Asia

Filipinos are casting their votes on Monday for a new president, with a tough-talking straight-shooting Donald Trump type of candidate poised as favorite to win. Voice of America reports: Rodrigo Duterte, the long-serving mayor of the southern city of Davao, is leading in public opinion polls by as much as 10 percentage points over his nearest rivals, Senator Grace Poe and Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas, the preferred candidate of outgoing President Benigno Aquino.

The following brief comment by Morgan Stanley's chief FX strategist Hans Redeker is one of the best summaries of the sad state the centrally-planned world finds itself in after 7 years of constant central bank manipulation to push risk assets higher no matter the cost.

The overnight session has been one of alternative weakness and strength: it started in China where stocks tumbled 2.8% to a two month low following an unexpected warning in the official People's Daily mouthpiece that debt and NPLs are too high, not to expect more easing will come, and that the Chinese Economy’s performance won’t be U- or V-shaped but L-shaped.

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?"