Dow futures are down over 120 points (and Nikkei 225 down over 200 points) at the reopen following North Korea’s ‘successful’ firing of a ballistic missile across Japan. Gold futures spiked to $1325 as USDJPY plunged. The USDJPY is tumbling on the news. Breaking below 108.50, a break of April’s 108.12 may require more than a little help from Kuroda and friends. Japanese equity market futures plunged to 4-month lows. And VIX futures are snapping higher…...
As global equity markets have moved higher and higher since what was arguably the start of a new bull market in 2016, a number of concerns have surfaced, such as higher valuations, dependence on monetary policy, and a range of other worries like geopolitics. But a key development has been the rebound in fundamentals, which have supported higher stock prices.I talked about this extensively in the latest weekly report. The chart below shows the median profit margin across all of the countries in the MSCI developed and emerging market universes. There is a clear rebound from what looked like either a near-miss global recession or a micro-recess...
Investors seeking momentum may have WisdomTree Chinese Yuan Strategy Fund (CYB – Free Report) on radar now. The fund recently hit a new 52-week high. Shares of CYB are up approximately 10.79% from a 52-week low of $22.89/share. But could there be more gains ahead for this ETF? Let’s take a look at the fund and the near-term outlook to get a better idea of where it might be headed. CYB in Focus CYB focuses on providing exposure to the value of the Chinese currency, yuan. It seeks to invest in short-term investment grade securities. It charges 45 basis points in fees per year and has AUM of $37.97 million (see all Currency ETFs here)...
In a quiet trading session traders buy up risk off assets. In tonight’s video market update let’s look at the specific assets traders are buying. Plus watch this video to find out what expect for the rest of the week and what price to watch in one key sector to determine the overall market’s next move...
Ok, there’s some potentially destabilizing s*&* going down. Specifically, it looks like Kim might have launched a missile from Pyongyang that ultimately flew over Hokkaido. BREAKING: Yonhap agency says South Korean military confirms North Korean ballistic missile flew over Japan. — The Associated Press (@AP) August 28, 2017 That’s obviously something nobody wants to hear and worse, reports now suggest that he may have fired a handful of them: SEVERAL MISSILES WERE FIRED BY NORTH KOREA, JAPAN GOVT SAYS:NHK NORTH KOREA APPEARS TO HAVE FIRED MISSILE TOWARD JAPAN: NHK The reaction was swift for USDJPY which promptly broke Monday’s...
This week the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release updated estimates for Q2 GDP as well as Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) and Personal Incomes for July. Accompanying those latter two accounts is the currently preferred inflation standard for the US economy. The PCE Deflator finally hit 2% and in two consecutive months, after revisions, earlier this year. The inability of consumer prices to maintain that pace is actually related to continuing weakness in the rest of the PCE reports, and therefore spilling out into GDP. Each of these numbers is often individually described as “strong” or “robust”, but together they demonstr...
WTI tumbles below $47 as negative sentiment about excess crude supply in light of extended refiners shutdowns grows, and Wall Street piles on with more detailed estimates about Harvey’s impact on US oil and refinery production. As oil slides, crack spreads have stabilized near the highs of the session, on concerns about gasoline availability, with Tudor Pickering saying that crack spreads could continue to rise in coming weeks in other U.S. regions served by the Gulf Coast refining center. As reported earlier, about 15% of U.S. refining capacity was offline Monday morning as the remnants of Hurricane Harvey continued to pound Texas ...
All eight indexes on our world watch list have posted gains for 2017 through August 28. The top performer thus far is Hong Kong’s Hang Seng with a gain of 26.65%, followed closely by India’s BSE SENSEX at 19.25%. In third is our own S&P 500 with 9.17%. The Last Four Weeks The tables below provide a concise overview of performance comparisons over the last four weeks for these eight major indexes. We’ve also included the average for each week so that we can evaluate the performance of a specific index relative to the overall mean and better understand weekly volatility. The colors for each index name help us visualize the...
Hurricane Harvey is not over yet. It made landfall on Friday night, and almost no one cared. We had rain. Big deal. Then more rain on Saturday as the storm sat, almost stationary. Harvey lost power and was demoted to a tropical storm. We went out to dinner, noting the water was over the seawall in some parts of our waterfront neighborhood south of Houston, north of Galveston. Then we had more rain. Overnight, a weakened Harvey meandered a mile this way and that, pulling moisture from the gulf, dumping it in our laps and homes. My sister texted at 6:45 a.m. Sunday. Water in their house and rising. They salvaged what they could and took ...