, he had to face its real burst and the most threatening crisis Read more…
On May 3, 2013, more than thirteen years since its first close above 1500, the S&P 500 closed above 1600 for the first time, at 1,614.42. Last week it closed at 1,667,47, some say by the end of the summer it may reach 1700 points. There has been a lot Read more…