Monday, March 10, 2014

Banks shedding asset management businesses

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Here is a chart showing the number of transactions that involve acquisitions of an asset management business by year. It tells us about a ...
Sunday, March 9, 2014

Don't bet on dollar weakness

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The US dollar has been surprisingly weak recently. In fact we are at the lows not seen since just after the US government shutdown when tr...
Friday, March 7, 2014

Ruble hits new lows as Bank of Russia focuses on more "pressing" issues

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Capital outflows from Russia seem to be picking up steam. Bloomberg : - The share of foreigners on the 3.75 trillion ruble ($103 billion...
Thursday, March 6, 2014

China's credit markets under pressure

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China's corporate sector has been hit with escalating credit problems. Here is the latest: 1. Shanghai Chaori Energy Science and Tec...
Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Will the slowdown in US services sector reverse with warmer weather?

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In trying to assess the trajectory of the US economy, one is struck by the recent divergence between the manufacturing and the services se...

Can the rally in global commodities be sustained?

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We are seeing broad improvements across global commodity markets. To be sure, commodity valuations are still at depressed levels relative ...
Monday, March 3, 2014

Russia's central bank hikes overnight rate, ruble continues to weaken

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Russia's central bank finally raised its overnight rate to 7% (from 5.5%) to stabilize the ruble. Apparently there is only so much cur...
Sunday, March 2, 2014

Residential construction weakness - looking beyond the cold weather

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Recently we've had a visible slowdown in housing starts in the US, which has largely been attributed to the weather ( see chart ). U...