Blow Out Phase In Emerging Equity Markets

Money flows from developed nations like US, UK, Europe is getting invested in fast growing economies like India, China, Taiwan, Singapore, HongKoong, Phillipines, Russia. This flow is very strong and there is almost herd mentality among them to enter these markets in a rush. This is causing extreme inflation in assets of these economies, notably in stocks. This money also is very reluctant to react to any adverse news and under such circumstances, making money at heightened valuations is an extremely challenging task for traders. Best to remain invested in excellent quality companies with excellent free cash flows and strongest of business fundamentals coupled with strong economic link.

US Job Data

US job data released by labour department beat earlier forecast by experts of 60,000 jobs being added versus fresh data depicting that jobs that added infact are 90,000. This data can make US federal reserve pause in it's rate cut spree. It's very essential for US central banker to hold it's rates so that dollar can be hold steady against Euro, Yen, Canadian Dollar. If he cuts the rates then it might again unleash huge liquidity to riskier assets, which alredy are extreme inflated levels. Also central banks of US and European countries should slow down the level of printing their currency if they want to have financial markets in healthy shape and avoid bursting of equity and commodity bubble in an abrupt manner.

Wheat, Maize And Crude Oil Prices

Price of commodities like Wheat, Maize And Crude Oil is rising continously for the past few months and they are creating new records. From inflation point of view, it's a cause of concern for monetary policy makers as they have to strike a balance between growth and inflation. Already financial markets are facing a fall out from slower growth expectation in the US, Japan, and Europe.
Asian countires like china are raising interest rates in order to contain a rapidly growing economy and India is also far away from softer monetary policy. Volatile times ahead for stock markets as they have to face lot of uncertainty ranging from elections next year in the US to slower world GDP growth to rising crude oil and food prices to rising fears over a possible attack on Iran and also tighter credit markets across developed nations and narrowing interest rate spread between developed countries and Asian tigers.
Happy Investing.

Fed Rate Cut Or Not?

Will the US federal reserve cut the interest rate in his september 18 meeting, if yes then by how much, is the puzzle that stock markets are grappling with. Any cut above 25 basis points will indicate deep scars left by subprime mortgage mess and subsequent dampening effects on the economy and job losses and thus concern for stocks in the US and on nations which are export dependent on US. Japan is already facing stronger yen problem because of yen carry trade unwinding and its effect on its exports. Asian stocks have shown good resilience and will continue to outperform the US and Europen stocks as money in these developed countries will flow to growing economies(asian) in order to beat low returns available in their home markets.

Consolidation

Equity markets across the world are consolidating gains they have made in the past few trading sessions with european,U.S.,asian markets displaying subdued trading sessions.
Market players will also be keenly waiting for U.S.Fed decision on rate cuts this september. Any rate cut will give further boost to emerging markets. Dollar has been under pressure against the yen and euro for the past few days with market players now wanting to buy riskier assets like stocks and dump dollar. Noise levels from U.S. sub-prime mortgage markets has been waining and is a welcome sign.

Not all money is credit

Markets have been bearing the brunt of mahem in the U.S. sub-prime mortgage with several U.S., Europeon and U.K. funds going burst.
Investors and traders believe that all markets have risen because of cheap credit pouring in the markets, however this is paritally true as people do have their own money to invest in case oppurtunity arises, because if all was borrowed money then markets for the past few trading sessions would not have been found the support of new buyers!

Smart buyers have been utilising this sharp fall in equities as a buying oppurtunity and are putting their own money.

Excessive borrowed money can only inflate the valuations of given assets to artificial levels but any cracks in that credit cycle can turn that tide against the borrower as he has to return the money to original lender and he does that in panic as we have seen for the past few weeks. Therefore investng with own money is the only rational strategy one must adopt.

Manic Selling In The Markets

Markets today fell very sharply fearing more bad news from the cracks in the credit markets and yen carry trade un-winding. Yen got further strength and breached 112 mark against the dollar, creating more panic among investors and that caused japanese stocks to drop very sharply by 850 points. All other asian markets traded extremely weak and later in the trading session got some respite because of lowering of discount rate by U.S.federal reserve and some short covering. European markets opened in the positive territory and this will have good sentimental impact when U.S. markets opens later today.
Keeping extremely close eye and ear on credit markets will be they key going forward. Any bad news from this front in future will significantly damage already brittle investor/trader confidance.