There is something different about Greece’s new finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, which markets don’t yet seem to have woken up to. He speaks the truth.

Things didn’t look great for the euro earlier today with the currency trading against the dollar at a fresh 11 year low of 1.10976 yesterday on the news that the left wing Syriza party had won the Greek election over the weekend.

After last week’s dramatic decision by the Swiss Central Bank to remove the ceiling on the swiss franc against the euro the repercussions for many FX brokerages are ongoing. Some brokers claim that they only act as an intermediary taking positions made by clients as opposed to acting as a counterparty.

The eagerly anticipated quarter four 2014 GDP data for China was published earlier today and it painted a disappointing picture though broadly ahead of analyst expectations.

Last Thursday’s surprise move by the Swiss Central Bank to remove the currency ceiling against the euro had dramatic implications and hit many Foreign Exchange brokers hard. T

Chinese shares had a record 7.7% drop today after an unprecedented 53% gain in 2014 after financial regulators finally clamped down on speculators buying shares on margin. The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 260 points to close at 3117, the largest fall since June 2008 after the index hit a 65 month high on Friday. Prior to today’s losses, the index was up 4.4% for the month to date with financials dropping 9.6%, with all 14 banking stocks down by their maximum  [read more →]

After a 6% fall in the price of Brent Crude yesterday to just under $53 a barrel, it is down yet another 3% to $51.50 a barrel

The euro has continued its slide against the US dollar, recently trading at 1.195 to the dollar, a nine year low. In May last year the euro was trading as high as 1.39 to the dollar.

It proved to be a fairly subdued end to the trading year with the US markets moving down on the final session of 2014 but showing strong gains for the year as a whole. The S&P 500 finished at 2,059, a 1% decline on the day and an 11.4% gain for the index during the year. The narrower based Dow Industrials finished at 17,823, below the key 18,000 market and ahead 7.5% for 2014.

Comments yesterday from Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi that the kingdom was determined to maintain market share and would not cut production, even if the price of crude fell even further, makes it likely that oil prices will not rebound strongly from the current $60 level in 2015, without a major geopolitical event.