investing

By Claus Vistesen ... China! At least this is the conclusion from some fascinating number crunching from JPMorgan's Flow & Liquidity team in their report last week. I had a feeling that this was the case looking at the surge in…

Yesterday, I began my Ten Surprises List. As a reminder, the surprise list is loosely based off Byron Wien’s list of ten surprises which he has conducting doing at Blackstone and Morgan Stanley for the last thirty years. Wien defines his…

Spot USD/CNY closed above the fix today for the first time since September 2012. Other factors are at work in China currently, making it even harder to read the true intentions of Chinese policymakers. All of these developments come against…

Brazil goes into a recession. Spanish GDP growth rebounds and outstrips German GDP growth. Gold rebounds to beyond $1600 an ounce. US GDP growth in Q2 and Q3 is below 2%. 10-year US Treasury yields fall below 2.25%. Abenomics ‘fails’…

Italian stocks and bonds have rallied strongly on ideas that the Italian situation can only get better. It is exactly such time, when so many observers are nearly euphoric, that the smart money may want to take some profits.

Owning shares in a bank is the functional equivalent of owning a call option on the bank’s future operational earnings, and if the share price contains little intrinsic value (i.e. the value of its assets does not exceed the value of its…

I have been sitting on my ten surprises for this year because not enough ideas had crystallized… until now. I think I will be ready to write the piece next week. Let me go through my thinking somewhat stream of consciously here. As a…

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the slowing of Chinese growth and the rout in commodity currencies, something that affected both developed markets and emerging markets. But the concern has become emerging markets because of political issues…

Themes for today: EM crisis in its infancy. Question goes to contagion US economic growth is decent but weaknesses now supporting bonds Europe is recovering with Spain brightest in periphery; France in trouble

Now, when I look at financial markets going into 2014, I cannot recall ever having come across a more one-sided view than the one which prevails. The consensus view on bonds is overwhelmingly bearish while pretty much everyone is bullish on…