The end of month closes across asset classes could be the most important since March 2009, when a clear reversal pattern prompted us to turn bullish towards equities. This time, a weak close would suggest an end to the rally of the past 10 months, with the potential for some significant medium-term downside for equities [Read more...]

 

 Standard Podcast [11:45m]
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There are two key aspects to President Obama’s banking reform:

1) It attempts to address the ‘too big to fail’ debate: Obama wants to place size limits on banks (although it is still unclear what these are). This should create a wave of divestments and carve-outs in the banking industry.

2) To break up [Read more...]

Risk Watchdog has been observing the recent correction in commodity prices with interest. A wave of risk aversion has seen commodities dragged down by weaker equities and a stronger US dollar. Of key concern is the CRB index, which has broken below multi-month support.

The CRB index has suffered several short-term corrections in recent months, only [Read more...]

The Republic of Congo’s unrated US$ 2029 sovereign bond is now trading at an all-time high, reflecting the strength of global risk sentiment in general, and the appetite for African fixed income instruments in particular. While I don’t see any fundamental reason for the instrument to continue rising, I do think its recovery bodes well [Read more...]

There was a time when audio or video messages issued by Osama bin Laden would be front-page news, and we’d all wonder if a new al-Qaeda terror attack was imminent.

However, in recent years, a widespread belief has developed that bin Laden is irrelevant, and that the real terror threat to the West comes [Read more...]

What do the Great Fire of London, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the attacks of September 11 2001 have in common? Though their occurrence spanned hundreds of years and different continents, they were all predicted well in advance, and by a single man. Michel de Nostradame, a.k.a. Nostradamus, the 16th century seer who used [Read more...]

In this week’s Business Monitor Podcast ‘role-reversal’ Terry Alexander, Head of Country Risk and Capital Markets at Business Monitor, interviews Mark Schaltuper, Head of Latin American Markets, on the investment outlook for Brazil in 2010. With much of the ‘Great Brazil Hype’ already priced in, Mark argues that the tide may be turning for Brazilian [Read more...]

 

 Standard Podcast [14:15m]
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