Markets

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The idea that central banks “need a financial stability mandate” keeps coming back

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | Even in Sweden, where 4 years ago the Riksbank decided there was “too much debt” and raised rates to “calm people down”. That, as we know, ended in grief and with the head honcho being outvoted (first time that happens) in the last policy committee meeting, when the policy rate was lowered by 50 basis points to 0.25%.


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Volatility: Buy some protection before heading to the beach

MADRID | The Corner | “We have been living in an unusually low volatilities -both implied and realized- environment,” JP Morgan’s Fernando Cavia argues. But the last two weeks analysts are seeing a change of trend: protection is gaining fans among European institutional investors who see some threat to equities’ potential.

 


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Markets may overreact, but bottom-line is plain vanilla

MADRID | The Corner | Yes, it’s boring. The only news you’ll find this Monday are about geostrategy (Israeli-Palestinian never-ending drama and Russian-Ukrainian conflict) and business results. The reduction of volumes of activity as we enter the central weeks of summer could make certain assets (stock markets, bonds, currencies…) overreact in the short-term. But nothing will substantially change.


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UK Banks: 6% unlucky for some

LONDON | The Corner | The issue of capital tension has been the key driver of BNP Paribas’ UK bank recommendations over the last nine months, and this remains the case. These experts have no Outperform ratings with the exception of Lloyds – which should broadly meet all three parts of the UK framework within 18 months. They believe this consultation is particularly unhelpful to Barclays.


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ECB: AQR results will be included in stress tests

MADRID | The Corner | ECB’s upcoming stress tests will have have the AQR findings incorporated (the so-called “join-up”), an element that was previously missing. And banks will be informed of the full and final results only shortly before they are communicated to the markets, as the central bank published on Thursday


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Shot down plane = Bund at 1.14%

MADRID | The Corner | Thursday was shelter assets’ day due to the tragedy of the Malaysian Airlines passenger hit by a missile in Ukraine, the hardening of the Russia sanctions and the worsening of the conflict in Palestine, analists at Bankinter commented. The Bund reached a new historic low of 1.14% (the previous record was 1.17%) and the yen and Swiss franc appreciated up to approx. 137 and 1.214 respectively.

 


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The financial drawbacks of being an emerging economy

NEW YORK | By Markus Jaeger via Deutsche Bank Research | The US today, like Britain under the gold standard, acts as the world’s banker. It is the most important source of international liquidity, leading countries to hold USD-denominated assets. Not only does this allow the US and especially the US Treasury to tap into a large investor base ready to finance current account and fiscal deficits at a lower cost. To the extent that the demand for international liquidity and USD assets exceeds the US balance-of-payments deficit, it allows the US to recycle short-term foreign liabilities into long-term assets.


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IMF warns about the “optimism of the financial markets”

MIAMI | By Pablo Pardo | The director of the IMF’s Department of Financial and Monetary Affairs, José Viñals, has declared himself “worried” about “the optimism of the financial markets.” Viñals made his remarks at the LSE Global Pensions Program, organized by the London School of Economics, Santander Asset Management and Novaster. To an audience of around one hundred pension fund managers and regulators, most of them from Latin America, the IMF official remarked that “everybody investing” in what he called “heterogeneous assets” has “made money” this year, in spite of the fact that the “economic news, ‘surprises’ have been relatively bad.” 


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Why hasn’t the Euro fallen more?

MADRID | The Corner | The EUR/USD dropped nearly 4 cents from its maximum area in 2014 (very close to 1.40) with a movement that began on 8 may, when Mario Draghi announced that a package of monetary stimulus / liquidity would be used at the June 5 meeting (refi rates drop in 10bp, negative deposit type, completion sterilization SMP and quarterly TLTRO). Why hasn’t the Euro fallen more?

 


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UBS Analysts Expect Further M&A Activity

ZURICH | By The Corner | Based on the results of the 20th quarterly survey of the UBS Global Equity Research department, UBS analysts expect M&A activity in the second half of 2014 to remain strong. 50% of respondents believe M&A will increase and 45% believe the pace will remain unchanged. Only 5% of analysts expect the pace of deal activity to slow in Q3 and Q4.