Something has clearly changed in global financial markets in recent weeks. Not only have they been falling, but real world issues have begun to provide a negative impact. This sounds a strange statement. But it simply means that in the past, markets have seen “bad news” as being good news. They expected that it would […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Markets slip as fears grow Fed’s cheap money may end soon
Western financial markets are getting nervous that the US Federal Reserve will cut off their supply of cheap money. They went through the same panic in 2011. Now they again have to wait to see what happens. The chart of the new IeC Boom/Gloom Index above highlights the parallels: Markets were strong through April 2011, with the […]
Financial markets hope for more policy ‘lunacy’
The last few days have seen financial markets rallying, whilst the news from the real economy gets worse. US GDP growth in Q2 was just 1.5%. And the Wall Street Journal notes the recovery since 2009 has been the weakest in the post-War period. But that doesn’t matter to the computerised trading systems that now […]
‘Waiting for Bernanke’ is hottest show on Wall Street
‘Waiting for Godot’, the great play by Irish writer and Nobel Literature Prizewinner, Samuel Beckett, deals with the meaning of existence. Written just after the Second World War, its two characters wait endlessly for the arrival of Godot. US financial markets are currently staging their own version of the play: • They no longer see […]
Financial markets at top of their trading range, again
Financial markets cannot make up their minds about the outlook. As this month’s IeC Boom/Gloom Index shows, sentiment (blue column) remains exactly at the dividing line between optimism and pessimism. This parallels the behaviour of the S&P 500 Index (red line). It had recovered strongly from March 2009, but has since found it very difficult […]
Oil prices near Q2 2008’s record level
Finally, and far too late, policy makers are waking up to the damage that today’s high oil prices are doing to the global economy. Q1’s oil price averaged $119/bbl, just 7% below Q2 2008’s record $127/bbl ($2012). Thus Saudi Oil Minister, Ali Naimi, last week told the Financial Times: “High international oil prices are bad […]
Oil prices remain in their triangle
A year ago, Petromatrix highlighted the short-term ‘triangle’ that was being drawn by oil prices. This describes a period when sellers and buyers are evenly balanced, and neither side can gain momentum to take prices in their favoured direction. It usually leads to a sharp move, either up or down, when one side wins. At […]
Oil markets set up another ‘triangle’ pattern
As promised yesterday, the blog looks today at the impact of high frequency trading (HFT) on oil markets. This now takes place in micro-seconds. It is algorithm-driven via ‘black boxes’, and so fast that as Andy Haldane of the Bank of England notes: “Around 40,000 back-to-back trades can take place in the blink of an […]
Speculators begin to leave crude oil markets
Speculators, assisted by the US Federal Reserve, have driven crude oil prices to unsustainable levels over the past year. Now, the Fed is withdrawing the liquidity that has financed this rise. The above chart from Petromatrix shows the surge in crude oil speculation on the Chicago futures market since August. The light blue line shows […]
Jump to page: