ZJPN News and Press, SPDR Solactive Japan ETF From 08/30/21

The issue of demography plagues Japan and the U.S. equally. The advancing decades show birth rates dropping as dependency on social welfare climbs. The problem, as with Japan, is that demographics are undermining the support for the social welfare system. The aging population is curre...

Equities wobbled a bit midway through August, but they have since regained their mojo, all but confirming that the bull market in equities remains strong and unchallenged. A reduction in the pace of QE is coming, in both the US and Europe. Indeed, the pace of asset purchases already h...

Now that Jackson Hole is over, the focus shifts back onto the economic recovery. The euro area economy is ticking along nicely. Data from the UK this week showed that, despite all restrictions being lifted, the economy continues to face headwinds because of supply and labour short...

Global real GDP reached a new high in the second quarter of 2021, completing a year-long recovery from the COVID-19 recession. The resilience of the global economy amid a lingering pandemic suggests that the world is learning to live with the COVID-19 virus. Western Europe's consu...

We’ve recently updated our Asia game theater, and although these changes partly reflect the recent regulatory crackdown in China, our update was independent of recent Chinese equity market volatility. Incentives appear to be aligning for increasing rhetoric between the United S...

The upcoming week is all about the Federal Reserve’s symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Government regulatory risk continues to dominate China equity markets, this time with President Xi pushing an agenda of wealth redistribution from rich to poor. Global macro weakness ha...

The volatility of the dollar does present some problems for the world but, for better or worse, it is the world’s reserve currency and I see no real threat to that status on the horizon. I positioned our portfolios for a weak dollar period early last summer and maintained those...

Global equity markets have diverged widely lately, with European and US stocks strongly outperforming the rest of the world. Despite recent strength, Europe has performed roughly in line with its global peers since last year. Contributions to the FTSE All-World ex USA returns were...

So historically we have not seen negative yields. Ever. I’ve looked at a lot of history books, I have not found persistent nominal negative yields, at least in written history. Right now, it would be a little bit tough to say that interest rates are free. Interest rates are whe...

A marked fall in business optimism in July hints that companies could become reticent to expand capacity while the pandemic continues to hit supply chains. Output growth continued to run behind the growth of new orders for a fifth straight month, meaning backlogs of work rose sharply ...