US Federal Reserve

“We’re not going to be in any hurry to withdraw the measures or to lift off. We’re going to wait until we’re quite confident that the economy is well on the road to recovery,” says Fed Chairman Jerome Powell

(Apr 9): Five months into the Covid-19 pandemic and there remains much that we do not know about the virus. Every government is grappling with the unknown, from the most powerful nations in the world, including the US and the UK, to the smaller, emerging

Investors must recognise that with policy rates near their effective lower bound and fiscal policy becoming a more important driver, that the equity-bond correlation can become less negative.

“This is not about helping Wall Street, this is about helping Main Street,” says former Fed chair Janet Yellen.

This writes a new chapter in the central bank’s 106-year history and puts them in a role that the Fed has traditionally argued belongs to fiscal policy and elected officials.It also opens up the central bank to questions of over stepping.

“These measures will reinforce the stability of the financial system in Singapore and support its role in providing credit and essential financial services to the economy,” MAS says.

Since the start of the year, the FTSE Straits Times REIT Index is down 20% compared with the Straits Times Index which has lost 22%. Interestingly, the FTSE EPRA NAREIT Developed Index is down 23%. No surprise then that recent entrants into the FTSE EPRA

The central bank also announced several other actions, including letting banks borrow from the discount window for as long as 90 days and reducing reserve requirement ratios to zero percent.

The US bond market rallied strongly even as fear over the coronavirus outbreak is driving the stock market’s steep selloff.

Emerging assets – especially North Asia and China equities – to be the outperformers in the first few months of 2020, according to Lombard Odier Asia-Pacific’s Chief Investment Officer, Jean-Louis Nakamura.