FinSec Post

Investment markets and key developments over the past week The turmoil in financial markets continued over the last week as worries about global growth, and specifically the exposure of global banks to energy loans and rising bad debts if there is a recession, continued to build. However, there was some good news on Friday with a strong rally in European and US shares driven by good results from a European bank, stronger than expected US retail sales and a rebound in [...]

Investment markets and key developments over the past week The past week has seen most share markets give up their gains of the previous week as some soft US data added to concerns about the US and global growth outlook and stronger US wage gains kept US Federal Reserve (the Fed) rate hike fears alive. US shares lost 3.1%, Eurozone shares fell 5.1%, Japanese shares fell 4% and Australian shares lost 0.6%. Chinese shares rose 1% though. Bond yields declined except [...]

Investment markets and key developments over the past week The past week has seen most global share markets continue to rally, as the US Federal Reserve followed the European Central Bank into dovishness and the Bank of Japan undertook more monetary easing. The latter in particular provided a strong boost at the end of the week for risk assets. As a result, Japanese shares gained 3.3% over the week, US shares rose 1.8%, Eurozone shares rose 1.1% and the Australian share [...]

Investment markets and key developments over the past week It’s been another volatile week in financial markets as investors continue to fret about the global growth outlook, but strong signs from the European Central Bank (ECB) of further monetary easing helped shares and other risk assets rebound after falling earlier in the week. As a result despite earlier sharp falls US shares rose 1.4% over the week, Eurozone shares gained 2.3% and Australian shares rose 0.5%. Chinese shares also rose 0.9%, [...]

Investment markets and key developments over the past week It's been more of the same over the last week with worries about China, global growth and falling commodity prices led by oil continuing to rattle investors. So share markets have remained under pressure, commodity prices have continued to slump with oil falling to $US29.6/barrel for the first time since 2003 and bond yields falling further helped by safe haven buying and falling inflation expectations. While there were a few up days [...]

Investment markets and key developments over the past week Shares have got off to a rather bad start for the year, triggered by many of the same worries seen last year: a fall in Chinese shares and the value of the renminbi, which in turn has triggered renewed worries about the Chinese economy; the weaker renminbi triggering more commodity price weakness and fears of an emerging market crisis; some soft US manufacturing data; and geopolitical risks, this time regarding tensions between [...]

Investment markets and key developments over the past week The past week has seen most share markets gain as the US dollar stabilised, most commodity prices including oil gained helping resources shares and US economic data was reasonably solid. While Japanese shares lost 1.1%, US shares gained 2.8%, Eurozone shares rose 0.7%, Australian shares gained 2% and Chinese shares rose 1.4%. After a shaky start it looks like the seasonal Santa Claus rally may have kicked in for shares. Bond yields [...]

  Investment markets and key developments over the past week The past week has seen more volatility with shares initially falling then rallying into (and immediately after) the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed’s) decision to raise interest rates before then giving back some or all of their gains as commodity price weakness and global growth worries continued. This left share markets mixed for the week with Eurozone shares up 1.8%, Australian shares up 1.5% and Chinese shares up 4.2%, but US shares [...]

Investment markets and key developments over the past week Global shares fell sharply last week by circa -3.6 % given anxiety over the imminent American interest rate rise, turbulence in the US high yield market, Chinese slowdown concerns and weak commodity prices. Solid American economic data over the past week supports the US central bank raising interest rates on December 16. America recorded healthy November job gains and retail sales. China's economic activity data for November actually shows encouraging stabilisation signs [...]