Today was the first day that the Nikkei cash has had to reflect upon the FED’s decision, as was closed Wednesday for a national holiday. Todays trading result was a small decline (-0.3%) which on the heels of the 2% rally Wednesday was quite refreshing. The other core markets also saw a small decline with the shanghai and […]

Most markets were in a holding pattern awaiting the outcome of central bank decisions. The Nikkei faltered initially but was short-lived as by the end of the day we closed almost unchanged. The BOJ decision expected within the next 24 hours could direct trading for the next few months. Most are looking for additional stimulus […]

As China opened after a long weekend, so it was that Japan was closed for national holiday (Respect for the Aged Day). There was also a computer issue in Australia that resulted in the ASX closing early. Ahead of both the FED and BOJ this week could be interesting. China added more liquidity over the weekend which set the […]

Police are starting to use Harris Corp’s Stingray. The company has fought to keep its manuals private and an exception to the Freedom of Information Act under the pretense that this would help criminals and terrorists. Of course, the number one police action is rapidly becoming the hunt for money under the presumption that the […]

The strong US session ran into Asia resulting in strong performances for both the Nikkei and Hang Seng. Both closing around 0.75% higher the main pull was from financials but this is just a rebalancing from the losses they suffered earlier in the week. China remains on national holidays and so we wait until Monday […]

A very welcomed rally in the US found the desired effect upon Asia initially but sadly failed to install confidence required to convince and resulting in a mixed session. The Nikkei saw a healthy opening but lost momentum midway through the session. Towards the close we did see some buying interest which managed to close […]

Asia started off where we left the US on Friday with the selling pressure still dominant. The Nikkei cash opened down over 1% lower and did not look likely to break that decline at any time during the trading session. Eventually closing 1.7% lower the JPY saw the safety rush but interestingly not as dramatic […]

With the ECB expanding its quantitative easing program to include corporate debt, European companies are now scrambling to issue as much debt as they can as cheap rates. These issue are selling BECAUSE it is assumed they have a guaranteed bidder being the ECB. At least this part of the QE is far better than […]

  QUESTION: Why are there so many Fed branches? It seems this is another way for government just to create jobs and pensions. ANSWER:I wrote several times that the original design of the Federal Reserve would have been a good, stabilizing entity for the economy had the politicians left it alone. At first, to ease […]

Asia was a mixed with a strong Hang Seng (+0.75%) an unchanged Nikkei and a slightly weaker Shanghai (-0.55%), which after yesterdays ECB Q+A session was actually very promising performance. However, it was not to last and as soon as Europe opened then the selling began. It started in the fixed-income markets but by afternoon […]