I believe that the ECB will try to get interest rates lower and continue to ease the monetary policy further. The question is how much central bankers can get market rates down from here.
To point out, we have a Federal election coming in 2015 and the government is certainly interested in reducing the deficit before they go back and address their voters.
I believe that in one way we can consider falling gold prices to be a positive sign. During the last five years there has been a surge in gold holdings, followed by price increases, as investors were trying to protect themselves from key risks, including a possible breakup of the Eurozone, as well as concerns about US sovereign creditworthiness.
We believe that expected strengthening of the U.S Dollar will most likely also be delayed.
I believe that the Japanese economy is continuing to react positively to Abenomics, as growth is picking up.
The U.K. always has had structurally high inflation issues over the last few years, and the Bank of England is still trying to get to the bottom of this.
Our opinion is that the Eurozone recession indeed is over; however, the upswing is very fragile.
It is a very positive fact that Janet Yellen is to be the next and actually the first chairwoman of the Fed, as she always has been taking part and been highly involved in decision making with regards to the monetary policy setting, and what is more important, always has been in agreement with the current Chairman Ben Bernanke.
I believe it is not so much the underlying economy and its performance that is important; it is rather the housing sector.
We are starting to see an improvement in data from the Eurozone, particularly, in those forward looking components such as consumer confidence series.
We believe the Australian Dollar is ultimately heading lower, as weaker domestic economic fundamentals give way to a better global environment.
I definitely believe that financial market is more stable and banks are safer now.
In the first phase, the policy of cheap money helped financial market to gain a huge amount of liquidity demanded by banks due to interbank market freeze and deep distortions in other segments of money market.
In my opinion, the figures that we got through executed close of above $1,415 per ounce was the detriment to gold prices, as that would have been a key turning point.
We believe that the Canadian Dollar looks a little bit stretched at these levels. Overall, we have been bullish on the U.S. Dollar, and we expect that the Canadian Dollar is likely to lag behind general Dollar strength throughout this year.
Yes, to a certain extent that is true as Syria as a country does not directly impact oil flows and hence would unlikely affect oil prices unless the unrests spread to other oil producing countries in the region.
All measures of unemployment are problematic in that they depend on whether or not an individual, who does not have a job professes to be looking for work or not.
I do think that hiking interest rates can be done much sooner than expected; as I believe the market is susceptible to any sort of tightening from any central banks.
I do not consider it to be a warning sign as if we look at the Euro's performance broadly, it is still tending to outperform. Thus, looking at anything other than the U.S Dollar, the general trend is still being on the strength of the Euro.
Yes, I expect the German economy to expand steadily for the next few years. I believe that we will continue to see robust growth of export industry.
Obviously, rising yields and improving economic activity in the world's largest economy are positive drivers for the U.S Dollar.
I do not expect this trend to continue in the long term. Actually, we believe that the Euro will weaken against most of its major counterparts, especially the U.S. Dollar.
I expect oil prices to continue to be impacted by global events including the turmoil in the Middle East, which continues to get worse, keeping oil prices inflated by supply concerns.
If the Japanese government can make the path through the cutting corporate-tax by raising sales-tax, and the BOJ can prepare next action of qualitative and quantitative easing, I agree to the thought of the BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda.