To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here . Today’s Points: The US says it has sent Iran a plan to end the conflict ; It’s also deploying 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne to the Gulf; Gold has dropped 27% from peak to trough — some shelter ; The gilt market has the UK’s Labour government Trussed up ; AND: Some more wonderful musical Canadiennes . Golden Stum...
To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here . Today’s Points: The US says it has sent Iran a plan to end the conflict ; It’s also deploying 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne to the Gulf; Gold has dropped 27% from peak to trough — some shelter ; The gilt market has the UK’s Labour government Trussed up ; AND: Some more wonderful musical Canadiennes . Golden Stumble The war in the Middle East has revealed that gold isn’t much of a haven. It’s almost exactly the opposite. The metal has lost about a fifth of its value since it surged to an all-time high in late January. At that point it was buoyed by the belief that the US administration was “debasing” its currency, which peaked when President Donald Trump said he was content to see the dollar move “like a yoyo.” It also provided a haven from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This war has been very different. Gold is roughly where it started the year, but only after an epic roller-coaster ride: The selloff from its January intraday peak to the trough earlier this week was an epic 27%, while the week leading up to Trump’s post threatening to attack Iranian energy installations was its worst five-day decline since 2013. That discouraging precedent was the start of a lengthy bear market: For gold investors, the question is whether this conflict marks a tectonic shift in the underlying assumptions that have driven its rise (like the bear market of 2013, which came as investors grew to accept that the monetary easing that followed the Global Financial Crisis was not going to cause inflation), or a simple reaction to idiosyncratic factors tied to the war. Gold’s trajectory in the last year looks startingly similar to the Nasdaq Composite in the lead-up to the bursting of the dot-com bubble, which offers little comfort: By coincidence, both the Nasdaq and gold topped shortly after hitting the 5,000 landmark, and the two are shown on the same scale above. If we appease the statistical purists by...
Chinese mainland investors’ fund flows into Hong Kong stocks have sharply fluctuated in recent weeks, underscoring a lack of conviction to build long-term positions. Onshore investors sold HK$27.4 billion ($3.5 billion) worth of stocks in Hong Kong on Tuesday via a trading link after buying HK$29.7 billion in the previous session. Their quick turnaround this week reflects a similar pattern earlier...
Chinese mainland investors’ fund flows into Hong Kong stocks have sharply fluctuated in recent weeks, underscoring a lack of conviction to build long-term positions. Onshore investors sold HK$27.4 billion ($3.5 billion) worth of stocks in Hong Kong on Tuesday via a trading link after buying HK$29.7 billion in the previous session. Their quick turnaround this week reflects a similar pattern earlier in the month, when traders dumped shares after a record daily purchase on March 9. The rapid swings suggest investors are still waiting for clearer signs that Hong Kong stocks have bottomed, even as the Hang Seng Index has fallen about 10% from a peak in January. Rather than build positions in favorites like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. , mainland investors appear to be taking a short-term trading approach via exchange-traded funds. “Southbound institutions have been moving in and out of three ETFs quickly in recent days and running swing trades with very quick in-and-out positioning,” said May Zhao, investment director at Star River Securities Ltd. “It’s largely about hedging and liquidity, though some are also using ETFs to bottom‑fish in beaten‑down sectors like tech and healthcare.” The trading activity is mainly concentrated in some of the largest ETFs including the Tracker fund of Hong Kong , coinciding with sharp swings in Hong Kong’s benchmarks. The Hang Seng gauge rose 2.8% on Tuesday, rebounding from a 3.5% drop the previous day. Southbound flows remained modest on Wednesday while the index was little changed. “The gap between index futures and the cash market has been wide enough to make arbitrage worthwhile,” according to CSOP Asset Management Limited in a written response to Bloomberg. “If you are trading through southbound, you really need the most liquid index ETFs as the core of the strategy.”