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...]

Having spoken to some of my colleagues at Corporate Financing Week, I’ve been struck by the volume and size of resource deals emanating from China, and I think we could be on the brink of a major programme of asset acquisitions of real concern to – among others – Australia’s policymakers. During his recent visit [Read more...]

In its continuing search to make sense of financial market meltdowns, the Watchdog has detected a pattern in the ongoing crisis: islands are getting hit the hardest.

New Zealand (actually two big islands), the home of the kiwi and of the carry trade, is officially in recession.
Japan (an archipelago) has been in trouble for what seems [Read more...]