Bloomberg (April 12)
“The feel-good days for global markets at the end of March are firmly over.” Suddenly, everyone is afraid of economic slowing. “With monetary support rapidly receding and recession risks rising, investors are hunkering down. Companies resilient to an economic slowdown such as health care are back in favor. Ditto cash and dividend-paying stocks. Meanwhile, demand for hedging is creeping up in the options market.”
Tags: Afraid, Companies, Dividends, Feel good, Global markets, Health care, Hedging, Hunkering down, Investors, March, Monetary support, Recession, Risks, Slowdown
Washington Post (March 10)
The lack of candor “is now causing confusion and panic as Trump and his political lieutenants paint a picture of the spreading coronavirus that is utterly at odds with what the nation’s public health experts are saying…. As global markets plunged on Monday and the virus continued its inexorable spread, Trump continued comparing the virus to the ‘common Flu,’ during which ‘nothing is shut down.’”
Tags: Candor, Confusion, Coronavirus, Experts, Flu, Global markets, Panic, Plunged, Public health, Trump, Virus
Bloomberg (January 10)
Today’s “easy-money policies” appear to be “setting up global markets for the next Minsky Moment.” If economist Hyman Minsky is right and the modern “economic cycle is driven more by surges in the banking system and in the supply of credit,” we can expect a tremendous crash when it ultimately comes.
Washington Post (September 27)
“The global marketplace may tell the larger story” about the presidential debate. “As the evening concluded, thanks to Clinton’s obvious dominance, as well as her assertion that a Clinton presidency would honor U.S. commitments abroad, the Asian markets recovered, the Mexico peso rallied, and Dow futures added 100 points.”
Tags: Asian markets, Clinton, Dominance, Dow futures, Global markets, Honor, Mexico, Peso, Presidential debate, Rally, U.S. commitments
Institutional Investor (September 19)
“A sense of dissonance” is overcoming global markets, according to the Bank for International Settlements. “Falling bond yields are normally associated with subdued growth…yet stock markets around the world have rallied even as corporate profitability has lagged.” Furthermore, the ten-year yield on many major sovereigns is “running well below the nominal rate of growth in gross domestic product, breaking a 65-year pattern in which the two have tracked each other closely.”
Tags: Bank for International Settlements, Bond yields, Dissonance, GDP, Global markets, Growth, Profitability, Sovereigns, Stock markets
Institutional Investor (August 21)
Black swan events “will continue to jolt global markets. But when even the best of human forecasters struggle to predict with accuracy the outcomes of these events, how can pension plans, for example, effectively make decisions to better weather the volatility that follows.” Big data may hold the key. “Using big data to track media sentiment, volume, tone and correlation can help institutional investors understand the diffusion of ideas and outliers that can serve as clues for unexpected risk.”
Tags: Accuracy, Big Data, Black swan, Correlation, Diffusion, Forecasters, Global markets, Human, Jolt, Outcomes, Outliers, Pension plans, Sentiment, Unexpected risk, Volatility
Barron’s (January 12)
“President Xi Jinping’s men thought they’d escaped 2015’s woes, only to see the floor fall out from under them in the first 10 days of this year. The root causes of instability that’s panicking global markets can be traced back to Jan. 1, 2015, when Xi opted for a muddle-through policy akin to Tokyo’s in the late 1990s.” Xi and crew can still conceivably avoid Japan’s fate by “acting assertively to restructure the economy and repair the bad-debt-heavy national balance sheet. Increasingly, though, Xi’s government is acting like Tokyo’s, circa 1998.”
Tags: Bad debt, Economy, Global markets, Instability, Japan, Panic, Restructure, Tokyo, Xi Jinping
Washington Post (September 16)
Acknowledging he was tainted, Lawrence Summers withdrew from consideration for appointment as Federal Reserve chairman. Global markets surged as the dovish Janet Yellen now looks better positioned to win the influential post. “Shed no tears” for Larry. “Though brilliant, the Harvard economist has nonetheless ticked off too many people in his long and brash career, not only on policy grounds but also because of his famously caustic personality. Note to future careerists: Niceness counts.”
Tags: Career, Chairman, Economist, Federal Reserve, Global markets, Harvard, Janet Yellen, Lawrence Summers, Niceness, Personality, Policy
Euromoney (July 9)
“The new Chinese government’s policy drive to deleverage the banking sector has become more apparent, and that deleveraging will continue to unfold in the next six to 12 months. In what Morgan Stanley calls its ‘super-bear scenario’, it estimates that aggressive policy tightening will reduce Chinese GDP growth to an annual rate of 5.5% in the second half of this year.” If the scenario plays out (a one in ten chance according to Morgan Stanley), it “would have major implications for global markets.”
Tags: Banking sector, China, Deleveraging, GDP, Global markets, Government, Growth, Morgan Stanley, Policy, Scenario, Super-bear
