Opinion – Wednesday 11 December 2013

Stock markets were generally weaker over the past 24 hours,with a variety of news weighing them down. The overall tone is risk averse ahead of the Fed’s final FOMC meeting of 2013, next Tuesday and Wednesday, culminating in Bernanke’s last meeting and his...

Opinion – Tuesday 10 December 2013

US Equities ended yesterday’s session with slight gains supported by better Chinese data which has offset concerns that the Fed might start tapering next week. Chinese CPI released yesterday morning showed a slowing to 3% from 3.2% last month thus easing fears...

Opinion – Monday 9 December 2013

US Non-Farm Payrolls came in a little ahead of the ‘whisper’ (expected) number at 203k but considerably ahead of the consensus 185k with +9k upwards revision. There was also a drop in the unemployment rate to 7% from 7.3% and a drop in the participation...

Opinion – Friday 6 December 2013

Equity markets have again lost ground yesterday on tapering fears after good US Economic data was reported. US GDP was revised up to 3.6% from 2.8% versus 3.1% expected after upward revisions to inventories and non-residential investment whilst Weekly Jobless Claims...

Opinion – Thursday 5 December 2013

The US ADP Employment numbers were solid showing that 215k private jobs were added in November, beating expectations for a 170k rise. In addition, October jobs were revised upwards to 164k from 130k. This data series does not have a strong pattern of correlation with...

Opinion – Wednesday 4 December 2013

US Equity markets have been beating a retreat, the US Dollar is gave back some of its recent gains and Treasury Yields are mostly lower. These moves are fully consistent with position trimming/risk reduction ahead of this week’s key US economic releases which...