The year that has just started looks like one of those textbooks opportunities which appear by magic at the beginning of a new year. The banking sector has risen strongly, only beaten by Metals&Mining and Automotive. For Alphavalue’s experts this ranking suggests we are not facing a shift in fundamentals. All the protagonists in the banking sector are clearly confirming that it’s not just a case of rediscovering a handful of quality names.
Spanish companies without any subsidies or bailouts have turned themselves around and transformed the former autarchy into a country decidely open to the overseas market.
Spain ended 2017 with 611.146 more people in a job, a notable improvement on the results of the previous four years. The number of people signed on with the Social Security rose 3.4% to 18.460.201 from a year earlier.
Greece enters a new year that could prove to be a watershed in its long and meandering traipse through three successive bailouts and faltering efforts to overcome the chronic weaknesses that contributed to one of the most damaging economic crises the developed world has seen.
The stability in Spain’s growth in the fourth quarter compared with the third is the result of two forces pulling in opposite directions: the strength of the export markets has offset the adverse effect of increased political uncertainty in Catalonia.
Tasnim Nazeer | Cryptocurrency, or blockchain, is rapidly evolving around the world to cater for virtual peer-to-peer transactions using digital currency. Virtual money has made the daily business of life much easier for many of us, but can it help alleviate poverty in the developing world?
Nick Malkoutzis via Macropolis | Sadly, politicians and technocrats in the European Union are providing the far-right with a golden opportunity to release this populist poison because they cannot unite behind a common approach to the refugee question.
US commercial banks are trading at a discount of over 25% with respect to the market as a whole (S&P 500) in terms of PER 2018e. Fundamentals are solid and the Fed’s monetary policy heralds a good performance from their profit and loss accounts in 2018 and 2019.
Francesco Saraceno | Angela Merkel will be Chancellor for the fourth time, marking a long period of political and policy stability. In the past fifteen years Germany emerged as the model to follow for the other large economies. For since its economy has performed better, in terms of growth and unemployment, than France or Italy.
The predicted train crash between the Catalan and the Spanish governments has now happened. But what’s next? It’s difficult for the referendum to be a success, but the the fact there is no independence in the short-term, doesn’t mean that the train crash is not going to have consequences in the medium-term.