China rally or speculative balloon?
As of today, February 27, the Shanghai Composite is up 13.53% in the last month. The beginning of a sustained turnaround or another speculative balloon ready to pop? It's too early to tell, unfortunately. The factors that could be inflating a speculative balloon are...China’s stock markets re-open to dose of negative news
Welcome back! The Shanghai and other Chinese stock markets re-opened today after the Spring Festival/Lunar New Year holiday. And investors and traders were greeted with a dose of bad news. First, according to the official China Daily, China's economic growth rate will...China GDP growth “perfect”–I hope not dangerously perfect
China’s GDP grew at a 6.8% year over year rate in fourth quarter. That represents a slight improvement on the expected 6.7% growth rate and an absolutely “perfect” continuation of the 6.8% year over year growth recorded in the third quarter. Data this good from China always raises the suspicion of either manipulation of the numbers or intervention by the Beijing government.
New credit in China threatens to grow out of control–again
To subscribe to JAM you need to fill in some details below including, ahem, some info on how you'll pay us. A subscription is $199 (although if you're subscribing with one of our special offers it will be lower) for a year for ongoing and continuing access to the...China’s increasingly frantic, increasingly dangerous game of financial markets Whac-A-Mole
China faces a depreciating currency, a bond market that has switched from rally to sell off, huge outflows of cash, and what looks like a resurgence of inflation. Fixing one of these problems alone would be a huge challenge to the People’s Bank. The combination leaves the central bank with a situation where fixing one problem may just make the others worse. Increasingly the People’s Bank looks like it is rushing from problem to problem, giving the crisis-of-day a whack and then rushing to figure out what’s likely to pop up next that will deserve a bash with the mallet.
Notes You Need for December 8: China bad debt, automotive semiconductors, iPhones, Next Big Thing, Macao ATM limits, Chamber of Commerce to work to keep NAFTA despite Trump promise
To subscribe to JAM you need to fill in some details below including, ahem, some info on how you'll pay us. A subscription is $199 (although if you're subscribing with one of our special offers it will be lower) for a year for ongoing and continuing access to the...China’s 6.7% GDP growth built on a mountain of new debt
China’s 6.7% GDP growth hinged on another quarter’s worth of debt financing for an economy that’s already eyebrows deep in debt. Money supply climbed at a 13.4% rate in the quarter as the People’s Bank continued to pump cash into China’s economy. New loans by Chinese banks climbed to 1370 billion yuan in March. Aggregate growth in new financing was more than double the rate in the fourth quarter.
China’s markets rise on hope that leaders will open cash spigots at next week’s plenum
On the agenda for next week’s plenary session of China’s Communist Party “reforms” to state-owned enterprises and more stimulus for China’s economy
A third big volatility event in three days? Is China telling us something?
The default today, April 20, of Chinese real estate company Kaisa Group Holdings, the first ever in China’s real estate sector, is a big deal for two reasons.
Scary corporate default scenarios build in China and Brazil
To subscribe to JAM you need to fill in some details below including, ahem, some info on how you'll pay us. A subscription is $199 (although if you're subscribing with one of our special offers it will be lower) for a year for ongoing and continuing access to the...Write offs from bad loans at China’s big banks soar by 127% in 2013
China’s five biggest banks increased their write off of bad loans by 127% in 2013 over 2012 levels. And the rising level of write offs along with the puzzlingly low ratio of non-performing loans at these banks has raised suspicions that banks are manipulating write offs to prevent the non-performing loan ratios from rising so quickly that they set off alarms in financial markets.