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Showing 1021 - 1030 of 3072 results for "Benjamin"

More fires than hires

BENJAMIN ONG  |  FRIDAY, 17 MAR 2017
Markets received their regular does of adrenalin again yesterday when the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its latest stats on the country's labour market. The seasonally adjusted numbers showed total employment dropped by 6,400 in February ...

One small rise in rates, one giant step towards normalisation

BENJAMIN ONG  |  THURSDAY, 16 MAR 2017
Don't you just love it when things turn out as expected? Wall Street surely did. US equities jumped -- Dow up 0.5%, S&P up 0.84%, Nasdaq up 0.7%, Russell 2000 up 1.5% -- the VIX index dropped by 5.5% and instead of climbing, the US dollar index fell ...

Good for now worrying for later

BENJAMIN ONG  |  WEDNESDAY, 15 MAR 2017
"The February NAB Monthly Business Survey gave back the surprisingly strong gains seen in the previous month..." This was the opening line of the NAB report on business confidence and business conditions for February. How much were given back? Business ...

Doubting the benefit

BENJAMIN ONG  |  TUESDAY, 14 MAR 2017
Lost in the current expectations du jour - inevitable Fed rate hike on the 15th of March (and how many more thereafter) and US president Trump's reflationary policies (would they be passed in full, scaled down, or abandoned) are recent developments ...

No other way but up

BENJAMIN ONG  |  MONDAY, 13 MAR 2017
A few more sleeps and the fed funds rate would no longer have a zero in front of a decimal point but a one. Unless something surprisingly dramatic occurs between now and the ides of March (15th of March), the US Federal Reserve is sure to announce its ...

Traded goods inflation

BENJAMIN ONG  |  FRIDAY, 10 MAR 2017
Quickening US import and export price inflation indicates that, barring a surprisingly weak US non-farm payrolls report (released later tonight), the fed funds rate would be at 0.75%-1.0% in about five days' time (15th of March). Import prices rose ...

Chinese inflation slows and quickens

BENJAMIN ONG  |  FRIDAY, 10 MAR 2017
People's Bank of China (PBOC) deputy governor Yi Gang's predicted inflation rate of 2% - 3% for this year appears at risk should the recent sharp slowdown in CPI inflation persist over the coming months. Headline inflation increased by a mere 0.8% in ...

Low-flation at the core

BENJAMIN ONG  |  FRIDAY, 10 MAR 2017
Low-flation at the core The European Central Bank's (ECB) governing council decided to keep monetary policy steady - refinancing rate at 0%, deposit rate at -0.4%, marginal lending facility at 0.25% -- while at the same time confirming that its asset ...

Year of the Rooster deficit

BENJAMIN ONG  |  THURSDAY, 9 MAR 2017
China's trade balance went into a US$9.2 billion deficit in February from a surplus of US$51.4 billion in the previous month and a surplus of US$28.2 billion in the same month in 2016. This was the first monthly trade deficit recorded since February ...

Jobs, jobs, jobs

BENJAMIN ONG  |  THURSDAY, 9 MAR 2017
Financial markets don't track the ADP private payrolls report as closely as they do the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment report but if ADP's estimate for February is any guide, the official US non-farm payrolls report (due out at the end ...