(As written for My Paper on 25 October 2011. Click here to enlarge)
What was original a 2 day meeting between the European finance chiefs has now been scheduled for 6 days.
With a final announcement scheduled for Wednesday, the lengthy Summit shows that the people in charge are committed to hammer out a solution for the on-going debt woes in Europe.
There are essentially 3 agendas that the finance ministers hope to achieve at the end of the EU Summit: Read more…
(As written for My Paper on 11 October 2011. Click here to enlarge)
Risk currencies are having a brief rally this week due to three reasons:
1. United States employment situation beat expectations
2. Bank of England increased its asset-purchases ceiling
3. European leaders pledged to recapitalise banks
US non-farm payrolls (NFP) rose by 103,000 last month with private sector payrolls rising by 137,000. This was higher than the 50,000 estimate by industry experts. Additionally, the August NFP report was also revised up from zero to 57,000.
At the start of the week, EUR/USD edged up nearly 100 pips to reflect the cheer of the jobs report. Read more…
(As written for My Paper on 4 October 2011. Click here to enlarge)
Finance chiefs meet in Luxembourg this week.
The good news for the markets is that finance chiefs are meeting and discussing global issues more frequently. The bad news is that no concrete solution has been hammered out yet.
In the process, markets are continuing their free-fall.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index declined 2.2% yesterday, extending a 9.5% slump last quarter that was the biggest since 2008. Not to be outdone, the Markit iTraxx Asia index of default risk headed for its highest close since May 2009.
Major Asian currencies were not spared as well. Read more…
