» Asian Markets

The latest move on China politics at Washington is the China currency bill, due at the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, Oct. 11.  The proposal would levy tariffs on China and four other Asian countries for artificially depressing the value of their currencies to boost their exports. To us, it seems eviden...

I spent the end of last week in Washington DC during the IMF/World Bank meetings. Needless to say this has been a pretty gloomy trip and most of the people I spoke to or heard speak had only bad things to say about the global economy. What’s more, given how bad the markets were this week, i...

I’ve highlighted the Shanghai index many times in my commentaries, pointing out that a multi-year flag/pennant pattern was forming. On April 12th the Shanghai was at the top of this pattern and my advice was to harvest gains and lower risk exposure because key multi-year resistance was at hand...

Todd Martin, an Asia equity strategist at Societe General SA, talks about the outlook for China’s economy and credit market. Martin also discusses global stocks and commodities. He speaks with Rishaad Salamat on Bloomberg Television’s “On the Move Asia.”  The interview sta...

Slow growth is embedding itself solidly into the US economy and the bond mayhem in Europe continues.  The external environment for China is getting worse.  This will almost certainly make China’s adjustment – when Beijing finally gets serious about it – all the more difficult.  With stil...

In the past two years a lot of analysts have been warning that the US and/or Europe are about to turn “Japanese”.  By this I guess they mean that very high levels of debt are going to set the stage for one or two decades of economic stagnation and zero growth. I am not sure I agree.  I thin...

Here is a series of real (inflation-adjusted) monthly close charts of the Nikkei 225 and the S&P 500 since 1970 with their respective annualized rates of inflation shown below. This series also includes an overlay chart with the two index peaks aligned. The overlay retains Japan’s inflatio...

What would the S&P 500 look like without the Tech Bubble? Perhaps something resembling Australia’s All Ordinaries Index. I’ve included the S&P 500 in the background to support the idea.   Click for a larger image   I’m not a technical analyst, but the twin peaks ...

We have attempted to keep professionals and investors aware of a key flag/pennant pattern in the Shanghai index for almost a year. Back in April the Shanghai index was at the top of the flag pattern and we suggested to “harvest gains” in this commentary. The pattern was suggesting that ...

Markets have been crazy this month, but rather than try to wade through all the news, much of which doesn’t seem to have much informational content, I thought I would duck out altogether and instead make a list of things I expect will happen over the next several years. We are so caught up in n...

Is the PBoC going to stop buying USG bonds?  Once again we are hearing very worried noises from various sectors about the possibility of a reduction in Chinese purchases of USG bonds.  Here is what an article the South China Morning Post said: China will press ahead with diversification of it...

This week has turned out to be Wall Street’s wildest week since 2008. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 519 points on Tuesday, Aug. 10, but then went up 423.37 points. But overall, Down has now lost more than 2,000, or 16% since July 21, less than three weeks ago. The selloff inten...