January, 2018

• 2 January

  India’s bond market has a 2018 message for Narendra Modi

  

  One year ago, India’s bond market was riding a wave of unprecedented liquidity. Now it’s mired in all kinds of doubts, ending 2017 weaker than Chinese sovereign debt when the opposite outcome would have been more natural. After all, India saw a ratings upgrade by Moody’s Investors Service during the year, while China was downgraded. The message for Indian Prime ...

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• 2 January

  The big loser is Shenzhen; the big reason is Leshi

  

  Shenzhen is the only downer this year among major Asian stock markets. The Shenzhen Composite Index, often referred to as China’s Nasdaq, fell about 4 percent in dollar terms, a sad result compared with the more than 35 percent gain in the Hang Seng Index. The Shanghai Stock Exchange SSE 50 A-Share Index, the so-called Beautiful 50 gauge of China’s ...

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• 2 January

  Europe poses a MiFID II challenge to US finance

  Europe’s regulators and financial institutions are under the gun: With a January 3 deadline, they’ve been scrambling to comply with new rules designed to make the region’s capital markets more investor-friendly. The goal — if not the way the policy is being implemented — is one their counterparts in the US might want to consider. Attention so far has focused ...

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• 2 January

  Mental-health IPO is a leap forward for China

  

  The number of Chinese registered as suffering from depression, anxiety, dementia, and other mental illnesses increased by 25 percent between 2014 and 2016, according to Chinese authorities. By one recent accounting, they number 173 million. Only 20 million receive professional treatment. Long-standing social stigmas and a lack of treatment options account for most of the gap. But those biases and ...

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• 2 January

  Return of volatility foreshadowed in economic data

  

  If financial market volatility was given up for dead in 2017, then get ready for a resurrection. To understand why, take a look at the incoming economic data. When the underlying dynamics of the economy change, the data tend to become more volatile before markets react. Economic volatility as expressed by the standard deviation of changes in the monthly data ...

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• 2 January

  Markets helped by what didn’t happen in 2017

  

  Many of the assessments of the 2017 financial markets understandably focused on the impressively favourable outcomes delivered by stocks and other risk assets. Yet it is also worth considering what didn’t happen — in particular, nine events, which, by not taking place, contributed to make the last 12 months exceptional for many investors, big and small. Superlatives have been and ...

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• 2 January

  New York Fed takes names in search for new president

  

  Bloomberg It may be the trickiest job to fill in central banking. And as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York search committee casts a wide net to find a replacement for its outgoing president, William Dudley, the wish list is getting long. Interviews with 10 members of the Fed’s advisory boards, which the committee is consulting, suggest they want ...

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• 2 January

  European bonds slip on first day of 2018 trading

  

  Bloomberg European bonds slipped on the first day of 2018 trading, led by longer-dated securities after European Central Bank policy maker Benoit Coeure said its current extension of stimulus may be the last. German 30-year bunds led the drop in the euro-area’s debt, followed by the Netherlands and France, while UK gilts also slid. Coeure said that given the region’s ...

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• 2 January

  Indonesia’s rupiah range shrinks to 20-year low

  

  Bloomberg While volatility in many financial markets has been rising over recent weeks, one notoriously unpredictable currency has been dead in the water. The trading range for Indonesia’s rupiah shrank to the least in two decades last year and volatility all but vanished as the central bank made maintaining the currency’s stability its chief mission. All this in a year ...

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• 2 January

  Former UBS trader says bank ‘mandated’ conduct that led to ban his from industry

  

  Bloomberg An ex-UBS Group AG trader banned from the finance industry over allegations that he manipulated Libor rates told a London court that his actions were “mandated” and “sanctioned” by the bank. Arif Hussein, a former head of UBS’s sterling rates desk, is challenging a decision by the Financial Conduct Authority to ban him at a London court hearing on ...

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