Markets

10-year Italian paper now trades at 6.17% and is poised to break through highs set in August. While the ECB and European leaders recognise that the ECB is the difference here, they are as yet unwilling to have the ECB declare itself…

Risk appetites returned in a big way in October, as equities, emerging markets, commodities and currencies all generally advanced and smartly so, recouping much of the ground lost in September. The events in the week ahead will likely set…

This is an interview with Eclectica Asset Management’s Hugh Hendry from much earlier in the year. It is a wide-ranging interview about the global macro environment, comparisons to the 1920s, investing, money management and hedge funds.

The big question–apart from how many investors they will get to go along with this, given that they couldn’t reach their target of 90% investor participation when the write-down was only going to be 21%–is whether this will trigger a CDS…

CDS buyers hate it, as do holders of Italian, Spanish, Irish, and Belgian bonds. Portuguese bond holders are just fine. There was no reaction in Austria, Germany and France.

It’s clear from the 1998 chart that the S&P500 was still in a major uptrend, which can’t be said of today’s market. Interestingly the 1998 20.7 percent 17-day spike started with a similar nasty bear trap. Remember, John Bull can stand…

This chart by John Kemp of Reuters tells you that speculation played a huge role in the run up in oil prices earlier this year, hugely amplifying the underlying fundamental trend. Hat tip to the FT’s Izabella Kaminska. She is right to say…

Markets rallied strongly in response to the European developments. Yet it is an exaggeration to think that risk appetites returned as the whole month of October has seen equities, emerging markets, commodities and foreign currencies trend…

What happens when you get a default that equates to a 50% loss for most investors without triggering default insurance? Massively negative unintended consequences.

The sharp rally off the October 4th intraday low of the S&P 500 is a result of the assumed prospect of a real plan to save the Euro and slightly improved U.S. economic numbers indicating that we may not be in a recession right now. In…