Sep 17, 2011

European news dominated the markets last week. There were all sorts of headlines flying around, including surge of chance of Greek default, dry-up of interbank liquidity, Moody’s downgrade of French banks, Italy’s talk with China for bond buying, Eurobond. And markets have been using all sort of excuses to...

Sep 17, 2011

we’d continue to expect upside to be limited by 1.3972 resistance. Below 1.3703 minor support will flip bias back to the downside for retesting 1.3498 first. Break will confirm...

Jan 13, 2011

1. Spanish and Italian Auctions Successful, Euro Extends Rally Today the European markets were focused on debt auctions from Spain and Italy. Spain managed to sell €3 billion of bonds, paying a yield that was close to 4.590%. That was higher than in previous auctions but a level that was below that in the secondary market and left investor feeling more...

Jan 11, 2011

Market sentiment was dampened yesterday by today`s large debt auctions in the Eurozone, where the weaker members of the union will be borrowing at least $43 billion. Credit default swaps rose on Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, and while the CDS index that measures that default risk of Western European governments rose to match a record yield of 228 bps. There is a...

Jan 10, 2011

Markets Worry About Portugal Meeting its Funding Needs for 2011 We start the new week, and before markets even open in NY we have our latest sovereign-debt rumblings. There was some pick-up in speculation that Portugal will be forced to seek external financial assistance. There was press reports that France and Germany were putting pressure on Portugal to...

Dec 27, 2010

Christmas Eve saw heavy action on sovereign debt, but the markets was more inclined to attribute the changes to bookkeeping on the part of the ratings agencies. The problems of the two nations are well-known, stretching back to 2008 in the case of Vietnam, and to the March-May period in the case of Hungary, if we don`t consider the earlier troubles during the...