In today’s briefing:
- Hong Kong: Worries About The Collapse Of The Currency Peg Are Overblown
- The Week That Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma – Bank Jago, Meralco’s Sell-Down, and Unilever Indonesia
- The Philippines: First SONA By Marcos Falls Short Of Expectations
- The Commodity Report #62
Hong Kong: Worries About The Collapse Of The Currency Peg Are Overblown
- Falling foreign exchange reserves have reawakened fears for the HK Dollar peg to the US Dollar. This fear is fundamentally misplaced.
- The currency board system underpinning the peg cannot break by definition unless there is a political decision to break it.
- Instead, what HK might have to fear is the consequences of the peg for the domestic economy by way of asset price deflation and falling wages.
The Week That Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma – Bank Jago, Meralco’s Sell-Down, and Unilever Indonesia
- The Week That Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma is filled with an eclectic mix of differentiated, substantive, and actionable insights, macro and equity bottom-up, from across South East Asia.
- The past week saw insights in Bank Jago, Bank Central Asia, AKR Corporindo, Matahari Department Store, Unilever Indonesia, BFI Finance Indonesia, and Manila Electric Company.
- There were also macro insights on Indonesian and Malaysian economies plus on SCG Packaging, Minor International, and Hwa Hong Corp.
The Philippines: First SONA By Marcos Falls Short Of Expectations
- President Marcos’ first State of the Nation Address (SONA) represents a missed opportunity of-sorts, given his sizeable mandate & political capital. The address lacked fresh reforms on taxation or economic liberalisation.
- Without a renewed push to open up the economy, foreign investment approvals, which have slowed, will only continue to languish.
- Conversely, a large part of his speech addressed the agriculture sector which he personally oversees, reflecting attempts by Marcos to broaden his family’s political base beyond the Solid North.
The Commodity Report #62
- Commodities rallied as the dollar weakened and real rates declined again.
- As you can see above, the CRB index bounced right from the 200D MA.
- More important commodities did so even while GDP data was worse than expected.
💡 Before it’s here, it’s on Smartkarma
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