EZU News and Press, iShares MSCI EMU ETF From 06/07/19

Overview Global equities continue to recover from the recent slide. Chinese and Hong Kong markets were on holiday today, but the MSCI Asia Pacific Index eked out a minor gain and ensured that its four-week slide ended. Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is up about 0.7% through the European mornin...

Eurozone inflation is in the doldrums again. After perking up to 1.7% in April, it slumped back to 1.2% in May. According to Bloomberg , this was "lower than expected." But I wonder who, apart from the ECB, really expected anything else. Core inflation has been well below target for the las...

On Friday, the 10-year Treasury bond yield collapsed to 2.13% (a 20-month low) after the stock market sold off in the wake of the surprise tariffs imposed on Mexico, to be enacted on June 10th if the Mexican government does not sufficiently cooperate with the Trump Administration to help stop ...

Overview The implications of President Trump's assessment that there has not been "nearly enough" progress in negotiations with Mexico that would avert the tariff on June 10 competing for investors' attention, which had been squarely today's ECB meeting. Minutes before Trump spoke, Fitch cut...

By Bill Witherell, Ph.D. The results of the European Union's Parliamentary elections, held the last weekend in May, were welcomed by investors as being not as bad as many had feared. A broad populist and nationalist anti-EU surge, which had looked possible, was avoided. Pro-EU lawmakers wi...

Overview The Federal Reserve's patience never excluded a rate cut, should conditions warrant. The acknowledgment of this without signaling a change in its stance is being seized to justify aggressive pricing of rates. At the same time, there has some tempering of trade anxiety on the margin ...

What Is It We're Worrying About? The eurozone is, by rough rule of thumb, some 20% of the global economy. If that goes into recession then it's going to affect everyone and every market. How do we tell if the eurozone is going into recession? Ah, well, that's much more of an art than it is...

What's the Problem Here? Macroeconomic factors will overwhelm near any investment plan based upon an individual stock or bond. Thus we need to be clear on the general direction of the economy before making such specific plans. The macroeconomic indicators we've got coming out of Germany are ...

(Source: ECB , caption and editing by the Author) For those who believe that the ECB will be forced into monetary policy easing again soon, the latest mid-year Financial Stability Review has come just at the right time. It may also have come just in time for the new Chief Economist Phil...

Overview The global capital markets are stabilizing today after taking a body blow of broadening the use of US tariffs (in migration dispute with Mexico), threatening the ratification of NAFTA 2.0, still-escalating hostile rhetoric between the US and China, and the threat of anti-trust actio...