In a world in which every nation is now part of the race to debase their currency, or as the Brazilian finance minister first dubbed it in 2010, a "global currency war", the first and foremost imperative on every central bank's agenda is to devalue its currency faster than its net exporting peers.
Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
This week brought another reason to get out of the casino, and to sell it short if you can tolerate some volatility.
On Friday the Japanese stock market ripped 6% higher and the European bourses were up 5% because their respective central bankers emitted some hints of more easing just ahead. Even the US market managed to find green for the week.
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
Unlike Goldman's cross asset strategists, whose six Top Trade recommendations for 2016 have gotten destroyed three weeks into the year, with half of them already stopped out as we showed yesterday, the bank's chief equity strategist David Kostin has been notably more accurate in his predictions, with his conservative 2015 year end target of 2000 on the S&P almost exactly where the stock market ended.
Since then stocks have taken a sharp leg lower, with the S&P dropping as much as 15% from its all time high, half the average post-war recession drawdown.
China has announced that their military is fully prepared to defend the islands in the South China Sea, having conducted several successful test flights at a newly-built airfield in the area. China’s Navy chief, Wu Shengli, said that China is confident that it is capable of defending the sovereignty and security of the islands against outside threats.