The Washington D.C. summit in 2008 crowned the Group of Twenty Nations (G20) as the official global economic summit of industrialized countries. Two years in, Korea is proud to have been chosen to Chair the 2010 G20 summit, which was kicked off in Busan last week for a meeting of the group’s finance ministers. Hosting the G20 certainly represents a milestone on Korea’s global economic ascent; however, the communiqué out of Busan begs a dissimilar fate for the unification of the group…

In the fourteen days since a verdict charged the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK/The North) with sinking the Republic of Korea’s (ROK/The South) Cheonan warship, global investors have realigned risks on the Korean Peninsula at the center of their radars. In this edition of the Korea Economic Slice on KBC, we’ll venture into history to gauge the significance of the recent alleged attack on the Cheonan and analyze the potential outcomes and economic repercussions. Then, we’ll move to identify the coming week’s crucial economic reports, technical indicators from the KOSPI, and the effects of global risks in the Korea economy…

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Looking to the week ahead, many questions regarding the strength of Korea’s economy from the stance of consumers, businesses, and international investors will become much clearer through the aforementioned econ data. However, the KOSPI Korean equity index, the Korean Won, and yields on Korean debt will continue to be heavily influenced by geopolitical factors surrounding the conflict with North Korea and developments in global financial markets, resulting from sovereign default risks in Europe.

Crude Oil has reluctantly played follow the leader with U.S. equities for much of the past 12 months. More recently, fundamentals took a back seat to short term speculation as risk takers drove the price of hot button commodities up with stocks. Crude has been in a holding range between $80 and $87/barrel for all of March and April, but in the past two trading sessions NYMEX WTI crude plunged directly from the top to the bottom of that range.

U.S. equities have vigorously rallied for the past six weeks to gain +20%, bringing the S&P 500 just above 1200, as Q1 2010 earnings hit the tape. In short, the charts are begging for a pullback, but earnings and economic indicators are giving no reason to sell. Most analysts agree that the good news is mostly baked in stocks, but sellers have left the building and buyers keep coming out of the woodwork.

Here we’ll focus on a few indicators related to the S&P 500, and tell investors why they should be taking profits at these levels.

As the ill-effects of a global financial crisis became evident to world leaders in late fall 2008, export driven economies with surplussed coffers of U.S. dollars did the obvious. They used the cash to stimulate their economies. In one specific nation, the Premier’s words fell like heavy boots on an ant hill, as decrees began to waterfall down from superiors to
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Even after the TARP fund liquidity injections in the U.S. financial sector in 2008, the E.U. has decided to bail out one of it’s member states, Greece, from insolvency. How can this even be considered? Yes, the EU constitution is a whopping 7 years young and therefore demands a minuscule thread of adherence by member states,
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“That will never happen to this country.” – Timothy Geitner in response to suggestions that the U.S. Treasury may one day lose its Aaa credit rating. Perhaps inspired by Niall Ferguson’s dramatic Financial Times piece, “A Greek Crisis Coming To America“, we see today as a prime opportunity to recap our short U.S. Long Term
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On a positive note for Japan, export growth in December surprised economists by growing at 12.1%, compared to the 7.6% forecast, for the first time since the collapse of Lehman in 2008. Breaking down the numbers, analysts were equally unsurprised to learn which market was responsible for the rapid growth. If I’m hitting my target
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Bernanke and the crew will get started bright and early behind the collasal locked mohagany doors of the FOMC board room Tuesday morning, while traders will ernestly focus on the information at hand. A slew of earnings from Ashland (ASH) (0.71 EPS est.), Corning (GLW) (0.42 EPS est.), Delta Airlines (DAL) (-0.24 EPS est), DuPont (DD)
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