Having rung up over US$25bn in debts, and four state bailouts in the past decade, Japan Airlines – Asia’s largest airline – has finally filed for bankruptcy protection. The beleaguered company made the filing yesterday, and although the government has pledged to keep the carrier in the air, almost 16,000 jobs will be slashed in [Read more...]

One of the things that has been troubling me more and more lately is Japan’s colossal debt burden, which is heading towards 200% of GDP. At the moment, the debt burden is existing in an equilibrium of sorts, with Japanese financial institutions seemingly content to keep buying Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs). In a climate of [Read more...]

Risk Watchdog has just returned from Greater Tokyo, where I spent a week trying to get a handle on what’s happening in Japan. Regular readers will recall that I have generally been bearish on Japan’s economy, so this was a good opportunity for a first-hand refresher.

I say ‘Greater Tokyo’, because I also visited Tokyo’s [Read more...]

One stock market that has really underperformed global equity markets in recent months is Japan’s Nikkei index. While other developed markets have rallied by over 50.0% since the March lows, and some EMs by around 200%, the Nikkei has only recovered by around 35.0%.

The price action has turned lower and is starting to form a [Read more...]

Risk Watchdog and his colleagues at Business Monitor International (BMI) have grown very bullish Latin American currencies. Three views in particular stand out and form part of the BMI Global Key Market Views portfolio:

Last Friday, my colleagues at BMI initiated a long Chilean peso/short US dollar view, which hit the initial CLP510.00/US$ target within days, [Read more...]

US President Barack Obama, en route to ‘Asia’ (I use the speech marks, because Asia is so diverse and it is inaccurate to consider it a single entity), has no shortage of issues to deal with when he gets there. There seems to be a general feeling that US influence in Asia is on the [Read more...]

Japanese Government Bond (JGB) yields have been testing key technical levels over the past day or so. On Tuesday, the 10-year yield hit a five-month high of 1.48%, up sharply from 1.25% at the beginning of October. The yield failed to break higher on Wednesday, but I am watching resistance (or support in price terms) [Read more...]