A strong day for all equity markets and worth noting that the S&P Futures Index is back to the level it was at at the beginning of March. So pricing reflects plenty of optimism that the worst is behind us and buoyed on a wave of even cheaper funding, equity markets can resume their March upwards. So no bad news priced in which historically suggests that equity markets are vulnerable to any such bad news.
Pre crisis in early March PLN traded at 3.80 versus USD. An abrupt slump to 4.25 by the end of March and now PLN is on the way back and trading at 4.05 as fears on both the pandemic and the economic fallout in Poland have receded.
Almost 60 years ago In 1962 historic tensions between China and India spilt over into warfare due to border infractions. Scroll forward to today and once again tented encampments have sprung up In the Galway Valley due to the Chinese Belt and Road initiative which they have partnered in that region with Pakistan, India’s long time foe. China does not like the investment that India is making in roads and infrastructure in order to compete with China. So far the situation has not escalated to the level of interfering with the polo that is still being played and which Ladakh is famous for.
This day in 1703 Tsar Peter the Great added to his already impressive accomplishments by founding St Petersburg despite understandable misgivings from his subjects that such an area of marshy swampland with all attendant inconveniences such as clouds of biting mosquitos might not be the best of ideas. However of the then population of Tsarist Russia which was 14 million, approximately 95% were serfs which meant that they “belonged” to Tsar Peter so his wage bill was next to nothing and there was plenty of it!
Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder
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