30/01/2015

Tweets & charts

Daily chart broth

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McDonald's revenues & currency wars

Seems collapsed McDonald's revenues just an effect of "currency wars". Currencies were devaluated, Big Mac USD prices fell, revenues too, nothing special.

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29/01/2015

How many "Apples" in your country?

At the peak of the US corporate earnings reporting season, Apple Inc. reported record revenue and profit for the 4th quarter of 2014 calendar year (or Q1 2015 fiscal year which began in the US in October 2014). Now the Apple Inc. has market capitalization of about 640 billion dollars, which is larger than the GDP of such countries as Sweden, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Venezuela, Algeria and many others (painted in shades of red on the map). US and China are as large as 27-28 AAPL's market caps. India is about 11 "Apples". Japan is 7.5 and the Germany is 5.7 only.

2014 fiscal year was finished with another all-time high in overall corporate profits, both in nominal terms and relative to GDP. Since the end of last recession, profits provide significant contribution to overall US GDP growth. But is this situation any sustainable and just how long it may last? Maybe present year will bring some answers.

Check the graphs below the page to see how US corporate profits evolved over time. You also can note that corporate profits declines for 2 or more quarters tend to precede recessions (see barchart at the bottom).

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28/01/2015

US unemployment & inflation rates

US unemployment (by all measures) are still higher than pre-recession levels and inflation are way lower, so is there any good reason for Fed to hike? Rather opposite: to postpone hikes to later date

More of this on Knoema

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27/01/2015

Tweets & charts

Daily chart melange

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Gender disproportions and female foeticide

In relation with US President Barack Obama's recent visit, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced wide-sweeping reform to address the female foeticide problem, growing in India past decades. As fetus imaging technology has advanced more and more pregnant women in India checking the sex of their unborn child and then, if it is a girl, aborting it. As a result of this, while overall ratio of females to males (feminity ratio) in India gradually improving, the same ratio among newborn babies deteriorating dramatically. If in mid-1970 there was about 94 newborn girls per 100 boys, now its only 90 (and in some areas even worse - check the graph and map of India states) and this is definitely what the United Nations call the "emergency proportions". According to some studies about 2,000 girls are killed every day in India, either by abortion or soon after birth. Breaking this practice – that continues despite laws against it – is part of a shift by Mr. Modi to boost the economy through what he calls “women empowerment.” His campaign is called “Educate the Girl, Save the Girl”.
But this medieval-era female foeticide practice continues not only in India. The China and some other developing Southern Asian nations are the same. And compare what happens in those countries with a situation in developed Asian economies, such as Japan or South Korea.
It must be said that gender disproportions differs significantly around the World. For example, in ex-USSR territories picture is opposite: while feminity ratio among newborns close to normal, the same ratio among total population remarkable higher (due to higher male mortality rates and less male life expectancy). And the countries where gender disproportions, being almost not represented among children, growing by enormous grade for older ages, but in other direction - towards increase of males proportion - are Middle Eastern ones, especially Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman. E. g. in UAE there are about 97 girls per 100 boys 0-1 age and for total ages the number is about 44 only! Some explanations on so called "missing women of Asia" phenomenon could be found in works of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen.
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26/01/2015

Greek elections & challenges

   According to the preliminary results, the left-radical party SYRIZA won the parliamentary elections in Greece. The voting results are very close to the forecast made on the basis of polls (see bar charts). SYRIZA won 10% more votes than in 2012, and will get 149 (vs 71 previously) seats in the new Parliament of Greece which does not provide it with the majority directly, but makes it easy to form the majority in the coalition.
   The main message of SYRIZA in the elections was a rejection of austerity measures imposed on Greece by European Union and the so-called "Troika". At the same time, the leader of SYRIZA Alexis Tsipras confirmed his commitment to this course immediately after the elections, but also stated the absence of intent to declare a default or to leave the Eurozone.
   Broad support of SYRIZA's political platform in Greek society is not surprising. It can be seen that so-called "policy of tightening belts" simply did not work (despite the improved current account), so why should it be continued, and why not to try something different? It should be also noted, that Alexis Tsipras paid attention to the most important current challenges (see the data from Fragile state Index on radar chart below) such as high level of unemployment and poverty, slow economic growth, low level of public trust in the government (due to the fact that the previous government was supported by EU-IMF austerity measures), external enforcements, tight credit conditions, weak banking system, relatively high tax level and weak overall business environment. For that matter, SYRIZA's political platform looks not only like populist one. In fact, it is highly sophisticated, well-designed and based on current economic situation.
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Daily chart soup

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24/01/2015

Markets end of week


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23/01/2015

Tweets & charts

Daily chart stew

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Is Grexit really possible? Poll data and greek elections forecast

   On Sunday Jan 25, the parliamentary elections in Greece will take place. Today the Greek political field consist mainly of all shades of red and brown, and some recent polls shows the left-radical party SYRIZA may get the majority (151) of seats in parliament in a result of the upcoming elections. However, every poll has a margin of error, and individual poll results can be outliers. To make more reasonable estimate, it is better to use average data from all surveys conducted from January 1 by different polling firms that were collected on this Wiki page.

According to the forecast, most likely, SYRIZA will get 146 seats in parliament, which would not give it an absolute majority, but will give an opportunity to get a majority in coalition with some of the smaller parties.

   Such a possibility worries observers who fear a sharp reversal of Greek policy towards rejection of the Euro currency and exit from the European Union (so called Grexit), despite the fact that SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras recently stated that it has no such plans.

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22/01/2015

Tweets & charts

Daily chart minestrone

Liquidity levels on EURFX before ECB
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Thoughts on ECB

  European austerity policy created environment in which low growth rates in most indebted countries coincides with deflation and relatively high borrowing costs. To break this vicious circle somehow what mr. Draghi as head of monetary authority can do? Stimulate economic growth with QE is only he can do, it seems. If QE will large enough it could lower borrowing costs even more and lead economies on the path of growth at last, creating some inflation at the same time... I am long EUR in medium term

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21/01/2015

Billionaires & Paupers. Global inequality and the Forbes

According to data prepared by Oxfam International for Annual Meeting in Davos, in 2014th the wealth of 80 world's richest people exceeded total wealth of more than 3 500 000 000 (three and half billions) people belonging to bottom 50% population of the world by incomes. If growing inequality trend, which got a fresh start since 2009, continues, then top 1% of world population will be wealthier than bottom 99% by the end of next year.

For now, 80 richest billionaires have net worth of about 1.9 trillion dollars and the richest in 2014 according to Forbes was Bill Gates, with net worth of $76 billion. Next one is Carlos Slim from Mexico ($72 bln) and the third is Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega ($64 bln).

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20/01/2015

Ongoing armed conflicts 2015

Since 2014 the armed conflicts and wars have killed more than 214 000 people. Approximately one third of all victims - about 77 000 - claimed the war in Syria. 40 000 of casualties are on account of one of the bloodiest wars of nowadays that are not so often mentioned in media - the Civil war in South Sudan. The war in Ukraine which began in 2014 already took at least 4 843 human lives. Some of ongoing conflicts lasts for years and decades, such as LRA insurgency, Katanga insurgency, Kivu conflict and other wars in Democratic Republic of Congo with more than 407 000 in their total death toll, internal conflict in Burma (Myanmar) ongoing since 1948, or raging drug wars in Mexico, taking about 5000-10000 victims annually.

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19/01/2015

Manufacturing & inflation

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Inlation, Disinflation & Industrial Production

Disinflationary trend in developed economies, started about 2011, continues. As latest World Bank's Data shows, inflation in developed world in December was at lowest levels since 2008-2009 financial crisis and its clearly going to enter the deflation zone soon. But industrial production, in general, keeps growing, though at a slower pace. In some countries the picture is quite different. E. g., stagflation environment (industrial production contraction accompanied by high inflation rate) can be noticed in India, Indonesia, Brazil & Russia last months. Also, Japan somewhat stagflationary. Recent developments of situation in Ukraine looks like catastrophe (double-digits contraction in industrial production).
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18/01/2015

Tweets & Charts

Daily chart hotch-potch

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17/01/2015

Productivity...

... is the difference between developed & developing economies

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Markets end of week


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16/01/2015

Global Muslim population & projections

Do you know which countries are homes to most people of the Muslim population of the world? If you think that this is the Middle East - you are not right. Actually, largest Muslim country is Indonesia - about 205 millions of people who affiliated with Islam lives there. The next are Pakistan and India and on 4th place is Bangladesh. The overall Muslim population of the world increased from 1990 to 2010 by more than 600 million. And by 2030, according to the estimates of Pew Research Center, there will be about 2,2 billions of people, who affiliated with Islam and they will be about 26% of total world population.

It is interesting that if to speak about not absolute increases, but about changes in shares of Muslims in the population of one or another country (the so called islamization process), most of such changes going to happen up in Europe (especially on the north) and Canada (look at the third map to observe the past and future changes).

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