World

Is France the eurozone's next crisis?

The spread between French ten-year government bonds and German Bunds has widened to eighty basis points, its widest since the sovereign debt crisis of 2012.

What happens to the euro when the ECB cuts first

Futures on the euro short-term rate (€STR) show near-certainty of a 25-basis-point cut at the European Central Bank's 6 June meeting, and currency desks are positioning for the two central banks to diverge.

How far can Europe cut before the Fed does?

The European Central Bank is getting ready to cut rates before the Federal Reserve.

How to spot Japan's secret yen buying

Japan's Ministry of Finance spent an estimated ¥9 trillion buying yen in two rounds of intervention, if the Bank of Japan's own current account projections are any guide.

How far will Japan let the yen fall?

The yen has slid towards 151.8 per dollar, its weakest level in thirty-four years.

Japan raised rates. The yen fell anyway

The Bank of Japan raised interest rates for the first time in seventeen years, and the yen fell.

Japan ends negative rates

The Bank of Japan ended seventeen years of unconventional policy on 19 March. It raised its overnight rate from minus 0.1 per cent to a range of zero to 0.1 per cent, scrapped Yield Curve Control and stopped buying ETFs.

Japan and Britain slip into recession

Japan and Britain both slipped into technical recession in late 2023, according to fourth-quarter national accounts.

Lunar New Year: China's stock market can't escape falling prices

Chinese consumer prices fell 0.8 per cent in January from a year earlier, the steepest drop in fifteen years, and the country's stock markets enter the Year of the Dragon with little to celebrate.

Japan wants pay rises before rate rises

The Bank of Japan kept its benchmark rate at minus 0.1 per cent in January, disappointing traders who had bet on an immediate end to negative rates.

Shipping costs double as ships avoid the Red Sea

Spot container freight rates between Asia and Europe have more than doubled in three weeks as ships avoid the Suez Canal and take the 3,500-mile detour around Africa.

Japan wants US Steel. Washington may say no

Nippon Steel has offered $14.9 billion for US Steel, or $55 a share, a forty per cent premium that the industrial logic can easily justify.

Japan is the last to keep rates below zero

Diwali: India's festive boom runs on credit

Car dealers, electronics retailers and jewellers across India reported record sales over Diwali, helped along by the fastest growth of any major economy.

Singles' Day: China's shoppers have lost their nerve

Alibaba and JD.com again declined to publish gross merchandise volume figures for Singles' Day, the second year running, and offered only vague claims that transactions had grown.

China's hidden local debt problem

China's central government has allowed provinces to issue more than RMB 1 trillion of special refinancing bonds to deal with the hidden debts of Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs), which are estimated at $9 trillion.

How weak will Japan let the yen go?

The yen has slid toward 147 to the dollar, and currency traders are on watch for the Ministry of Finance to intervene.

Country Garden and the end of China's property model

Country Garden missed $22.5 million in coupon payments on its international bonds, and the last pillar of China's private property model cracked.

China's prices are falling. Its currency could be next

Chinese consumer prices fell 0.3 per cent year-on-year in July, and the People's Bank of China now faces an awkward choice.

Is Japan about to loosen its grip on bonds?

The yen sits near 139 to the dollar and headline inflation is comfortably above target, and speculation is growing that Kazuo Ueda will loosen or scrap the Bank of Japan's yield curve control (YCC).

Why British homeowners feel rate rises faster than anyone

Two-year gilt yields are climbing toward 5.5 per cent, their highest since 2008, and British homeowners are feeling it faster than borrowers almost anywhere else in the rich world.

China's lending engine sputters

The People's Bank of China cut its one-year loan prime rate by ten basis points, to 3.55 per cent, and very little happened.

Britain's mortgage crunch returns

Two-year gilt yields have risen above five per cent because UK core inflation will not come down, and mortgage rates have followed them to levels last seen in the global financial crisis.

China is spending again. Its property market isn't

China's economy grew at a respectable 4.5 per cent annual pace in the first quarter, lifted by a sharp rebound in retail spending, restaurants and domestic travel after the end of zero-Covid.

OPEC just made the Fed's job harder

OPEC+ surprised oil markets on Sunday, 2 April, by announcing a production cut of 1.16 million barrels per day.

Lunar New Year: China's reopening lifts the yuan

The yuan had a good Lunar New Year. Having flirted with 7.35 to the dollar in late October, the onshore and offshore rates rallied back toward 6.78, one of the fastest percentage recoveries on record.

Japan spends trillions to defend one number

The Bank of Japan has been buying government bonds at a record pace, more than ¥5 trillion in a day, to defend its new yield ceiling, and it now holds more than half of the entire 10-year JGB market.

Europe's lucky warm winter

Benchmark Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) gas prices have fallen from peaks above €340 per megawatt-hour to below €80, and European boardrooms have let out a large sigh of relief.

Germany's bond shortage is finally easing

Two-year Bund swap spreads blew out towards 100 basis points at the height of the collateral squeeze in 2022, as traders paid steep premiums to borrow physical German government bonds.

Japan surprises everyone, and bonds everywhere feel it

The Bank of Japan unexpectedly widened the permitted trading band for 10-year Japanese government bonds from ±0.25 to ±0.50 per cent, and bond markets around the world shook.

China reopens, and the world gets a new inflation problem

Markets have decided that China's eventual exit from zero-Covid will be pure good news for global inflation.

Diwali: India's gold habit is weighing on the rupee

The rupee has fallen past 83 to the dollar for the first time, and India's households are about to buy a great deal of gold.

The Bank of England takes away the safety net

The Bank of England said on 28 September that it would buy up to £65 billion of long-dated gilts to stop a collapse among UK pension funds, and it promised that the backstop would end at 5:00 PM on Friday, 14 October.

Japan is fighting the dollar. The dollar is winning

Japan's Ministry of Finance told the Bank of Japan to sell dollars and buy yen on 22 September, its first such intervention since 1998, and officials tried to draw a line near 145.90.

Britain learns the price of a budget nobody believed

On Monday, 3 October, the chancellor dropped the planned abolition of the 45p top rate of income tax, a retreat forced by the market's punishing response to £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts.

How Britain's pension funds nearly broke the bond market

The 30-year gilt yield shot above 5 per cent in late September and sterling fell towards 1.035 against the dollar after the government unveiled a fiscal package with no funding attached.