All articles by Caroline Hay – Page 10
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Features
Dutch pension reforms
As well as trying to mind-read Central Bankers, poring over economic statistics and keeping a keen watch on world events, investors also need to be more than up-to-date with all sorts of rules and regulations, dull though they may be. In a recent piece of careful and thorough research from ...
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Features
Spectre of 1994 rides again
Is the ghost of 1994 set to spook the markets 10 years further on? Interest rates are very low, for some bond markets they’ve never been lower, and the last time the Central Banks were in anything like tightening mode is but a distant memory. But 2004 feels different in ...
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Features
Where the dollar takes us
As is customary, end-of–year preparations have deterred many investors from actively participating in bond markets, so trading volumes have shrunk and trading ranges have narrowed. Foreign exchange markets, on the other hand, have been moving in to distinctly new territories. The US dollar has continued its downward trajectory, as the ...
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Features
Credit spreads: a great year, from the bottom up
Last year was an excellent year for credit throughout the world’s capital markets. Spreads across all levels of the credit spectrum narrowed markedly over the course of the first 11 months of the year. Figures from Standard & Poor’s show that investment grade credit spreads among US non-financials declined from ...
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Features
World 'not going under'
“It has been grim. We haven’t seen conditions like these for years”, says Pictet’s Rajeev de Mello, “and no we don’t think there’s light at the end of the tunnel.” As a fixed income fund manager shouldn’t he be happy with rates continuing to fall? Is he a hedge fund ...
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Features
Living in extreme times
From possible rate hikes, to open discussions about the possibilities of rate cuts, it is little wonder that market volatility remains so painfully high. Whilst many fixed income managers are bemoaning the fact that their portfolios are not long enough against respective benchmarks, it could be worse: they could be ...
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Features
Demand for gilts looks secure
Like the rest of the world’s developed government bond markets, UK gilts have done pretty well out of the turmoil in stock markets. The yield curve has also steepened significantly, across the whole curve. The short end has benefited most as the market has re-assessed the outlook for short term ...
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Features
Waiting for the break
With the holiday season almost here, there is almost tangible sense of relief in the bond market. Whilst one might expect investors and players in equities to be tired out by the vacillations and stomach turning downward lurches in stock markets, fixed income investors seem to have been equally drained ...
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Features
Dollar languishes in the doldrums
Is something happening to the dollar? Something big and bad? Between the beginning of March and mid-May of this year, the US currency has declined just over 5% versus the euro. Not that noteworthy perhaps and the foreign exchanges have certainly seen much more drama than that in the past. ...
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Features
Watching the mighty fall
“High Yield Walloped Treasuries” – the headline on a recent Merrill Lynch research paper describing the huge outperformance enjoyed by the US High Yield sector over 10-year US Treasury bonds during the month of March. Sadly for the European counterpart, there have been no such headlines over here. In fact ...
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Features
Poland sets a challenge for EU expansion
Poland is by far the largest of the first wave of EU enlargement countries. Of the 10 candidate countries likely to enter the EU next, Poland’s population of 38.5m citizens outnumbers the 36m of the other nine nations and its own GDP is only slightly smaller than their combined GDPs. ...
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Features
Markets at odds on interest rate trends
This year appears to be starting well, for the US and European economies at least. On both sides of the Atlantic, forecasters have been upgrading their figures as new data emerges showing surprising economic strength: the recent German Ifo and French INSEE surveys, US consumer sentiment, US GDP and Chicago ...
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Features
Window is closing
The world outside the capital markets tends to view all within as dreadfully short-termist, while those in the know point an accusing finger at the fixed income community (who in turn ‘tut tut’ in disapproval of the foreign exchange community’s urges for instant trade gratification). So trying to attract attention ...
