I have been positive on emerging markets for a while, maintaining that especially China and other Asian countries, as well as resource-based Latin American countries, would be the leaders of the economic recovery and stock market performance in the next upswing. These views are supported by a recent Q&A with Mark Mobius, Templeton Asset Management’s guru on emerging markets, as published in the company’s Market Views newsletter.

Emerging markets have been outperforming thus far in 2009, do you think this trend will continue for the rest of the year? Although we are optimistic about the opportunities for upside potential, it is important to realize the volatility is still with us and will be with us for some time. This means there will be periods when the markets go down as well as periods when they go up. We should therefore take advantage of

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p style="text-align: left;"By Claus Vistesen: Copenhagenbr /emspan/span/em/pp style="text-align: center;"emspanbr //span/em/pp style="text-align: center;"emspanChina! China! burning bright /span/em/p p style="text-align: center;"emspanIn a bubble, Day and Night /span/em/p p style="text-align: center;"emspanIs it Bust or is it Boom/span/em/p p style="text-align: center;"emspanThat frames thy fearful asymmetry?* /span/em/p pbr //p pspanbr //span/ppspanCan you feel it? That calm and soothing feeling of low volatility and heaven bound risky assets driven by green shoots and second derivatives. Well, if you can't you are excused since neither can yours truly, or more precisely; he has a distinctly difficult time seeing from where people get the idea that we are headed for a broad based global recovery. However, beauty as always lies in the eye of the beholder and whichever way you look at it would be difficult to completely deny that the three key ingredients for a global recovery (and a resurgence of carry trade) in the form of ...

China! China! burning bright

In a bubble, Day and Night

Is it Bust or is it Boom

That frames thy fearful asymmetry?*

 (click on pictures to enlarge)

Can you feel it? That calm and soothing feeling of low volatility and heaven bound risky assets driven by green shoots and second derivatives. Well, if you can't you are excused since neither can yours truly, or more precisely; he has a distinctly difficult time seeing from where people get the idea that we are headed for a broad based global recovery. However, beauty as always lies in the eye of the beholder and whichever way you look at it would be difficult to completely deny that the three key ingredients for a global recovery (and a resurgence of carry trade) in the form of low volatility, steadily climbing risky assets, and benign credit wholesale market credit

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I have been positive on emerging markets for a while, maintaining that especially China and other Asian countries, as well as resource-based Latin American countries, would be the leaders of the economic recovery and stock market performance in the next upswing. These views are supported by a recent Q&A with Mark Mobius, Templeton Asset Management’s guru on emerging markets, as published in the company’s Market Views newsletter.

Emerging markets have been outperforming thus far in 2009, do you think this trend will continue for the rest of the year? Although we are optimistic about the opportunities for upside potential, it is important to realize the volatility is still with us and will be with us for some time. This means there will be periods when the markets go down as well as periods when they go up. We should therefore take advantage of

...

Whoa!  The RTS is booming today.  From the Financial Times:

Yet one market has outperformed all others. Russian equities have more than doubled since they touched lows in January - gaining particular momentum since the return of risk appetite at the start of March.

Since March 1, the dollar denominated RTS index has risen 90 per cent. This compares with a rise of 30 per cent on the S&P 500, the US benchmark stock index, and 25 per cent on China's Shanghai Composite index, the biggest emerging market index, over the same period.

What on earth is going on here?  Oh yes... such short memories we have.

Worries over Russia's unpredictable politics have also been largely shrugged off by investors intent on taking advantage of the rally. Geopolitical squabbles with Georgia and Ukraine and doubts over corporate governance and the rule of law have mostly been forgotton - for the time being.

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With the New York gold market closed on Monday…trading added up to a big zero. Don’t forget that well over 90% of all trading volume in both gold and silver occurs out of New York. So when the boyz have a long weekend, there isn’t much activity.

However, starting at 8:00 a.m. in Hong Kong on Tuesday morning, gold tacked on around $20 from there…right until the London open…which is a big move for that time of day, as the Far East markets are pretty thinly traded. Nothing much happened in early European trading, but once floor trading started on the Comex in New York yesterday morning, gold added another $13 dollars or so. That ended about 12:20 p.m. when it appeared that someone tapped on the brakes and gold went sideways from there. The usual N.Y. commentator offered this assessment…”Estimated volume was 146,365 lots with a switch effect of 12,978.

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The year 2008 was for the global equity markets the worst in history. Capital outflow reached record 14 trillion dollars. The crisis of the financial system and the worst recession since 1970, froze investor confidence. MSCI index of global shares in the year fell by a record 44%.br /br /One of the worst performance posted stock market in Russia. Benchmark RTS Index closed the year 72% lower. The second worst result in the world has seen China's stock index, the SSE Composite lost a record 65% after the boom in 2006 and 2007 brought the growth of over 300%.br /br /In the U.S., the Dow Jones index ended the last trading day a profit of 2.2% over the year but lost 34% of which was the worst loss since the Great Depression in 1931. Only two titles, retailers Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) and Mc Donalds (MCD), closed the ...

By Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /Russia's foreign-exchange reserves have been now been declining very rapidly since mid August, and as the money goes so does the faith that the large stock of reserves the country built up during the boom times would be sufficient to see them through any downturn in energy prices. As the money leaves, so it seems does the decade of economic growth and stability which they symbolised. Indeed so rapid has been the decline that Russia's international reserves, which are the third-biggest after those of China and Japan, have now fallen $161 billion, or 27% percent, since 8 August last, and decreased by $17.9 billion to $437 billion in the week to 5 December. Investors have now pulled $211 billion out of the country since August, according to estimates by BNP Paribas.br /br /br /pa href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SUbQptNe4tI/AAAAAAAALyE/K0xlBOy3AlA/s1600-h/russia+GDP.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5280137028067844818" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: ...

 

Russian indexes, ETF soar despite downgrade

As MarketWatch's Polya Lesova notes, a downgrade by S&P of Russia's sovereign debt hasn't fazed investors. Following the recent rally, the Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX) soard on Monday. So did the dollar-denominated RTS index and the ruble-based Micex index.

You can read the story here.

 

Metals, Basic Materials ETFs blast-off

At Investor's Business Daily, markets reporter Trang Ho  observes that Monday's rally resulted in basic materials and metals ETFs taking-off. That makes sense since markets were moved by optimism that a big bailout of Big Three automakers was in the works. 

As Ho notes, the auto industry is a big consumer of metals and basic materials. She also relates 10-week and 200-week moving averages and Relative Strength ratings in assessing the performance of some ETFs.

You can read the story here. 

 

The Smart Money's On Green

At least that's the headline of this interesting

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Financial News Jason Corcoran in Moscow10 November 2008 A merger of Micex and RTS is more likely following the exodus of €108bn in foreign capital since AugustRybnikov: suspensions must stop Moves to merge Moscow’s two stock exchanges, modernise market architecture and improve long-term liquidity have been given impetus following Russia’s worst trading collapse since the sovereign default in 1998. The frequent closures of Moscow’s two main trading platforms have led many investors to switch to trading Russian Global Depositary Receipts and Russian American Depositary Receipts in London and New York.Some 23 suspensions of trading on the rouble-denominated Micex since early September have contributed to a two-thirds slide in the volume of trading and an exodus of investors.Micex chief executive Alexei Rybnikov hopes the suspensions will become a ...