Saudi Arabia just doesn’t know when to quit.
The kingdom’s plan to deliberately suppress crude prices in an effort to bankrupt the US shale space and preserve market share has cost Riyadh dearly over the past 12 months. The country’s budget deficit for 2015 ballooned to some 15% of GDP as oil revenue collapsed. For 2016, the deficit is expected to come in at a still elevated 13% of economic output.
There is a saying that as January goes, so goes the full year market. But what about just the first day of January?
Courtesy of Reuters' Jamie McGeever, here is a quick snapshot of the worst opening days for the US stock market in the past century.
As of this moment, the S&P is down just about 2.4%. If the market closes here, that would make it a worse first day of trading than in such "dramatic" years as 2008 and 1933.
Following China's disappointing drop in Manufacturing PMI overnight, this morning started off poorly with Canada's PMI crashing to its lowest reading since records began at 47.5. Then US Manufacturing PMI tumbled to 51.2 - its lowest print since October 2012 (with US factory orders collapsing to weakest since 2009).
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...