The following are some of the news items mentioned in January 2024:

  • Nikkei hits 36k in Jan 2024, the highest since ever, a 34 year high
    • It is estimated that about 4 Trillion Yen has left Japan searching for higher interest rates
    • BOJ dominates Japan’s government debt market, owning 54% of the country’s $7T in govenment bonds
    • 10 year bond yields near 0.6% in [2024-01-25 Thu]
    • Exchange operators have added 3 month interest rate futures in March 2023
    • Citadel is planning to set up shop in Japan after more than a decade to take advantage of “exit of negative interest rate area”
  • HK Turnover of the structured products is about 1.5 billion USD
  • Snowballs are structured derivatives sold in China tied to the performance of an underlying index. They offer to pay investors bond-like coupons as long as that index stays within a predetermined range.
  • The two popular indices used in “Snowball” structures are CSI500 and CSI1000
    • Snowballs have grown to be 45billion market in China
  • New Delhi will likely announce a gross borrowing of 183 billion usd for the year starting April 1, 2024. It is equivalent to 20T INR
  • Foreigners own just 2% of India’s sovereign debt market