Facing a double-whammy of a credit-fuelled housing bubble and a slowdown in Chinese economic activity, the outlook for Australia’s economy is turning increasingly precarious. While consensus continues to point towards further monetary tightening by the Reserve Bank of Australia, Business Monitor’s Head of Asia analysis, Stuart Allsopp, believes that further interest rate hikes are unlikely. [Read more...]

On this week’s Business Monitor Podcast, Head of Country Risk & Financial Markets Justin Patrie, Chief Economist Tim Cooper and Head of Asia Analysis Stuart Allsop discuss the global strategic outlook. The market sell-off catalysed by the German ban on naked short selling has reinforced BMI’s core views including deflation over inflation, a slowdown in [Read more...]

BMI’s Infrastructure team has identified Australia as our favourite developed market, and here are the crucial reasons why I like Australia.

Sophisticated Project Finance operations: Australia comes top in BMI’s global Project Finance Ratings. The country was one of the first to embark on the public private partnership (PPP) scheme [Read more...]

While I had not been pencilling in another interest rate hike this year, the Reserve Bank Of Australia (RBA)’s decision to raise its policy rate by 25 basis points (bps) for a third consecutive month to 3.75% on Tuesday was not wholly unexpected. Indeed, Business Monitor Online stated on November 30 that [Read more...]

Global politics and commerce have long been centred on major basins, starting with the Mediterranean, then shifting to the Atlantic and later the Pacific oceans. In recent years, the Indian Ocean has emerged as the focus of a new geopolitical competition and a realm for promoting ‘South-South’ trade and investment, especially between China-India and Africa. [Read more...]

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) hiked interest rates on Tuesday, from 3.00% to 3.25%, in what appears to have marked the first act of monetary tightening since the 25 basis point hike by the ECB back in August 2008.
I salute the RBA. Unlike the rest of the global central banking community, it has [Read more...]

Several months into the rally, how much more room is there for global markets to climb? Terry Alexander, head of Country Risk at Business Monitor International, makes the case for a sustained rally given the technical picture. Careful about the fundamentals, though!

Appendix 1

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="378" caption="Dow Jones Index & Fibonacci retracement"][/caption]

Appendix 2

[caption id="" align="alignnone" [Read more...]