equities

There have been several developments and they have imparted conflicting impulses into the market. The S&P downgrade of a number of large banks based on a new methodology that has been unfolding over the past couple of years comes at a…

Britain’s economy is a shambles as the negative impact of austerity has been made plain. Now, mind you, it was already clear from a leaked Greek bailout document that expansionary fiscal consolidation has failed in Greece. But now the…

Commercial banks and savings institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reported an aggregate profit of $35.3 billion in the third quarter of 2011, an $11.5 billion improvement from the $23.8 billion in net…

The European sovereign debt crisis is rapidly approaching what could be a significant tipping point as it threatens to spread to the heart of Europe. In recent days Italian 10-year bond yields have soared to 7.22% and today Spain was forced…

Here is an interesting take on the valuation of the S&P500 by our friends over at The Chart Store, who do excellent work. Their chart shows that it now takes 69.23 hours at the average hourly wage of $19.53 to buy the S&P500.

With big oil's bank accounts full to the brim with cash, the stage is set for some significant acquisition activity... or, to put it another way, for a battle to buy producing assets. There are quite a number of contestants in the battle -…

The foreign exchange is calmer. Equity markets are generally higher. Global bond markets are also quieter today.

We see no easy way out of the current turmoil. The result of enough fiscal austerity to relieve the debt pressures is a severe recession or depression. Historically, independent nations undergoing austerity have accompanied the policy with…

Right now everyone is looking at monetisation and thinking this will save the day. You saw the Lakshman Achuthan video; clearly punters don’t think the US is going to double dip. Buy gold then. Maybe they are right, but I see weakness…

The euro zone periphery was a sideshow. This stuff with Italy is the real deal. With yields at 6.7% and rising, it’s game over for the euro zone. The extend and pretend stuff ain’t gonna work.