After a stellar 28% return in 2017, the BSE Sensex (down 2%) and the NSE Nifty 50 indices in India been a disappointment in 2018 to date. The emerging markets convulsions in May were compounded by the political shock for the BJP in Karnataka. The financial markets have also been alert due to the oil […]
Market View – The Federal Reserve and the rise in inflation risk The dominant theme of 2018 has been a rise in the bellwether ten-year US Treasury note yield from 2.40% to 3% amid fears on Wall Street that a rise in wage inflation and Trump tax cuts will force the Federal Reserve into an […]
I had written an article titled “six reasons to be bullish Saudi equities in 2018, published in the KT on January 28. Yet I was surprised to see Saudi Arabian equities become the world’s second best performing stock market in 2018 after Egypt. The Saudi equity index fund (KSA) I recommended in my column is […]
A dismal legacy of civil war, sanctions, insurgency, foreign invasion and terrorism has had a catastrophic impact on the Iraqi economy. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told the assembled global elite at Davos 2018 that Iraq needed $100 billion in postwar construction. Yet money alone will not solve Iraq’s problems of systemic corruption, a society divided […]
The Sensex and Nifty seem near a cyclical peak though the declines in Indian midcap/smallcap shares have been draconian. There is no doubt in my mind that, after a stellar 2017, investors sentiment in the Indian equities market is at an inflection point in April 2018: The old adage “don’t fight the Fed”, so frequently […]
After a 1000 point midweek Dow rally, the US stock market was slammed again by 567 Dow points on Friday after President Trump announced $100 billion in additional tariffs on China and the March payroll growth number was a dismal 103,000 relative to the Wall Street consensus of 180,000. The financial markets fear that the […]
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made it clear that his strategy on interest rate hikes will be guided by the real time performance of the US economy, not the estoric econometric models of the central bank’s staff monetary economists. Unlike Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Janet Yellen, Powell is not an economist but a former […]
Brexit, sterling’s fall from grace, the collapse of the London housing bubble and the fractious politics of Theresa May’s Tory government in Westminster has made UK equities a pariah for global asset allocators. British equities exhibit metrics of investor pessimism last seen just after the epic failures of RBS, Lloyds HBOS and, yes, Barclays PLC […]
