ASIA: China took more action to boost its economy by reducing the amount of cash banks have in reserve. The PBC said it would reduce the reserve requirement ratio for most financial institutions by 50 basis points. The first in the over eight months. The step is expected to release nearly a trillion yuan into […]

ASIA: There was a somewhat successful call yesterday between US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. The call concluded that the US and China will resume trade talks in person at the beginning of October. In the run-up to the event, the two countries will hold a discussion in order to […]

ASIA: China today has officially filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the US raised tariffs from 10 to 15 percent over the weekend on 300 billion USD worth of Chinese goods. China has asked for the WTO to act as a mediator to convince the US to reduce or end the […]

ASIA: Over the weekend the U.S. imposed a 15% tariff on a range of Chinese goods. Today, China returned the favor by imposing new charges on US. products. US President Trump tweeted today regarding the progress of the US-Chinese trade talks: “We are doing very well in our negotiations with China. While I am sure […]

It is not looking very good for the winter ahead. A reader from Calgary sent this picture in about the early snowfall up there. Indeed, Calgary just experienced the Snowiest Day in More Than Three Decades. It Broke an October Snowfall Record. Of course, they will call this Global Warming as well. This is just a […]

The refreshing news that the US and Canada had reached an agreement, that would replace NAFTA, encouraged markets across the world today. Starting in Asia the Nikkei managed to add +0.5% even as Confidence (a Bank of Japan statistic) declined yet again. However, the Nikkei rally was at the expense of the Yen, which late […]

Private Blog For the Quarterly Close of September 2018 Private blog posts are exclusively available to Socrates subscribers. To sign-up for Socrates or to learn more, please visit Ask-Socrates.com. https://ask-socrates.com/

Private Blog For the Close of September 2018 Private blog posts are exclusively available to Socrates subscribers. To sign-up for Socrates or to learn more, please visit Ask-Socrates.com. https://ask-socrates.com/

The Nikkei led the pack for Asia rallying 1.6% before a setback at the close. However, given the slight dip it still managed a 1.36% return raising the index to its highest since January. Ypu would have to go back to 1991 to see the Nikkei at these levels, but obviously it is and probably […]

The FED did not set the pace for Asian trading, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell did in the Q+A afterwards. The comment that all are referring to today was the FED’s inflation outlook. Guess you really have to ask the question, ‘Have they ever got it right’? The set-up for Asia was not great, with confidence […]