It really felt like a day of two-halves today after a lack-lustre Asian session and a weak European morning. The Nikkei was again a talking point (or at least the JPY was) but Shanghai too saw a bit of volatility as we flirted toward the 3k level early afternoon only to recover by the close. […]

A lot of emails have been coming in with regard to the Panama Papers. Let me say this from the outset — Panama has been the key place to establish offshore accounts for decades. This was not a government hack. The German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung obtained the stash of records from an anonymous source and shared […]

Fridays NFP in the US did not help support the Nikkei despite the DOW’s strong closing rally. We did see a bounce off of the 16k figure but given that the Chinese markets were closed, holding any gains on the day proved just too lonesome. Late news on Friday about oil production continues to haunt […]

Asia followed the bullish tone provided by the Federal Reserve with a gap higher opening of around 1%. Mainland China and Hang Seng managed to build upon this enthusiasm, eventually closing up almost 2.5% each. The same could not be said of Japan when the Nikkei had problems holding the 17k psychological level. Tomorrow being […]

Most markets were undecided on which way to play ahead of today’s main event, and so moves were light and limited. Asia saw all core indices tussle between black and red, and with the exception of China all closed pretty much unchanged. Shanghai closed down 1.3% but that was after a late recovery rally at the […]

We have completed porting over the first memory node in our artificial intelligence system. There are three more to finish. Nevertheless, the first memory node will improve the text in the Investor section. We hope to have most of this uploaded this week. Below is a sample of what Socrates wrote for the Chinese yuan. […]

The Nikkei was the bright spot in Asian equity markets today closing up 0.8% whilst the JPY decline would have cost 0.3% of that gain. It was far better than the declines we saw in mainland China which closed -1.7%. Yuan gained small ground today and was last seen 6.5212. Given the majority of the […]

Richard Nixon unsuccessfully tried to pass a version of Milton Friedman’s plan. Nixon’s Democratic opponent in the 1972 presidential election, George McGovern, also suggested a guaranteed annual income. Milton’s basic guaranteed income proposal was well thought out and substantially different than simply the welfare state. Our welfare system has seriously altered human behavior as it […]

Shortly after the European open news broke of the Belgium terror attacks and we saw the usual flight to quality. Treasuries rallied, as did Gold and the US Dollar while stocks fell and in particular airlines and travel companies. At one stage we saw the DAX down over -1.5% with CAC, IBEX and FTSE not […]

The Asian markets responded quite positively to the FED’s unchanged decision yesterday with HSI and China Main trading a little over 1% higher across the board. The Exporters did not fare so well, as such, Japan closed a little lower (-0.22%) on the back of a stronger JPY (+1%). China moved the yuan mid-point from 6.5172 […]