Asia

With stocks the biggest beneficiary of the late January "Shanghai Accord" (that shall not be named), it stands to reason that the US Dollar was the biggest loser. Sure enough, overnight the WSJ writes that the "powerful rallies that have lifted stocks, crude oil and emerging markets for the past three months have one important thing in common - the falling dollar - and investors are growing anxious that it could prove to be the weak link."

But is a strong dollar about to make another appearance and unleash the next leg lower in risk assets?

Following the biggest news of this weekend, the (anticipated) resignation/termination of Saudi Arabia's longstanding oil minister Ali al-Naimi, everyone has been wondering about what comes next and how this development will impact the price of oil. We laid out our preliminary thoughts as follows:

Ultimately this is not about the new oil minister: this is about Prince Mohammed taking full control over Saudi oil. So the question everyone now wants answered is "what does this mean for oil?"

 

Submitted by by Erico Matias Tavares via Sinclair & Co.,

On 23 June the British will vote in a referendum to decide whether their country should remain in or leave (BREXIT) the European Union (EU). The importance of this event cannot be overstated, since it will impact the future of the UK – and very likely that of Europe – for decades to come.

When it comes to tracking the nuances at the all important margin of the gold market, few are as observant as ADMISI's Paul Mylchreest, whose December 2014 analysis showed the stunning role gold holds in the new normal as a funding "currency" for BOJ interventions in the form of a long Nikkei/short gold (and vice versa) pair trade, indicating that central banks directly intervene in gold pricing (by selling, of course) when seeking to push paper asset prices higher.

Overnight China reported April exports and imports, both of which dropped after a strong pick up in March, and missed consensus expectations, confirming "weak demand at home and abroad and cooling hopes of a recovery in the world's second-largest economy."