After a rough 2013, times haven’t been any easier for emerging markets investors lately. The Argentinian Peso and Turkish Lira crisis as well as a risk of a liquidity short fall in China have all taken their toll since mid last week.

Apple results are just out with the shares down around 6% to $517 in after hours trading due to lower than expected guidance for the second fiscal quarter between $42-44 billion versus analysts expecting of $46 billion.

BG Group is down 15% or 185p to 1068p due to a surprise announcement before its usual early February results as problems in Egypt have forced it to cut earnings and output forecasts for this year and 2015.

Its quite a week in terms of news from the U.S especially after a 318 point drop on the Dow Jones Industrials on Friday. The focus is the Federal Reserve’s FOMC meeting, the last with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and some big earnings announcements with the peak of the fourth quarter 2013 reports due this week.

Despite all the talk of Iranian oil entering the market due to a potential easing, worries about China and the shale oil and gas boom in the USA the oil price is remaining remarkably resilient.

The markets never go up in a straight line and after weeks of enthusiasm driven by bullish statements from the Federal Reserve and strong fourth quarter 2013 earnings from the likes of Microsoft, there has been an inevitable mild sell off.

Is Bitcoin a return to a system similar to the Gold Standard? Maybe, but a system based on a physical asset that can be sold to realise value is very different to a digital algorithm with all the risks of hacking and fraud.

China’s economy grew by 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013 from a year earlier according to the latest data released early this morning at 2am, confirming the country is entering a period of slowing growth not seen since the late 1990’s.

I came across an article in the FT called “Gold mining: Squandered opportunity” and the sentiment expressed in it reflects the over exuberance and waste which has been endemic in not only the gold industry but in many, many commodity companies over the last few years. When prices were high, management took their eye off the ball on their cost base and went all guns blazing developing trophy assets in far flung, high risk areas around the world. The  [read more →]

An interesting interview with emerging markets veteran, Mark Mobius, of Templeton Emerging Markets. He believes the fundamentals of emerging markets are strong despite the falls in 2013.