Macroeconomics

Over the past two weeks, the world was in the grip of the issues we have been dealing with for some time, added to by the murder of the Russian opposition leader, which raised questions about the safety opposition in Mr Putin’s country.

The crisis in Ukraine remains unresolved and one has to hope a solution can be found soon. Russia’s neighbours are becoming increasingly concerned and this can be seen in Latvia trying move away from dependence on Russian gas.

The situation with Greece hasn’t changed much. Positions have been taken, but no solutions have been found. The Greek government is talking to everyone around the globe in the attempt to find additional allies and assistance to solve the financial woes. At the end of last week, the Greek government surprised the European Union again by declaring they have less money than had previously been thought.

The financial markets are not taking too much notice. Stock markets remain firm with investors failing to find any other attractive investments in this time of low interest rates. Energy prices have been rebounding in the past weeks and this has also increased consumer prices in various countries, which is creating a bit of inflation.

Other commodities are not showing price movement, which is usually an indication that investors are uncertain about the market trends. This is not surprising considering the unclear pictures in many parts of the world.

It was again the currency market which delivered most of the sensations in the financial sector. In particular, the euro fell significantly in the past two weeks and ended Friday at levels around 1.0850 against the US dollar. We might recall that this is almost $.30 from the levels we had been recording last summer. One doesn’t need to be a financial pundit to understand that such kind of movements in such a short period of time are creating massive tensions at a corporate level.

Market intelligence

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