News

The Bank of Japan reviewed the effectiveness of their policies, and decided at their meeting to leave interest rates in the negative, and maintain their $750b p.a of bond buying. The review reflected on the billions of dollars (trillions of yen) they spend on buying bonds, which has distorted the market and left the BOJ holding 40% of government bonds. To try and reduce the distortion, they announced a cap on 10 year Japanese Government bond yields, and vowed to overshoot their 2% inflation target. The Nikkei closed 2.6% weaker, as a stronger Yen hurt exporters.

On Monday the 3rd of October, Germans paused to reflect on a critical event which occurred 26 years ago - the reunification of East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) with the West (the Federal Republic of Germany). Instead of Germans cheering and celebrating, they angrily waved placards which read “Merkel must go”.

In a bid to control pollution issues in China, Officials announced in April a limited number of statutory working days for coal miners. Low prices and a supply glut (at the time) saw working days cut from 330 days a year to 276 days. As usual… an unintended consequence from this has arisen. We are now seeing spot coal prices soar to mining boom levels, last seen 4 years ago.

Australian stocks were one of the worst performing asset classes in August, shedding 1.6%. Domestic reporting season saw companies that were “priced to perfection” punished for either meeting expectations or just missing.

What attracted Facebook’s latest significant investor to invest in the tech giant? Is it the 85% gross margins, or its earnings per share growth of 180% year on year?