Wall Street

Contagion hits financial markets as Great Unwinding continues

Crude oil prices continued to fall towards $30/bbl last week.  Markets are finally starting to recognise, as the BBC reported last year, that ‘China fooled the world‘ with its stimulus programme. It had not suddenly become middle-class by Western standards in 2009.  Instead, aided by developed country stimulus policies, its own stimulus had helped create […]

SuperCycle era ends for analyst ‘buy’ judgements

The above chart may well become a collectors’ piece in time. It appears in a fascinating article in the latest Harvard Business Review, which focuses on why stock market analysts in the USA (U), Europe (E), Asia (A) and Latin America (L) issue ‘buy’ r…

Wal-Mart sends a message

The blog is a great believer in the predictive power of the retail sector.

Wal-Mart and Tesco were the first to spot the downturn in the summer of 2007, a year before it became obvious to everyone else.

Now Wal-Mart’s problems are providing some impo…