January in Figures
January 30, 2015
2014 got off to an extraordinarily volatile start in the marketplace, with huge declines in long-term interest rates, big gains in the yen and dollar, wide swings in equities not all in the same direction, a 9.4% drop in oil prices, and a recovery of 8.0% in the price of gold.
The month saw huge surprises from the Swiss National Bank, which abruptly abandoned a 3-year-long policy of preventing the franc from appreciating beyond 1.2000 per euro, and the Central Bank of Russia, which today cut its interest rate by 200 basis points after raising such by 900 basis points combined in November and December.
The global economy is struggling to return to a pre-2007 sense of normalcy, which would involve huge but unsynchronized monetary policy changes along the way. In this continuing transition, central bank news has become the story rather than a neutral player reacting appropriately to the story, and the chronology of January 2015 raised doubts about whether the process of policy normalization is in fact an achievable mission. The Second World War provided that bridge to get past the Great Depression, but no imaginable catalyst of that sort is appearing to play a similar role now.
| 10-Yr Yield | 12/31/14 | 01/30/15 | Chg vs End-2014 |
| U.S. | 2.07% | 1.64% | -43 Basis Points |
| Germany | 0.54% | 0.30% | -24 |
| Japan | 0.31% | 0.27% | -4 |
| U.K. | 1.75% | 1.33% | -42 |
| Canada | 1.79% | 1.35% | -44 |
| Switzerland | 0.29% | -0.11% | -40 |
| 3-month rates | Chg vs End-2014 | ||
| U.S. | 0.26% | 0.26% | 0 Basis Points |
| Euroland | 0.06% | 0.03% | -3 |
| Japan | 0.11% | 0.10% | -1 |
| U.K. | 0.56% | 0.56% | 0 |
| Swiss | -0.06% | -0.85% | -79 |
| FX | Pct Chg in USD | ||
| EUR/USD | 1.2099 | 1.1300 | +7.1% |
| USD/JPY | 119.70 | 117.41 | -1.9% |
| USD/CHF | 0.9942 | 0.9183 | -7.6% |
| GBP/USD | 1.5579 | 1.5062 | +3.4% |
| AUD/USD | 0.8168 | 0.7785 | +4.9% |
| NZD/USD | 0.7796 | 0.7277 | +7.1% |
| USD/CAD | 1.1620 | 1.2710 | +9.4% |
| USD/CNY | 6.2020 | 6.2500 | +0.8% |
| Equities | Chg vs End-2014 | ||
| S&P 500 | 2059 | 1995 | -3.1% |
| Nasdaq | 4736 | 4635 | -2.1% |
| Djia | 17823 | 17165 | -3.7% |
| Dax | 9806 | 10694 | +9.1% |
| Nikkei | 17451 | 17674 | +1.3% |
| Ftse | 6566 | 6749 | +2.8% |
| Canada TSE | 14632 | 14673 | +0.3% |
| Swiss SMI | 8983 | 8385 | -6.7% |
| Commodities | Chg vs End-2014 | ||
| Oil, $ per barrel | 53.27 | 48.24 | -9.4% |
| Gold, $ per ounce | 1183.90 | 1278.30 | +8.0% |
Copyright Larry Greenberg 2015. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: bonds, foreign exchange, gold, Oil, stocks
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