Black Swan Capital
Currency Currents
Currency Currents - January 14, 2010
Key News
• Shanghai overtook Tokyo as Asia’s biggest stock market by trading value last year, as an 80 percent jump in China’s benchmark index boosted equities demand. (Bloomberg)
• [Japan]: Orders from non-manufactures dropped 10.6 percent to 380.7 billion yen ($4.15 billion), the lowest since May 1987, the Cabinet Office said today in Tokyo. (Bloomberg)
• Australian employment soared for a fourth straight month. The number of people employed gained 35,200 in December from November, the statistics bureau said in Sydney today. The jobless rate fell to 5.5 percent from a revised 5.6 percent. (Bloomberg)
Webinar: Currency Trade Setups for Major Pairs and Emerging Markets to Start 2010
Date: Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Time: 3:30 p.m. CST (4:30 p.m. EST)
Speakers: Jack Crooks, Black Swan Capital
This webinar event takes an in-depth look at the key fundamentals and technical rationales for why the US dollar has bottomed. In addition, Jack will outline the best intermediate-term trade setups for major pairs and emerging market currencies.
Click here to register for this event at Trader Kingdom …
Maybe Google Knows Something….
Notes from the 2009 Central Propaganda Department in China:
C. Currently, our country’s main internal contradictions (conflicts) are:
i. Mass incidents caused by changes in businesses.
ii. Problems with ex-members of the armed forces. The central government requests: they must be well taken care of, every effort must be made to resolve their difficulties, and it is necessary to prevent them from being used by hostile forces.
iii. Irregularly petitioning for redress. It is the right of citizens to petition higher levels of government; however, using irregular means of petitioning for redress influences social stability.
iv. Large scale mass incidents caused by demolitions and the taking of rural land.
v. Large scale mass incidents caused by serious criminal activity. For example, multi-level marketing schemes and illegal fundraising.
D. The challenges to social stability brought by the widespread use of the internet.
Source: China Digital Times http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/social-unrest/
“Furthermore, despite optimistic projections of China’s future growth potential, its economy is still beset by numerous imbalances and risks in the medium term. These include persistent and even widening regional economic disparity and rural-urban income inequality, rising social unrest and inter-ethnic conflicts, rampant corruption, and serious economic degradation. An eruption of any or several of these ‘fault lines’ could put a sharp brake on the ascent of the Chinese economy, and as the same time propel the renminibi onto an inordinately volatile trajectory.”
Friedrich Wu, Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
“Asia is leading the world out of global recession, but the financial crisis may yet have a dangerous sting in the tail – the risk of social unrest as unemployment and inequality rise even as economies recover.
“Fears of widespread unrest last year failed to materialize, and most Asian economies are now posting impressive growth. But unemployment is a lagging indicator, and many political risk consultancies are warning that 2010 may hold nasty surprises.
“’Although we maintain that the crisis has already inflicted its deepest wounds, its impact will continue to be felt throughout 2010,’ the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a report.
“The main downside risks to economic stability this year include asset price bubbles, deflationary pressures, and the danger of ‘an increase in the frequency and intensity of social and political unrest, given increased unemployment, weak growth and impending fiscal austerity measures in many countries,’ the EIU said.
“Much of the risk is concentrated in Asia.
“The EIU rates China in the ‘high risk’ category for social unrest in 2010, upgraded from ‘moderate’ risk in 2009. Also in the high risk category are Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Bangladesh and North Korea.”
Andrew Marshall, Reuters
“Although most believe that China’s substantial stimulus package announced earlier this year is being invested in infrastructure, many analysts agree with my perception that most of it is ending up in overheated stock and real estate markets. The Chinese refer to this as ‘stir fried’ markets.
“…Just take a look at China’s ten largest companies which are all state-owned or state-controlled, as are thirty-four of the top thirty-five companies listed on the Shanghai exchange.”
Carl Delfeld, President of Chartwell Partners
“There has been some hope that boosting trade with developing countries, and especially with developing Asia, will result in a new source of net demand. James Kynge said something like this in the Financial Times earlier this week:
Popular narratives sometimes overshoot. One of the latest to outlast its veracity is the conventional wisdom that China’s export engines have been spiked by subsiding consumer demand in the US. This, so the argument goes, leaves Beijing with no option but to spur domestic demand to compensate for lost export revenues.
This became an über-narrative last year. Its snowballing popular appeal was powered by two unassailable charms: it made sense and seemed largely true – but not any longer. Its potency appears set to wane in coming months not so much because of a challenge to its central plot, but by other things happening off stage.
The telling off-stage action is the recent upsurge in trade with south-east Asia and the “newly-rising economies” of Brazil, Africa and India. Although Chinese trade with these places has historically been limited, it has grown so fast in the past five years that a robust performance in 2010 may be enough to offset any moderate weakness in China’s trade with the US.
“A friend wrote to me to ask what I thought of this possibility, citing Kynge’s article, and my response (with some editing) was:
“The idea that net demand from developing countries can replace net demand from the US is alarmingly widespread, both in China and abroad, and mainly indicates to me a lack of familiarity with the history of developing countries. The developing world excluding China is roughly the same size as the US, so if you want them to replace the US you need the developing world to run trade deficits of roughly equal to 7% of their GDPs.
“Leave aside the huge problem that most developing countries also want trade surpluses and have a stubbornly tough time understanding why they should run deficits in order to help Chinese employment, the historical evidence suggests that just a few years of trade deficits of 2% of GDP will lead to external debt crisis. For example it took the Asian Tigers just a few years of deficits after 1993-94 to run into the Asian crisis. Do Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and so on really want to go through that again? Developing country demand cannot replace the US. Even Europe cannot replace the US. This is an unrealistic hope.”
Michael Pettis, Professor at Peking University
FX Trading – Party on dudes…
Question: Is it a Black Swan event when so many people are already talking about it? No, but the China cheerleaders will say it is so…
DJ Shanghai Stock Index Weekly: Divergence? Stay tuned.
Jack Crooks
Black Swan Capital LLC
www.blackswantrading.com
Note from David Newman …
2010 Forecast Issue coming this month … 20+ pages of analysis and charts covering the major and emerging market currency world—key themes and targets.
Currency Investor presents its annual 2010 Forecast for the coming year. Don’t miss this issue as it may be the most important one we write all year.
Our monthly Currency Investor newsletter is geared toward newcomers and experienced investors who are looking for a conservative approach to the foreign exchange market, and learning more about how the global economy works.
In plain language we deliver global macroeconomic analysis and actionable ideas geared toward exchange rate fluctuations.
Our analysis is comprehensible and our recommendations consist of ETFs, so don’t get turned off by buzz words like “exchange rates” or “foreign exchange” – this investing strategy is as easy to implement as buying and selling stocks.
Plus, at $39 per year it’s a deal you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.
Thorough global analysis plus complete investment guidance … and all for only $39 per year? You can’t beat that with a stick. Click here to sign up …
Thank you.
All the best,
David Newman Posted by admin | Filed Under Currency Currents
Director of Sales and Marketing
Black Swan Capital
dnewman@blackswantrading.com
Comments
Got something to say?