The Markets

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – The big week for monetary policy is underway and market color points to nothing more than position fine-tuning until the first Federal Reserve headlines hit the wire. Or maybe, until early Wednesday morning for those intraday punters looking to make a quick run on the market. It could all prove anti-climactic in the end, especially if the Bank of England and the European Central Bank ask for more…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Bitcoin is staging a comeback along with other riskier assets on Monday, bouncing back from its Black-Friday lows.  The largest digital asset rose as much as 3.4% during the session to trade around $58,266. Other coins also posted snap-backs, with the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index adding 5.5% at one point. So-called alternative coins like Polkadot and Dogecoin gained too.  A brutal selloff Friday saw investors fleeing a number of…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Kenya’s securities exchange has moved a step closer to requiring companies to start Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG, disclosure and introducing an index for the category. The Nairobi Securities Exchange published its ESG guidance manual on Monday, with a view of aligning information reported by companies listed in Kenya with international standards. The NSE and the East African nation’s Capital Markets Authority are in discussions to introduce an ESG index…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Emerging-market currency traders will have to pick their fights carefully for the coming year after a surprisingly strong dollar and rising U.S. Treasury yields steamrolled almost everything in the developing world in 2021. With investors ramping up expectations for the Federal Reserve and other developed-market central banks to tighten policy, the likes of the Brazilian real and Hungarian forint have been weighed down by inflation and political concerns even as local…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – A short-lived reprieve for emerging-market carry trades funded in dollars looks to be over, with an upsurge in U.S. inflation making the outlook increasingly treacherous. A Bloomberg index of these bets has dropped more than 4% in the past two months, the biggest slide since March 2020 for a strategy of borrowing in the greenback and investing in developing-nation currencies. The quickest U.S. inflation in three decades is putting pressure on the Federal Reserve to…