Business

Something snapped in Japan today.

Having successfully pulled off the announcement of the ECB’s “dovish taper” – where monthly bond purchases will be halved to Euro 30 billion from January 2018 – last month, a challenge for Mario Draghi in Q1 2018 has appeared on his radar. The ECB’s bond buying ammunition is slightly less than analysts thought and there is the small matter of the looming Italian election. The latter is likely to be held in March 2018, although it could take place as late as May. Veteran strategist, now Bloomberg columnist, Marcus Ashworth explains in "Italy's Shrinking Safety Net".

IPO mania is gripping Hong Kong and if you’ve been looking for a warning sign that equity markets are close to a peak, just maybe this is it. It was a feature of the Hong Kong market in 2006-07, before the Great Financial Crisis, and in 2000, prior to the bursting of the Dot.com bubble. No surprises, the current mania is also focused on the technology sector. The focal point today is the China Literature Ltd IPO which began trading this morning. The stock price rose as high as HK$110 per share compared with the HK$55 IPO price. No wonder the company’s executives were looking smug.

Over the past year we have provided extensive coverage of what will likely be the biggest, most politically charged, and most significant financial crisis facing the aging U.S. population: a multi-trillion pension storm, which was recently dubbed "one of the most heated battles of a lifetime" by John Mauldin.

While everyone likes to point the finger at Amazon, the growing retail apocalypse in America can't be tied to just one catalyst.  Certainly, there is no doubt that Amazon is taking a toll on brick-and-mortar retailers but massive excess capacity, perpetually over-levered capital structures and a constant lack of capital investment have undoubtedly helped accelerate the decline.