East Europe & Central Asia

Highlights Commercial oil inventories finished the first quarter with a minimal draw. This was largely due to a surge in production and sales by Gulf producers and Russia at the end of 2016 and earlier this year, as well as slightly lower demand. Despite…

Highlights The sequential improvement in global trade is less pronounced than the annual growth rates in the Asian trade data imply. China has been instrumental to the recovery in global trade but mainland's credit and fiscal spending impulse has rolled…

Feature Game theory teaches us that "credible threats" are an important part of creating stable equilibria. To enforce a credible threat, a geopolitical actor must have the capability and willingness to act on a standing threat. For example, if a country A…

Highlights WTI and Brent forward curves remain more or less backwardated beginning in 2018. On its face, this indicates hedgers and speculators are trading and positioning as if the OPEC - non-OPEC production deal negotiated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (…

Highlights Dear Client, In this analysis, my colleague Bob Ryan of the BCA Commodity & Energy Strategy argues that there is more upside to oil prices. First, Russia and OPEC will continue to coordinate their production for at least the rest of the year…

Highlights The end game for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Russia and their respective allies is fairly obvious: Remove enough production from the market to draw down storage and make the oil-supply curve, once again, more inelastic. This would allow…

Highlights EM equity valuations are neutral. Relative to the U.S., EM share prices do offer some value, but this primarily reflects elevated valuations within the S&P 500. According to the cyclically-adjusted P/E ratio, EM stocks are cheap for…

Highlights Trump's agenda has not derailed ... at least not yet; Europe remains a red herring ... as the Dutch showed; Turkey cannot restart Europe's immigration crisis; Supply-side reforms are still likely in France; The ECB will remain dovish for…

Highlights Eurostoxx50 versus S&P500 boils down to a simple choice: Banco Santander, BNP Paribas and ING; or Apple, Microsoft and Google? Right now, we would rather own the three tech stocks than the three banks - which necessarily means…

Highlights Substituting certain imports with local production will ensure that Russia's inflation rate will become less sensitive to fluctuations in the exchange rate and more sensitive to local wages/unit labor costs. In such a scenario, the central…