Business

Markets have started 2016 with a healty dose of turmoil, and so many were wondering how long - and who - would be the first central bank to intervene in either directly or verbally in markets.

Moments ago we go the answer when Sweden's Riksbank announced it has held an extraordinary monetary policy meeting in which it took the decision required to be able to "instantly intervene on the foreign exchange market if necessary, as a complementary monetary policy measure, to safeguard the rise in inflation."

This is what else it said:

Having been halted down around 7% overnight, China's CSI-300 index is extending its losses in US trading as ASHR (the CSI-300 tracking ETF) is down 9% - its biggest drop since the August collapse. This plunges Chinese stocks to 3-month lows...

Something unexpected happened on the road to the latest Greek "recovery": the local population no longer believes one is coming.

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

Late in 2015, Germany's Handelsblatt reported, erroneously, that Venezuela was the best performing asset class of 2015.

It wasn't. The reason this was in error is because if one adjusts the returns into the real currency exchange rate, one which reflects the true implosion of the economy, instead of the government "mandated" one, the result is very different, one which shows that contrary to popular wisdom, during hyperinflation stocks are not a good store of value.