MADRID | The Corner | The escalation of the crisis in Ukraine has led to sharp asset prices and currency volatility with capital outflows from the region, particularly from Russia and of course Ukraine itself. UBS points out that the European banks within their coverage present “a meaningful exposure: the loans in Russia and Ukraine amount to over €60bn before taking into considerations any investment banking activity.”
MADRID | The Corner | The idea that quantitative easing has been helping equities of the EM has been widely discussed: many believe the liquidity generated by QE is used to play the “carry”, and that’s why the end of QE and the rates rises may lead to the withdrawal of those positions. But that’s not so clear.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”