The Chinese Shanghai Composite index has had an incredible rise over the last few months. Today it closed down 5% at 2,856 after rising as high as 3,090 at one point. The index is up 39.5% for 2014, 24% in the last month and 32% in the last 12 months helped by Chinese retail investors piling into the market causing a rise of bubble like proportions.

The Dow Jones Industrials are within touching distance of the 18,000 mark with the index recently up 41 points to 17,941 with the S&P 500 up 4 points to 2,076 as the US non-farm payrolls number for November didn’t disappoint.

The Russian Rouble is currently trading at 53 Roubles to the US dollar, an all time low. Earlier this year a dollar bought less than 35 roubles. The collapse of the currency has been in part due to the sanctions imposed following Crimean/Ukranian crisis but more recently by the steep fall in the price of oil below $70 a barrel. This petro-economy is reliant on oil to balance the budget with oil and gas providing nearly two thirds of  [read more →]

It feels like being back in the dark days of 2009 the way that oil shares are being hammered by the markets right now with Brent crude oil down yet another $1.5 to $68.5 this morning. Back in June Brent was selling for $113 a barrel!