Global ETF News Older than One Year
World Gold Council: Investment Commentary: Looking into Q4 2014
October 27, 2014-- Gold is up, defying expectations
The gold price is up 3.4% year-to-date (as of 20 October 2014) amid record low volatility. The fact that gold has been above its 2013-end price for all but two days this year has defied predictions from market analysts, who have generally been expecting lower prices.
What does the current macroeconomic environment mean for gold?
In our view, there are four main reasons investors should view gold as a valuable portfolio component today:
Positive economic growth is supportive of gold's long-term demand
Rising interest rates do not necessarily push gold prices down
Gold’s cost effectiveness makes it an attractive portfolio hedge compared to other strategies
Constraints in mine production and falling gold recycling have kept the market in balance.
Source: World Gold Council (WGC)
IMF Working paper-Global Risks and Collective Action Failures: What Can the International Community Do?
October 24, 2014-- Summary: Abstract What do climate change, global financial crises, pandemics, and fragility and conflict have in common? They are all examples of global risks that can cross geographical and generational boundaries and whose mismanagement can reverse gains in development and jeopardize the well-being of generations. Managing risks such as these becomes a global public good, whose benefits also cross boundaries, providing a rationale for collective action facilitated by the international community.
Yet, as many public goods, provision of global public goods suffer from collective action failures that undermine international coordination. This paper discusses the obstacles to addresing these global risks effectively, highlighting their implications for the current juncture. It claims that remaining gaps in information, resources, and capacity hamper accumulation and use of knowledge to triger appropriate action, but diverging national interests remain the key impediment to cooperation and effectiveness of global efforts, even when knowledge on the risks and their consequences are well understood. The paper argues that managing global risks requires a cohesive international community that enables its stakeholders to work collectively around common goals by facilitating sharing of knowledge, devoting resources to capacity building, and protecting the vulnerable. When some countries fail to cooperate, the international community can still forge cooperation, including by realigning incentives and demonstrating benefit from incremental steps toward full cooperation.
Source: IMF
Natural Gas: The New Gold
October 22, 2014--Natural gas is creating a new reality for economies around the world. Three major developments of the past few years have thrust natural gas into the spotlight: the shale gas revolution in the United States, the reduction in nuclear power supply following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, and geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
What's cooking
Over the last decade, the discovery of massive quantities of unconventional gas resources around the world has transformed global energy markets, and reshaped the geography of global energy trade. Consumption of natural gas now accounts for nearly 25 percent of global primary energy consumption. Meanwhile, the share of oil has declined from 50 percent in 1970 to about 30 percent today.
Source: IMF
IMF Working paper-Are Non-Euro Area EU Countries Importing Low Inflation from the Euro Area?
October 22, 2014--Summary: The synchronized disinflation across Europe since end-2011 raises the question of whether non-euro area EU countries are affected by the undershooting of the euro area inflation target. To shed light on this issue, we estimate an open-economy, New Keynsian Phillips curve, in which we control for imported inflation.
Regression results suggest that falling food and energy prices have been the main disinflationary driver. But low core inflation in the euro area has also had a clear and significant impact.
Countries with more rigid exchange-rate regimes and higher share of foreign value added in domestic demand have been more affected. The scope for monetary response to low inflation in non-euro area EU countries depends on concerns about financial stability and unanchoring of inflationary expectations, as well as on exchange rate regime and capital flows dynamics.
Source: IMF
Citi buys Deutsche commodities trading book in expansion push
October 20, 2014--Citigroup Inc has bought Deutsche Bank AG's energy and metals book, a source familiar with the matter said, in the latest sign of expansion from the U.S. firm in commodities trading as rivals retrench.
Citi won Deutsche's oil, metals and power books this summer and autumn, the source said, after a bidding round that saw several Wall Street firms and trading houses chasing the opportunity to take on the positions of a once top-five commodities bank.
Source: Reuters
DECPG Weekly Economic Brief--October 17, 2014
October 17, 2014--China has been pursuing a comprehensive program of structural reforms since November 2013. The program aims to rebalance the
economy from its reliance on investment toward consumption.
The Chinese authorities announced a comprehensive program of structural
reform measures in the Third Plenum Session in November 2013. Among
these, state-owned enterprise (SOE) and land reforms are likely to have the largest
growth impact.
Rather than privatizing SOEs, the reform aims to remove some of their privileges and encourage competition. The land reform has the potential to increase productivity of the predominantly household-owned agricultural sector. However, these two reforms are among the most difficult to implement and would succeed only if pre-requisite fiscal and hukou (China’s system of household registration to which social benefits are tied) reforms are also undertaken. The transfer of land from low-productivity household farmers to more efficient agribusiness would be supported by hukou reform which includes a gradual easing of registration restrictions and eventual portability of social benefits.
Source: World Bank
IMF Working paper-Determinants of Financial Market Spillovers: The Role of Portfolio Diversification, Trade, Home Bias, and Concentration
October 17, 2014-- Summary: This paper defines financial market spillovers as the comovement between two countries' financial markets and analyzes financial market spillovers over the period 2001-12 through four channels: bilateral portfolio investment, bilateral trade, home bias, and country concentration. The paper finds that, if a country has a large amount of bilateral portfolio exposure in another country, these two countries' comovement of bond yields are large.
Also, countries' geographical preferences impact financial spillovers; if a country has a stronger home bias, the country could have less spillovers from foreign financial markets. A policy implication from this result is that, if countries become less home-biased and have a greater amount of portfolio investment assets, they should strengthen prudential regulations to mitigate against rising risks of financial spillovers (or risk greater volatility owing to comovement with foreign markets).
Source: IMF
Declines in commodity prices likely to continue through 2015, says WB report
October 16, 2014--Prices of most commodities, particularly oil, are expected to remain weak for the remainder of this year and through much of 2015, says the World Bank's latest issue of Commodity Markets Outlook, released today.
Growing concern over a slowdown in the Euro Area and emerging economies, a strong US dollar, a well-supplied oil market and good crop prospects have contributed to a weakening of many commodity prices since the summer. The World Bank energy price index declined by about 6 percent during the third quarter, after being broadly stable in the first half of the year.
"A broad-based expansion in commodity supply is coinciding with weakness in global growth, especially in emerging economies, where most of the demand expansion has been taking place," said Ayhan Kose, Director of the World Bank's Development Prospects Group.
view the World Bank Commodity Markets Outlook-October 2014 view the Infographic-Commodity Forecasts Just Released
Source: World Bank
Deutsche Borse partners with African Stock Exchange
Moreover, market participants in Africa will have technical access to a large pan-European trader network.
"The trading system is based on very stable and reliable technology, and also stands out due to its low latency. This high-level technology used by Deutsche Börse at its own trading venues-Xetra and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange-makes the markets more transparent and secure.
Source: Deutsche Börse
World's Risks Loom Large at Annual Meetings
Among them: much swifter action on the Ebola epidemic. "We have to get high-quality treatment and prevention services in those three countries immediately," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim at a press conference following the Development Committee meeting.
"The humanitarian response, the public health response, and the response that can blunt the economic impact are all the same."
Source: World Bank
First pan-African exchange to open in 2015 / Easier access for Xetra users to markets in Africa
October 16, 2014--
The African Stock Exchange (AFSX) plans to use the technology and support services of Deutsche Börse's Xetra trading venue. The AFSX is a start-up based in Mauritius with the objective of offering securities trading for the whole of Africa. Xetra trading participants will have easier access to the African financial markets in future through the Deutsche Börse infrastructure.
October 11, 2014--Ebola, climate change, lack of money for crucial infrastructure- the world's risks loomed large as the World Bank Group-IMF Annual Meetings drew to a close. But solutions, too, were on the table.
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