Category Archives: Market Insights

The Group of Seven, 7 of the world’s richest countries, has agreed to put a global price cap on Russian oil, potentially cooling oil prices while hitting the revenue of Russia. The cap is planned to be enacted around the same time as the EU sanctions on Russian oil, which will come into effect 5thContinue Reading

On Wednesday (GMT+3) 31st August, the ADP US Nonfarm Employment figures were released after a 2-month hiatus. According to the ADP, US private payrolls grew by 132,000 – down from the 268,000 in July and the forecasted 300,000 increase. The ADP took a two-month hiatus to revise its methodology and released June, July, and August’sContinue Reading

On Wednesday (GMT+3) 24th August, the US crude oil inventories greatly outperformed expectations, dropping by 3.282 million barrels against an expected drop of 0.922 barrels for the week of 19 August. The Energy Information Administration also reported a drop of 0.661 million barrels against expectations for an increase of 0.58 million barrels.  Gasoline inventories, however,Continue Reading

Despite its name, the Inflation Reduction Act does not, nor is it meant to ease inflation. Instead, the broadly-named $750 billion bill covers health care, taxes, and climate change in what president Joe Biden called a win for the American people and a loss for special interests. Some of the primary constituents of the actContinue Reading

On Wednesday, 17 August (GMT+3), the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released the minutes for its 26-27 July meeting. In it, the Fed has finally decided to take a step back to assess the effects of aggressive monetary tightening. For the past few rate hikes, which saw increases as high as 75 points, the FedContinue Reading

At its most recent earnings call, cryptocurrency platform Coinbase reported a tremendous loss of $1.1 billion in revenue for Q2, pulling the company’s stock down over 10% on Tuesday to $87.68. Earnings per share for the company also largely underperformed, with a loss of $4.98 per share versus an expected $2.65. Quarter-on-quarter user activity hasContinue Reading

On Tuesday evening (GMT+3), the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July was released, showing a year-on-year growth of 8.5% – lower than the expected growth of 8.7% and the previous month’s increase of 9.1%. Core CPI, which excludes volatile categories like food and energy, comes in at an increase of 0.3% month-on-month, lower thanContinue Reading

AMTD Digital, a little-known fintech company based in Hong Kong and listed on the NYSE (HKD) surged over 1500% in five days during last week’s trading. Since its IPO earlier this year in July, the company’s stock has surged from US$7.80 to a high of over US$1670 for a market cap of over $300 billionContinue Reading

On Tuesday evening (GMT+3), the US JOLTs Job Openings data was released, showing 10.689 million job openings, lower than the expected 11 million and the previous month’s value of 11.303 million. This is also the lowest in 9 months.  Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, notes: “Fewer openings likely mean the frothContinue Reading

With the most recent US GDP figures (-0.9%) showing a second back-to-back negative reading, many are saying that the US has entered a recession. This comes after another recession indicator, an inversion of the US Treasury yield curve, began flashing several times starting in April. Most recently, interest on the 2-year note has been higherContinue Reading