The growing pile of bearishness on China continues. Last night, Chinese stocks hit a new 6-month, as concerns rise about growth, debt, acute financial market stress, a property bubble, and everything else. Today, HSBC has significantly slashed Chinese...
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Brutal day for the Australian dollar. First it dived after the Fed's hawkish press conference. Then just now it's falling after that bad Chinese Flash PMI. This is the perfect storm: Weakening demand for commodities from China, and a strengthening US...
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In its America's Morning Comment note, Nomura has a really nice way of summing up Bernanke's challenge today, as the Fed releases a new policy statement, economic forecast, commentary (at the press conference). But in the tepid market open, there was...
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Last week, the WSJ's ace Federal Reserve reporter Jon Hilsenrath wrote a piece on Fed strategy that got a lot of attention in markets. The gist was: Just because the Fed may signal a reduction in asset purchases doesn't mean that an interest rate hike...
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It's been an interesting couple of months in world markets. In a sense, we've seen a level of volatility and confusion that we haven't seen in awhile. This is especially apparent in any emerging markets (and of course Japan). And yet US equities have...
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Unemployment is well above the Fed's economic target, and inflation is low and falling. So why is there even talk of the Fed slowing down QE (popularly called tapering)? Citi's foreign exchange expert Steven Englander explains the real motivation: a...
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It's June 19 in Japan, which means Fed day has officially begun. So far, so good. After Nikkei futures rallied throughout the US trading session, Japan has opened up 1.7%. For a full preview of what is the most anticipated FOMC announcement in a long...
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Two important datapoints are coming up in a little bit. From Calculated Risk • At 8:30 AM, Housing Starts for May. The consensus is for total housing starts to increase to 950 thousand (SAAR) in May. • Also at 8:30 AM, the Consumer Price Index...
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Riots have broken out in Brazil. Notionally they have to do with an increase in bus fares, but they have to do with bigger issues related to inequality, and how much the government is spending on things like hosting the World Cup. The Brazilian economy...
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SocGen's Kit Juckes has an interesting perspective on what we're learning in this rising rates, taper-obsessed world. Each of the three significant financial bubbles of the last 30 years has been fuelled by the Fed keeping policy rates below the nominal...
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We wrote last night about the huge protests in Brazil (which have various economic causes, including a recent decision to hike bus fare). Anyway, the protests were gigantic. Via Smackson on Reddit, check out this Vine showing how big the throng of protesters...
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Tomorrow is the big day, when we might get clues about whether the Fed will begin to pull back a bit on monetary easing. Today is the calm before the storm, and it's pretty quiet. Futures are up in the US and markets are higher in Europe. Japan ended...
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The protests in Turkey continue to dominate the attention of media, but today there were two other protests in red-hot emerging markets that warrant your attention, especially since the basic narratives are fairly similar. In Indonesia and Brazil —...
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A new CNN poll provides the sharpest evidence yet that a month of scandals (IRS, Benghazi, AP, leaks, etc.) is taking its toll on President Obama's approval rating. A full breakdown of the poll can be downloaded here (.pdf) but the key datapoints are...
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It's been a very bad year for the world's hottest emerging markets. There are two big trends being cited for that. One is the slowdown in commodities and China, which is having a ripple effect for growth among many of the export-oriented commodity economies....
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Apple has put out a statement concerning PRISM, and the Fed's demands for data. Here it is: Two weeks ago, when technology companies were accused of indiscriminately sharing customer data with government agencies, Apple issued a clear response: We first...
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