Singapore Expats

http://www.chestertons.com/research-and ... s-markets/
@JR8, Chestertons predictions

and the latest digestion of Yellen's meeting on Wednesday.
http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/healthy- ... sign-75699

This sums up for me the current sense of daily uncertainty in the markets...
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'In years gone by, European equity traders suffering from a soft trading session in the morning could garner optimism in the knowledge that when the US markets opened, the markets would ignore what had gone on so far in the day, making their own call on where to go. That no longer appears to be the case. As Asia starts the ball rolling overnight with another sell off, European traders take their cue and follow suit. The US no longer having the swagger of the biggest thing in town now invariably follows on that trend. With a combination of uncertainty surrounding interest rate decisions and the complexities of a US general election looming, the ‘buy on dip trader’ looks to be an increasingly endangered species.'
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http://www.ig.com/uk/market-update/2016 ... tory-30464


... the old comfort of having a feel for how the markets will play off each other as one continent closes and another opens, around the clock, has temporarily gone. In big part it's due to China having become a major player, and the opaqueness over how economic affairs are dealt with and reported in that country.

And an article this morning that sums up the EUs 'existential crisis'. I'd love to be at liberty to quote it in full...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... eared.html
Crippled EU is no longer the 'anarcho-imperial monster' we once feared
The European Project flamed out as a motivating force in history long ago and is descending into existential crisis. All illusions that the EU can run as a centralised political union have died

http://m.economictimes.com/markets/stoc ... 938837.cms

The carnage in European financial stocks has rejigged the pecking order of banks in terms of market capitalisation. HDFC Bank, India's second-largest private lender by assets and the second most expensive bank globally, has overtaken European majors such as Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, SocGen in market cap.

Sent from my Redmi Note 2 using Tapatalk

From the markets news-feed this morning:
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'Congressional testimony: 'An economic minefield'
David Buik, of Pamure Gordon, comments on yesterday's congressional testimony by Fed chair Janet Yellen:

"Fed chairman Janet Yellen is hardly known for her presentational skills and I accept that her 2-day ‘Humphrey Hawkins’ testimony to Congress was always going to be a political and economic minefield, but, dear God in Heaven, the market was given exactly what it didn’t require in the current climate of doom and despondency – a nervous, nebulous, non-committal critique of the state of the US and global economies.

"It was a classic recipe to send investors scurrying to the hills. Sadly these mountains may not be alive with the sound of music! Admittedly it isn’t quite ‘tin-hat-time’ but M/S Yellen’s rhetoric did little to sooth frayed nerves."

It's not good. Her speech did not go down well.

Meanwhile in news from the 'through the looking-glass' land known as the EU:

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'Other EU leaders are ready to copy David Cameron’s referendum tactics for their own “egotistic goals”, the European Council president has said, as he sounded the alarm over populist politics bringing the bloc to the brink of “suicide”. Donald Tusk’s forthright warning on Wednesday came as he announced he was clearing his diary next week to concentrate on the “very fragile” talks on a “new settlement” for Britain, which will be discussed at an EU summit next week. – Financial Times - www.digitallook.com/news/press-round-up ... 31297.html
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The UK PM is in Europe trying to get some concessions from the EU. In short, a lot of Brits are feeling strangled by the undemocratic centralised monolith that is the EU, and they are angry at their loss of democracy.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Tusk
President of the European Council (EU 'upper chamber')
Former activist against the communist Polish regime
Poland - a long-time ally of the UK, esp. against Germany during WW2.]

So here is a man [Tusk] who rose due to his anti-authoritarianism, to lead the recently democratic Poland, accusing the democratically elected UK-PM who is simply acting on his citizen's will, of being 'egotistic'. But surely it's the reverse, surely he is simply doing his job of conveying the wishes of his electorate.

And once again, rather than there being any possibility of concessions, even the smallest ones, the spectre of such causing the 'suicide' of the entire EU is suggested. [Shaking head] - well, at least you don't have to wonder any longer why anti-EU sentiment is growing so widely across Europe; it's like trying to negotiate the people's will vs a communist super-power.

Anyway, the outcome of these talks will be the same as usual. The EU might concede something superficial, so, not a rolling back of their powers, but perhaps a brief delay in implementing further future integration policies. At least for now, the EU will probably U-turn on any such promises in future, that is how arrogant and undemocratic they are.

And Cameron; well he is quietly pro-EU himself whilst trying to appeal to populism by pretending to be one of the undecided. So once again he'll return to Britain clutching some worthless and reversible micro-concession, exclaiming what a huge battle he fought and huge victory he managed to win vs the EU. We've heard it so many times before, no one believes it any more, and disdain for the EU just grows even more.

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'This is exactly the tonic that the populists have been waiting for. Despite their dramatic emergence, they have so far failed to make a real breakthrough. The SNP was unable to win the Scottish referendum and the National Front didn’t gain a single region in France. Mariano Rajoy remains Spain’s prime minister, and anti-establishment parties have been thwarted in Germany. Even lighter forms of populism, such as Ed Miliband’s [UK], were rejected. Syriza’s victory in Greece was one of the few genuine populist triumphs; but it was soon crushed by the combined might of Brussels and Frankfurt.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... ow-it.html
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So much for democracy in Europe. An irony is that by the day the EU increasingly resembles some authoritarian super-state, much like the collapsed Soviet Union once was.

Tusk's populistic rhetorics of desperation. Personally I think EU has not much to offer to the UK.

Over the same subject a few days old article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... -deal.html

What I am also finding almost amusing is that some, if not many of my countrymen living in the UK developed much more aggressive attitude against the Brexit supporters. This is from the comments under the article's facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/borisjohnson/p ... 3274276317

[..]your country will collapse without my money! I am paying taxes and contribute to the british economy more than some british pople who collect benefits! Moreover there is by far more immigrants who are in better paid jobs and in managerial positions so Yes you should be nice to us! [..]

Yeah, right. Not that I think the migrants do not contribute and the UK does not benefit from them but with this sort of heated responses I would say, pack up your stuff girl and let them collapse.

The comments https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/massi ... 00286.html

Thanks for that link, I'd missed it when it was originally published. I noted the writer very briefly at the header and was reading through the column and around half-way thought to myself 'Who is the writer again, he is unusually eloquent, bordering on the dazzling ? - Ah yes, Boris Johnson, an extremely eloquent writer'.
Side-note: 'BJ', who is Mayor of London, and Cameron were contemporaries at both Eton and Oxford, so they go back to their earliest 'teen years. BJ is a guy who is going places, which makes it interesting to observe when he and DC play off against each other politically.

Amusing comment you quote from FB. Yes the Poles are welcomed in the UK as they a known as very good and hard-working employees. I've seen it first hand employing Polish builders (as have friends of mine). Either way re: Brexit, which FWIW I never see happening, I still have to consider Norway and Switzerland, both arms-length outside the EU having negotiated their own relationships, despite which together they represent the two wealthiest countries in Europe...

Dow tanked 500 points

Brah wrote:The comments https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/massi ... 00286.html

Interesting article, interesting also to see the denial in the comments.
He [Zulauf] visited our office some time back in the late 90s, to give a presentation re: some investment product he'd launched that our salesmen could pitch to our clients. I didn't get invited to such events often as I wasn't a salesmen, 'just the P/L guy'. That invite was a bit of a golden one, since he was considered a guru/billionaire a la Soros, even back in those days. He's kept a far lower profile than the likes of Soros etc., for example I haven't even heard Zulauf's name mentioned in 5 maybe 10 years. But given what I do know of him I'd consider his opinions pretty damn closely if what he forecasts were to have an impact on my investments.

Despite the black clouds, there's still room for a little dark humour:

Primrose Hill wrote:Dow tanked 500 points

Well, not yet it hasn't; 'only' -250 so far this session. That's -1.6%, meanwhile look at other indices, London -2% (right now) Tokyo -2.3%, Europe -2.8%

All a bit messy.