Weekly overview: US employment numbers; Bond yields fall globally over the past month; Stock markets volatility

US employers added only 103,000 jobs in March as against 185,000 new jobs expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Jobs have been added for 90 straight months, the longest phase on record. January’s job addition number was revised sharply downward from 239,000 to 176,000. Wage growth was 2.7% which was largely down to tax cuts driven wage rises earlier during the year rather than real wage inflation.

Any addition under 80,000 new jobs a month would cause the unemployment rate to rise. As we covered earlier, unemployment has always hit record multi year lows on an average 6 to 12 months before the start of a recession.

The graphs below might help visualise it better, Continue reading “Weekly overview: US employment numbers; Bond yields fall globally over the past month; Stock markets volatility”

Parts of the European Union have seen nominal GDP per capita fall between 2007 and 2017

We have been analysing some numbers from the latest releases from Eurostat (the official statistical office of the European Union), the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan.

We will be posting several findings in the next couple of days. We begin with GDP per capita between 2007 and 2017 for countries which are part of the European Union based on a statistical release from the Eurostat.

EU GDP Per Capita 2007 to 2017
Data Source: Eurostat

Continue reading “Parts of the European Union have seen nominal GDP per capita fall between 2007 and 2017”

The Athens Stock Exchange General Index has returned 19% over the last year (but lost 85% since 2007); Australian interest rates are lower than that of the US for the first time in 18 years

The Greek stock market has been one of the best performing markets in the world over the past year. The Athens Stock Exchange General Index has returned 19% over the last year. But it has lost 85% (5334.5 to today’s close at 781.14) in value since October 2007. Continue reading “The Athens Stock Exchange General Index has returned 19% over the last year (but lost 85% since 2007); Australian interest rates are lower than that of the US for the first time in 18 years”

Spotify’s direct listing (and comparison to Netflix); ECB sells bond after spotting an error after 2 years; Nomura to hire fewest graduates in five years as it spends more on robots

Spotify’s direct listing

As reported earlier, Spotify listed directly on the NYSE today at an opening price of $165.90, the stock ended the first day of trading in New York at $149.01, up from the reference price of $132 set yesterday by the NYSE.

Spotify has offered a streaming service since 2008 and has 159 million monthly active users including 71 million paid subscribers globally. It generated €4 billion (about $5billion) in revenues last year, up over 40% from 2016, and a €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) net loss compared with about €542 million ($664 million) in 2016. The company’s average revenue per user has declined from €6.84 in 2015 to €5.32 in 2017 as it promotes its “Family Plan” which allows several users to share one account. Analyst reckon that Apple Music will overtake Spotify in terms of paid subscribers in under 2 years, yet the company is now valued at $28 billion (5.6 times revenues). Continue reading “Spotify’s direct listing (and comparison to Netflix); ECB sells bond after spotting an error after 2 years; Nomura to hire fewest graduates in five years as it spends more on robots”

The problem Asset Managers have is that they have money that must be invested

The 10 largest asset managers in the world, a list that includes BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Allianz, UBS and JP Morgan Asset Management have some $32 trillion assets under management (at the end of 2017). The entire space of asset managers have around $65 trillion of assets under management.

Fund managers have over $3 trillion of new inflows a year, primarily down to private pensions (governments keep pushing it given the looming state pension crisis). These fund managers get paid as long as they invest the money. There lies the problem – they have to invest it. It isn’t as simple as it sounds. Continue reading “The problem Asset Managers have is that they have money that must be invested”

Not an April Fools’ Day joke – this really is how the US Dollar has performed against each currency of the world over the past one year

Here is the performance (1-year % change) of the US Dollar (USD) mapped against currencies and countries around the world (the data set is after the map),

USD 1-year change mapped (data as of 31-March-2018)
USD 1-year change mapped (data as of 31-March-2018)

Continue reading “Not an April Fools’ Day joke – this really is how the US Dollar has performed against each currency of the world over the past one year”