Videos

Although a new opposition political party is making Singapore’s current election season somewhat more interesting than past campaigns, the outcome is not in doubt: the ruling People’s Action Party will be confirmed in power for another five-year term. In this short video interview, Vincent looks beyond the July 10 poll to survey the economic and market outlook for the island republic.

Hong Kong has been beset by a string of bad news, from mass street protests, through Covid-19, to national security legislation of unknown scope and severity imposed by the mainland. Yet you wouldn’t guess it from looking at the city’s property market—the world’s priciest—or its stock market where several mainland tech companies are lining up to do their initial public offerings. Vincent explains the disconnect.

In this video, Udith argues that the mayhem seen on the India-China border this week will provide another catalyst for Indian nationalists who want to lessen the country’s reliance on China, even if that means accepting far slower economic growth.

The US is deepening its effort to limit Chinese technology giant Huawei’s access to components that rely on American design, which may prevent Huawei from rolling out 5G networks. The US is also broadening its efforts to constrain Mainland tech firms by using sanctions that impact suppliers to China’s government and military.

The price of Brent crude oil has doubled in the past six weeks, supported by the beginning of a recovery in demand as economies come out of lockdown and by expectations that the Opec+ cartel will extend the deep production cuts it agreed in April. Tom weighs the forces likely to drive the oil market over the coming months.

Having long resisted the lure of negative interest rates, policymakers at the Bank of England have recently admitted that they are considering a cut in the UK’s main bank rate to below zero.Nick examines the pros and cons of negative interest rates, and weighs the probability that the Bank of England will indeed enter negative rate territory for the first time.

Emerging markets have broadly weathered the liquidity squeeze that threatened to engulf them in March, however Udith is not convinced they are out of the woods. Growth shocks associated with the Covid-19 crisis mean that many smaller markets on the frontier are at risk of debt defaults, which could end up spurring forced selling by foreign investors.

With most big US firms having reported their first quarter earnings, the picture is not pretty and worse may follow in 2Q20. Yet the stock market rally of the last six weeks suggests that investors have a fairly cheery view about US firms’ prospects. So what gives? Near-term expectations are, in fact, appropriately set and the fundamentals of the US market are better than they appear.

Hong Kong’s GDP contracted almost -9% year-on-year in the first quarter, as the impact of the coronavirus hammered an economy already severely weakened by the last year’s anti-government street protests. In this video interview, Tom examines the storms battering Asia’s premier financial center, and accounts for the resilience of its financial system.

The United States is moving towards a release from its lockdown. With individual states treading different paths, the process looks messy and accident-prone. However, Yanmei argues that investors should look through the noise of states’ rights arguments as the US is cranking up Covid-19 testing and generally heading in the right direction.

China research director Andrew Batson was joined by China macroeconomist Wei He and Asia analyst Vincent Tsui to discuss the news from the National People's Congress and what it means for China's economic recovery, the likely direction of fiscal and monetary policy, and the consequences of Hong Kong's national security law.

Yesterday Louis Gave, Charles Gave and Anatole Kaletsky joined Arthur Kroeber at the Global Investment Roundtable. They discussed different scenarios for how and when the world’s major economies can exit the Covid-19 crisis and what it means for investors.

Louis Gave, Simon Pritchard and Vincent Tsui joined Arthur Kroeber to talk about the national security law which China's National People's Congress announced it will implement in Hong Kong, and what this could mean for Hong Kong's future as a global financial center.

In yesterday's webinar, Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian and Yanmei Xie joined Simon to discuss the outlook for the US and answer viewer questions as the country tries to return to normal after Covid-19 lockdowns.

In yesterday's webinar, Anatole Kaletsky, Cedric Gemehl and Nick Andrews joined Louis Gave to assess policy measures to deal with Covid-19 in Europe and discuss the significance of a €500bn coronavirus Recovery Fund.

The rivalry between the US and China has taken a turn for the worse during the Covid-19 pandemic. In yesterday’s webinar, Tom Miller talked about how China has attempted to use the pandemic in its global influence strategy. Dan Wang updated viewers on the technology rivalry. And Arthur Kroeber outlined how the US-China relationship got to this point.

Most of the world’s big economies have been shut down in response to a pandemic disease—a truly unprecedented event. This led to extreme market moves and also generated an unusually large array of tail risks. Louis likens these to the nine tails of the magical kitsune or fox of Japanese mythology. In yesterday's webinar he elaborated on this idea.

China has started to reopen its economy, but it is proving hard to get Chinese consumers and small businesses up and running again. He Wei and Andrew Batson provided the latest updates on policy efforts to revive China’s economy. Udith Sikand reviewed the broader outlook for emerging markets.

So far the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have been a less significant health event in most emerging markets. Yet EMs are bound to suffer a lot of economic damage not only from their own lockdowns but also from the demand collapse in Europe and the US. Udith Sikand and Vincent Tsui analyzed where the investment opportunities lie, and Tom Miller offered the prognosis for India.

Markets are showing both signs of dislocation (in negative oil prices) and impressive stability (the S&P 500 is only down -4.1% over the previous 12 months). Is this stability a Federal Reserve-induced illusion? Are there more shocks to come? If so, where? In our monthly investment roundtable, Louis, Charles and Anatole discussed market scenarios for the months ahead.