Tag Archives: Germany

How (Not) to Win Friends and Influence People Overview: There are two big themes in the capital markets today. The first is the ongoing push of the Chinese state into what was the private sector. Today’s actions involve breaking Ant’s lending arms into separate entities, with the state taking a stake. This weighed on Chinese shares and Hong Kong, where many are lists. On the other hand, Japanese markets extended their recent gains. The Nikkei, for example, is has...

 Overview: The US dollar remains firm ahead of the July CPI release, and even though Chicago Fed Evans demurred from the hawkish talk, the market is getting more comfortable with the idea of a rate hike next year.   The implied yield of the December 2022 Eurodollar futures is rising for the sixth consecutive session.  Most emerging market currencies are also under pressure.  The JP Morgan Emerging Market Currency Index edged up yesterday to snap a five-day drop but...

Overview:  A flash crash saw gold drop more than $70 an ounce in early Asia. Silver was dragged lower too.  The precious metals have stabilized at lower levels, but it signals a rough adjustment to a higher interest rate environment as a hawkish BOE and strong US employment data suggest peak monetary stimulus is at hand.  The dollar is broadly mostly firmer against the major and emerging market currencies.  The JP Morgan Emerging Market Currency Index is lower for...

Overview: US interest rates and the dollar turned higher following comments by the Fed's Vice Chairman Clarida, who appeared to throw his lot with the more hawkish members. The dollar recovered from weakness that had seen it fall to almost JPY108.70, its lowest level since late May, and lifted the euro to $1.19.  Still, there has been little follow-through dollar or Treasury buying today.  The euro and yen are marginally softer, but most other major currencies post...

Yield curve control, remember that one? For a little while earlier this year, the modestly reflationary selloff in bonds around the world was prematurely oversold as some historically significant beginning to a massive, conclusive regime change. Inflation had finally been achieved across multiple geographies, it was widely repeated, and this would create problems, purportedly, as these various places would have to grapple with higher interest rates. The idea behind...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.51% to 1.0852 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, July 08(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The dramatic move in the capital markets continues. The US dollar is soaring as yields and equities slide. The US 10-year yield has fallen below 1.30 to 1.26% European benchmark yields are 1-4 bp lower, while Australia and New Zealand have seen a 7-9 bp drop today. Signals that the...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.03% to 1.0922 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, July 07(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The dollar has steadied after surging yesterday and has so far retained the lion’s share of its gains, though it remains lower against most major currencies today. The dollar-bloc and Norwegian krone are the best performers while the yen is underperforming. The freely accessible...

In the FAZ, Christian Siedenbiedel reports that Deutsche Bank questions whether a digital Euro as envisioned by the ECB (i.e., with tight quantity restrictions) would be successful: Die Argumentation geht so: Die EZB will den digitalen Euro einführen, um auf den verstärkten Währungswettbewerb zu antworten. … Um sich vor solchem Machtverlust sowohl durch Digitalgeld von anderen Notenbanken („Krypto-Dollars“) als auch durch privates Digitalgeld („Global Stable Coins“) zu schützen,...

Back at the end of May, Germany’s statistical accounting agency (deStatis) added another one to the inflationary inferno raging across the mainstream media. According to its flash calculations, German consumer prices last month had increased by the fastest rate in 13 years. Even using the European “harmonized” methodology (Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices, or HICP), inflation had reached 2.4% year-over-year which was the highest since 2012. Europe HICP and...

In the NBER working paper “Dissecting Green Returns,” Lubos Pastor, Robert Stambaugh, and Lucian Taylor argue that excess returns on green assets during recent years are unlikely to predict expected excess returns. At least that’s what theory suggests: … green assets have lower expected returns than brown, due to investors’ tastes for green assets, yet green assets can have higher realized returns while agents’ tastes shift unexpectedly in the green direction. … green tastes can...