» Asian Markets

The Markit/JMMA Japan Manufacturing PMI™ shows Downturn of manufacturing sector accelerated during December.  Key points: Output and new orders register sharpest contractions for 20 months Employment, purchasing and stocks all continue to be cut Output charges lowered further as input prices re...

Bloomberg reports BOJ Holdings of JGBs Exceed 100 Trillion Yen for First Time  The Bank of Japan holdings of the government’s bonds exceeded 100 trillion yen ($1.2 trillion) for the first time, raising the risk that yields will jump on perceptions that it is financing public spending. The centr...

One useful relationship that helps identify turning points in the USD Index is a look at foreign equities. Foreign stocks will often outperform the U.S. markets when the USD is weak; part of the reason for this is that foreign markets are very sensitive to inflation, so when their currencies advance...

The HSBC Flash China Manufacturing PMI™ report shows Operating conditions continue to improve in December.  Key points Flash China Manufacturing PMI™ at 50.9 (50.5 in November). Fourteen-month high. Flash China Manufacturing Output Index at 50.5 (51.3 in November). Two-month low. Data coll...

The big news in the past two weeks has been the slew of economic data suggesting that China has firmly turned the corner on its economic closedown. Growth is up, investment is up, and inflation is down. Here, for example, is the New York Times, a newspaper whose website is no longer available ...

In Japan things have gone from Grim to Grimmer. The Markit/JMMA Japan Manufacturing PMI™ shows Japanese manufacturing sector contracts at sharpest rate in 19 months.  Key points: Output and new orders both continue to decline Capital goods producers register sharpest falls in production and sa...

In Indebted Dragon, Professor Lynette Ong from the University of Toronto discusses how the Chinese economy relies on land as collateral to borrow money while paying the interest on the loans by selling and leasing the land. Ong notes this makes China susceptible to two problems: a real estate bubbl...

All eight of the indexes on our world market watch list closed the week with a gain. In fact, the average gain of the eight at 3.41% is the biggest weekly increase of 2012. The three EU indexes were the top performers, with France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAXK rising more than five percent...

Japan’s grand experiment of decades-long QE coupled with Keynesian foolishness is about to take one last gigantic leap forward before it plunges straight off the cliff into a massive currency crisis. Please consider the New York Times article A Call for Japan to Take Bolder Monetary Action  ...

Inquiring minds as well as commodity bulls need to consider the likely economic impact of China’s commodity imports and how sustainable those imports are. For example, please consider China’s Cotton Reserves Enough to Meet Deficit for Six Years  Cotton stockpiles in China, the world’s b...

In the past two weeks we have been treated with a mostly positive but nonetheless mixed bag of economic data from China. There has been good news, bad news, good news with worrying underlying trends, and bad news with silver linings. Analysts have announced that things are getting worse and that ...

Nearly every day I receive emails from “Brisbane Bear” regarding the sorry state of affairs in Australia. Here is another one to consider: Insolvencies for quarter near record high  CORPORATE insolvencies hit their second-highest peak on record in the last quarter, as the aftershocks o...