Markets


farolillo chino

Putting China’s SDR Inclusion In Perspective

BARCLAYS | On 1 December 2015, the day after the IMF Board voted to include China’s currency in its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket, we hosted a conference call with Barry Eichengreen, a professor at Berkeley and an expert in the field of international economics , to put China’s SDR inclusion in perspective. Highlights from the call are below.


OPEP meeting

OPEC 168: Hands off the wheel

UBS | Last week’s 168th ordinary OPEC meeting in Vienna concluded without the group agreeing on any meaningful change in strategy. Contrary to an earlier wire report that the group was to lift its target outp ut ceiling to 31.5Mb/d the defining feature of the official release was the lack of any explicit reference to either the quota or to actual production.


parity euro dolar

Can The Euro Achieve Parity With The Dollar?

The euro started off the week trading momentarily below 1,06 dollars, its lowest exchange rate since mid-April and bringing it ever nearer to parity with the “green back.” The question being asked by many investors now is whether the euro will achieve parity with the dollar in 2016. There are all sorts of forecasts, but the current majority opinion is that the euro has very little downside left.


EU US2

US-Europe Desynchronised Cycles

The major economies are now characterised by desynchronised economic cycles, with divergent policy regimes. This complicates the equity investment decision. Europe may be a relative winner, but too much of the globe is seeing financial conditions tighten, against lacklustre growth, to be optimistic on directional trends. We see downside risk through the opening months of 2016. The European economy is moving in the right direction and further ECB action promises…


ibex cools

Ibex performance: a year for stocks, not sectors

The investor (or fund manager) who wants to have an idea of how the Spanish stock market is doing by looking at the sector index could be stepping into a trap. There can be a vast difference in profitability between one stock or another in the same sector.


SantanderTC

Final TLAC ratios will impact on Spanish sector revenues by around 4%

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) published information on the Total Loss Absorbing Capacity (TLAC) requirements for 2019 and 2022, which will be presented at the G-20 meeting later this month. Finally the TLAC ratio will be at the low end of expectations (16% and 18% respectively in those two years).

Ibex35TC

The Ibex is overcoming weak corporate results

Lately the markets are moving more to the beat of the big central banks’ drums than to the trend in corporate earnings. That’s the only way to explain how the Ibex is saving face, given that third quarter results presented so far (by 20 out of the 35 companies in the index) are 16% lower than expected, according to Bloomberg.


US Europe earningsTC

Earnings expectations continue to fall in US and Europe

After the damp squib of the Chinese plenary session, the ongoing weakness in manufacturing surveys offers little comfort. Combination of US monetary policy risk, weak earnings season & manufacturing and recent rally make the directional outlook more vulnerable. Meanwhile, Europe’s recovery remains far more tangible.