There is a new breed of bond in the fixed income world. It’s different, it’s bold, it’s the so-called green bond market. As the drive towards environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing continues to gather pace, policy makers and investors alike are waking up to the importance – and benefits – of green bond investing.
An important step was moved the last week towards the integration of the Chinese economy within the financial world. The index giant MSCI has finally decided to include, next year, 222 China mainland stocks to its emerging markets index. The proposal had been rejected three times in the recent years.
It’s a big decision since MSCI controls the benchmarks of the most heavily owned exchange-traded funds worldwide, an asset class that is more and more relevant in the global financial world.
From the growth point of view, Brexit can affect the economy in two ways. In the near term, uncertainty from Brexit and rising inflation from the reduction in Sterling trade since the vote could cause a modest demand-side shock. But that effect has been much smaller than expected. In fact, the economy has outperformed the non-Brexit scenarios. Of course, we do not know how the economy would have performed had the UK not voted to leave. That seems to be an absence of the short-term demand-side shock. I am confident that the UK can continue to enjoy a broad-base expansion over the next couple of years. I see probably 2% real GDP growth this year followed by 1.7% next year.
Geneva is a truly remarkable hub: the second financial centre in Switzerland, but possibly the first in commodities trading
Institutional investors in the UK and other developed markets are finally beginning to wake up to a truth that their counterparts in US, Germany and the Netherlands have long known: residential property is an attractive source of income that complements commercial property beautifully.
The bedrock of the appeal of residential is the shortfall of homes across most of Europe. Even if populations stay stable, there is already huge under-supply as a result of low development and this is exaggerated by the total number of homes required is growing, because the number of households is increasing: people are more likely to live alone and less likely have large families. In Germany, for example, the population has increased by only 12% since 1961, but the number of households has risen by 110%. Housing supply is notoriously unresponsive to changes in demand – certainly much less so than commercial property. Because of planning restrictions, particularly in countries in Europe with a strong tradition of preserving green open spaces, residential does not work like a free market. This supply constraint buoys rental incomes and, indeed, values.
Technically speaking, the US 30 years government bond yields curve, from a long term point of view, is still in a bear market. But looking on a short and medium term basis, we must consider some elements to understand if prices could be in a retracement phase of a potential short term rising trend.
First of all, the 30 years Treasury curve, the week that Trump was elected, advanced with the most highly percent daily change in 30 years (1). The price broke the medium term downtrendline (2) but was not able to overcome the previous high around 3,25 of June 2015 (3).
According to the latest reports, the European economy grew at a stronger pace than the US economy did. Do you agree that further trend is going to be the same?
I do not think so, though it is mostly because the US is likely going to pick back up again. What we saw in the first quarter, and this is something we have seen over the past few years, is that the US has a relatively weak first quarter. This could mean that growth is not going to be as spectacular as it has been over the past years in the United States. Nevertheless, I would say that, overall, the US economy is likely to pick up steam again in the Q2 and Q3. On the other hand, the Euro zone economy is performing quite steadily, while growth is sweeping quite robust at the moment. Still, I do not think that it will be able to keep up with the pace that we have seen in the United States. Currently, we expect the Euro zone growth to come in just under 2% over the year, while we think the United States GDP could hit 2.3% or maybe even 2.5% in 2017.
This new regulation requires that for non-centrally cleared derivatives, appropriate procedures and arrangements should be put in place to measure, monitor and mitigate risks.
These will have a significant impact on derivatives market participants.
