Week in Review
- Asian equities were mostly lower this week as the uncertain path of US Fed rates hikes and US turned global bank failures weighed on risk sentiment globally.
- The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is returning to China to finalize audits, demonstrating the good access that the US regulatory authority has been granted.
- China’s property and fixed asset investment figures came in above expectations for the first two months of the year.
- The “Two Sessions” political meetings concluded last weekend. In this week’s video update, Xiabing gives an introduction to the “Two Sessions” and interviews attendees on what they heard and expect to come out of the important policy summit.
Friday’s Key News
Asian equity markets ended the week up on high volumes driven by S&P Dow Jones and FTSE Russell indices rebalancing along with trading driven by the expiration of stock index futures, stock index options, stock options, and single stock futures derivatives, an occurrence known as “Quad Witching”. Big liquidity days like today are important to watch as they provide investors the opportunity to adjust portfolios thanks to the ample liquidity provided by these events.
US banks depositing cash at First Republic Bank helped investor sentiment. All this TikTok focus during a US banking crisis, which I would argue is crisis of confidence in the US government, is bewildering, though I digress.
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