The mythical chain of toy stores Toys “R” Us is closing, reflecting not only the power of Amazon in the US retail sector, but also the end of the historic “mall” and the impact of monetary normalisation.
The market behaviour in Q2 continues to be one of de-risking, says Mark Tinker Head of Framlington Equities Asia. “It is clear that the noise traders who came so enthusiastically into equity markets around the turn of the calendar year have gone again before the start of the new financial year, taking their leverage with them”, he explains.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised its growth estimates upwards for the Spanish economy for the next two years, so Spain is now the European country which is growing the most, and number two amongst the developed markets, after the US.
The reasons behind the cooling off in activity on both sides of the Atlantic during Q1’18 are more important than the cooling off itself. In fact, the characteristics of these reasons are those which allow us to have confidence about the improvement in activity in the spring in both the US and Europe.
Saudi Arabian Oil Co. is ready for its initial public offering in the second half of 2018. Bloomberg published on Friday selected data from what it reported to be the company’s 1H17 IFRS financial statement. However, Saudi Aramco said in a statement these were “inaccurate”. If the reported data is accurate, BoAML’s experts make the following observations based on already published fiscal data.
The tech stocks that fuelled the last bull market have seen their share prices plummet as an onslaught of bad headlines takes its toll. According to Neil Dwane, Global Strategist at Allianz Global Investors, “more regulation and taxation are almost certainly on the horizon amid growing concerns about privacy, governance and profitability.”
While the US bank’s chief economist in pointing to systemic risks, financial bubbles and market complacency, his colleagues in Spain believe “this tale about market manipulation is not real.”
Glen Kuecker and Kris Hartley | Technological fixes such as smart cities make a system more complex, resulting in “wicked problems” that require ever more extensive technological remedies.
S. Ramakrishna Velamuri via Caixin | A leading Indian business daily reported on March 6 that Chinese corporations had made investments of $5.2 billion in Indian early- and growth-stage companies in 2017, and the figure for the first two months of 2018 had already crossed $1 billion.
Unsurprisingly, the US exhibits relatively more risks compared to the euro area, with one red flag in particular being the price of risk in asset markets reflecting elevated asset prices across fixed income, equities and real estate. In the Euro zone, risks look mor e modest except in some pockets related to price distortions as a result of the European Central Bank ’s quantitative easing strategy.