The lobbying is off and running is super-high gear to stop the Fed from raising rates once again. Governments all over the world have a very myopic view and focused only on the next quarter, or the next election. The Reserve Bank of India also fears that the US Fed’s impending interest rise would affect the external […]

India is moving now to confiscate gold after going after the cash. Currently, each married woman is entitled to 500 grams, each unmarried woman 250 grams, and each man 100 grams of gold. Everything that goes beyond is classified as illegal possession and thus will be confiscated. There is no restriction on the possession of […]

The Nikkei closed today at its highest level for the year which included a well behaved Yen. Closing up +268 points (+1.45%) certainly puts it in good shape for the year end rally. Shanghai and Hang Seng were mutually off-set (+0.2%/-0.2%) with many just waiting for the ECB rate decision and being led by the […]

Asia was encouraged by the wests acceptance of the Italian vote and especially the Euro’s strength. Bouncing off of the key 105 levels has created a triple bottom which, if breaks, propels the market lower. we were already aware of the Nikkei’s performance through the futures contract and so cash opening created the days highs […]

  QUESTION: Hello Martin, A year ago or so you said ‘ I highly recommend Europeans to hoard Dollars instead of Euros. I suppose that hasn’t changed. Do you see in the meanwhile a risk for hoarding Dollars here in Europe ? Are we even facing the Dollar Cash to be cancelled soon ? Thank […]

Been a crazy day for many markets today but stocks have not really been one of them! Oil was the crazy sector today following yesterdays 7% price decline today we saw a healthy 9% appreciation on news OPEC plans a production cut. However, that was not until late European trading so lets just recap Asia […]

The major bonus to Hillary losing the elections is that Larry Summers will not be the chief economic adviser. Larry Summers is Hillary’s top choice for Fed Chairman or the Chief Economic Adviser in the White House. Treasury Secretary, was a position he held under Bill Clinton in the 90s, but that was going to go […]

US dollars are soaring in premiums on the street. There is a serious risk that the government has shaken the confidence of the people to such a degree, that they trust the US dollar more than their own currency. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come out an said the currency changeover could still take a few weeks […]

The Yen weakness continues to off-set the Nikkei strength with today breaching the 113 level and spending most of the day trading weaker. The Nikkei rallied closing up 0.9% with exporters leading the gains given the currency play. Volumes were light but then that should have been expected given the US holidays but we remain […]

Asian trading was pretty quiet ahead of much European and US data and consequently did not spring into action until later in the day. The Nikkei, HSI and Shanghai exchanges were moderately mixed but we did see the ASX (Australian market) produce a strong 1.3% return as Miners and Ind Metals performed well. All this […]