The man in charge of bond investment at Norway’s biggest bank said monetary stimulus would save the world — for now.
Next month, the European Central Bank (ECB) might step in to rescue the region’s “dysfunctional banking system,” DNB Asset Management fixed income head Svein Aage Aanes said.
“Many are a bit skeptical but I still think the central banks have some dry gunpowder left,” Aanes said on Thursday in an interview in Oslo. “The ECB can do much. This will calm down.”
The banking sector needs to be rescued, with yields now so high that lenders cannot issue subordinated debt, Aanes said.
Investors are counting on the ECB to “calm down” markets with rate cuts, more quantitative easing or again step in with specific measures for the banking system, he said.
However, the risk is that the “development becomes self fulfilling,” Aanes said.
Part of what is rattling global markets is a slowdown in China.
However, investors are underestimating the power of the Chinese government to steer the world’s second-largest economy through the turmoil, Aanes said.
“Against what normally would’ve been a clear bubble situation there’s a government in China that has completely different tools and the ability to intervene through regulations and capital controls,” he said. “It’s a terror balance between an unbalanced economy and a government with a big foreign exchange reserve and economic muscle.”
“If we think credit spreads will narrow because someone will clean up in this round, that’s a good investment,” Aanes said.
Central banks would at some point need to “break this loop” because markets are relying on “monetary experiments on a scale that has never been tested before,” Aanes said.
“What is the end game? I don’t have the answer. No one has,” he said. “The risk is obviously, if this doesn’t hold, a financial Armageddon.”
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
Nvidia Corp’s GB300 platform is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of global artificial intelligence (AI) server rack shipments this year, while adoption of its next-generation Vera Rubin 200 platform is to gradually gain momentum after the third quarter of the year, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said. Servers based on Nvidia’s GB300 chips entered mass production last quarter and they are expected to become the mainstay models for Taiwanese server manufacturers this year, Trendforce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) said in an interview. This year is expected to be a breakout year for AI servers based on a variety of chips, as
HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) and the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance cooperation on the suspicious transaction analysis mechanism. This landmark agreement makes HSBC the first foreign bank in Taiwan to establish such a partnership with the High Prosecutors Office, underscoring its commitment to active anti-fraud initiatives, financial inclusion, and the “Treating Customers Fairly” principle. Through this deep public-private collaboration, both parties aim to co-create a secure financial ecosystem via early warning detection and precise fraud prevention technologies. At the signing ceremony, HSBC Taiwan CEO and head of banking Adam Chen (陳志堅)
RSS