Jun 15th, 2010
I apologize for waiting two weeks since my last post, but my schedule has been crazier than usual what with the SED meeting and a number of conferences and visitors to Beijing. What’s more, next week I will go to New York and environs for a week, followed by a week in Italy. It always [...]
Jan 1st, 2010
I just got back to Beijing three days ago and am still seriously jet-lagged, but I wanted to post a piece today anyway. Last night I celebrated the new year at D22, where a group of very cool musicians (including the amazing Snapline, for one of their very few shows this year and perhaps one [...]
Apr 30th, 2009
The Shanghai stock market had a good day today – its last trading day before the May holiday and the very long four-day weekend. The SSE Composite is up 4.84% and trading volume was up substantially too. What seemed to propel the market today was a bunch of companies reporting good earnings, especially the banks [...]
Mar 11th, 2009
Deflation and debt On Monday CPI and PPI numbers for February came out. CPI was down 1.6% year and year and PPI was down 4.5%, in line with or slightly below expectations and, according to Bloomberg, the highest rate of deflation among the 78 countries they follow. Some of this may be caused by one-off [...]
In all the worry about the trade numbers I haven’t discussed another data release last week which, until recently, would have been the most important piece of economic news for me. It was only a few months ago that we were intensely debating the cause of rising inflation in China. Now, inflation is clearly receding. [...]
Nov 11th, 2008
On Sunday I suggested that the newly-announced RMB 4 trillion fiscal package would cause markets to surge, but that the rally would not last very long as analysts began examining the numbers more closely. In fact the duration of the rally was even shorter than I expected. On Monday the markets did indeed surge, with [...]
Nov 3rd, 2008
There’s still no respite for Chinese stocks. The market bounced around violently today with the SSE Composite making at least eight or nine up or down moves of more than 1%, before closing the day at 1720, down 0.5% for the day. This is the lowest closing in over two years (it closed at 1722 [...]
Sep 13th, 2008
There is still no respite for the Chinese stock market (or, for that matter, of any of the other global stock markets). On Thursday the SSE composite fell more or less in a straight line, losing 72 points, or 3.3%, rising a single point on Friday to close at 2079. We are now less than [...]
Sep 10th, 2008
Another terrible day on the stock market saw the SSE Composite, led kicking and screaming by energy and financial companies, trade more or less straight down by 3.2% to close the day at 2203. The brilliant autumn weather in Beijing (and the best week for air quality I have seen in seven years of living [...]
The Chinese stock market had a fairly volatile day, with the SSE Composite bouncing up and down by 1% or more several times during the day before it closed at 2306, down 0.8% for the day. I think we have to go back to end of 2006 before we can find a lower close. We [...]