Monday’s twin bombings in the Moscow Metro demonstrate that the war in the North Caucasus is neither over nor just a conflict in a peripheral part of Russia. The Moscow attacks came just four months after the Moscow-St Petersburg railway was bombed, showing that Islamist terrorists are capable of carrying out their threats to take… [Read more]
Asia FX are sitting pretty, both on a technical and fundamental basis, and several currencies are looking particularly attractive against the US dollar this morning. The Indian rupee and Malaysian ringgit are leading the pack, but another currency that has caught my attention is the Philippine peso, which is flirting with 19-month highs of PHP45.27/US$…. [Read more]
In this week’s Business Monitor podcast, Yoel Sano speaks to Lisa Lewin, Head of Africa Analysis, on her recent trip to Nigeria and Ghana. Lisa discusses both countries’ economic outlook for 2010, Nigeria’s banking sector and political crisis, and how Ghana’s forthcoming oil production promises to transform the economy.
Commodity markets have traded sideways in recent weeks, despite global equity markets edging higher. This is concerning given that the two asset classes have been very well correlated in recent months. The key driver of this divergence, in our view, is a resilient US dollar. Greenback strength tends to weigh particularly heavily on commodity markets,… [Read more]
Having lagged much of the global rally that kicked off in March 2009, Sub-Saharan African equity markets are at long last beginning to perk up. Interestingly, the major markets are also moving with a much greater degree of correlation than in previous years, suggesting that they are creeping onto the collective radar of international investors…. [Read more]
Rumours are still swirling on the subject of the Dubai World (DW) restructuring, and I am not yet convinced that the time to initiate a long-term bullish position on Dubai stocks has come, in spite of the recent rally. I have heard various theories on DW, and I am inclined to the optimistic side: the… [Read more]
My colleagues’ long-held view that downward price pressures would be the prevailing influence on European bond markets this year has continued to play out. German 10-year bund yields pushed through 12-month resistance at 3.10% to trade at 3.07% at one point on March 23, setting up further compression back to 3.00% in the short term…. [Read more]
