Interest rate decision by the Fed Tomorrow, Thursday 17 September 2015, the federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the US central bank Fed will be taking an important decision. Is the Fed funds rate to be raised or not? The financial markets have accorded this decision a particularly important role. After all, the rate hike […]
ARTICLES IN THE TOPIC “Know-How”
“Quarterly Capitalism” under attack
If you thought “quarterly” was a simple adverb characterizing a regularly recurring activity, you may need to reconsider. A new term is making the rounds: “quarterly capitalism” – and in this context, “quarterly” stands for “short-term, myopic, greedy and dysfunctional”. In fact, the term was already invented four years ago by Dominic Barton of McKinsey […]
Turning more positive on CEE equities
In searching for a perfect example of a sideways market one does not need to look further than at Central and Eastern European (CEE) equity markets. The CECE Composite, a Euro-based index of 23 Polish, Czech and Hungarian blue-chips (Bloomberg: CECEEUR), has been range bound for nearly four years, rarely trading outside a narrow range […]
When will the earnings momentum rise on the European equity markets?
The stock exchanges have been moving sideways and down for weeks. There are of course enough uncertainty factors such as the Greek crisis, the correction on the Chinese stock exchange, and the expected interest rate increase in the USA that can serve as explanation. However, one factor that has (so far) been left out of […]
Bond investments in the current environment
After the recent, rather substantial corrections on the bond markets many investors were wondering: “Can or should I still invest in bonds or bond funds in view of possibly rising interest rates?” Let’s first have a look at the bonds with the highest quality within the Eurozone, i.e. German government bonds. Where have the prices […]
Is the Eurozone facing a turnaround in interest rates?
Eurozone government bonds have ensured very good performance returns in the past years. The asset class has benefited from the zero interest rate policy and the very expansive monetary policy of the European Central Bank. In recent weeks the prices of bonds from Eurozone countries have gone through a correction, above all German government bonds. […]
Changes in the market regime
The big trends of the past weeks such as the appreciation of the US dollar, the weakening oil price, falling yields, and the outperformance of Eurozone equities have reversed in the past days and weeks, in some cases drastically so. What is behind all of this? When both demand (i.e. economic growth) and supply (i.e. […]
Corporate bonds with short maturities
Bond investors are faced with a difficult environment. Do corporate bonds offer the chance of a halfway decent yield? Stampfl: The statement that bond investors are faced with a difficult environment is actually an erroneous one. A balanced portfolio consisting of bonds from the peripheral countries and the core countries across all sectors would have […]