Economy

Commodities from an index perspective were close to flat on the week. Behind this perceived calm, however, some major developments unfolded – as can be seen in the table below.

Crude oil…

Commodities showed broad-based gains during a week that was driven by central bank action or perhaps (as it turned out) no action at all. The "hawkish no hike" from the Federal Open Market…

Precious metals have been back on the defensive this past week with the shake-out in both bonds and stocks hurting the general level of the appetite for risk in the market. Next week's central…

The Bloomberg Commodity Index, which tracks the performance of 20 major commodities split evenly between energy, metals and agriculture, continues to show a gain of more than 10% in the year to…

I am writing this chronicle from South Africa which is almost as far away from Europe and the constant and never ending Brexit talk as you can come. It's hard even here to avoid the turbulence…

Since the international growth scenario announced by Coface last March, prospects have deteriorated slightly, and growth would appear to remain below 3% in 2016 for the 6th consecutive year.…

Commodities continued their strong ascent with broad-based gains across most sectors with the exception of industrial metals. Towards the end of another strong week, however, some profit taking…

The commodity sector was trading close to unchanged for a second week. Weakness in energy and especially precious metals was offset by gains across the agriculture and industrial metal sectors. …

Supply chain resilience is vital to robust business performance. Threats to resilience—such as depressed oil prices, natural catastrophes and the spread of terrorism—are keeping financial…

Commodity markets had a strong week with broad-based gains seen across a sector that has been under siege for quite some time. The Bloomberg Commodity index rose 2.4% with metals – both precious…

January proved to be a very volatile month for commodities and the final week was no exception, with the oil market continuing to attract most of the attention. Speculation of a so far…

Two-thirds of CEOs (66%) see more threats facing their businesses today than three years ago.  Just over a quarter (27%) believe global growth will improve over the next 12 months, a decline of…

The energy sector suffered its worst weekly setback since June 2011 as the imminent return of Iranian crude and milder weather in the US sent oil and natural gas sharply lower. These…

The risk landscape for businesses is substantially changing in 2016. While businesses are less concerned about the impact of traditional industrial risks such as natural catastrophes or fire,…

Now that the US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates for the first time in nine years, investors want to know how this rate-hiking cycle might proceed and, more important, how markets will…

On Friday, China’s central bank, the PBOC, posted a brief note on its website to indicate that it would publish a new and broad measure of the renminbi exchange rate, which it dubbed the "RMB…

Commodities were back on the defensive for a second week running with China growth worries, a stronger dollar and high inventories of key commodities such as oil and aluminum continuing to drag…

We've long been sceptical about the Chinese economy’s potential and our below-consensus forecasts for growth reflects these doubts. Amid the chaos now erupting in China, one thing is absolutely…