{"id":59433,"date":"2012-02-01T12:10:13","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T01:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2012\/02\/01\/february-favours-emerging-markets-and-aluminium\/"},"modified":"2012-02-01T12:10:13","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T01:10:13","slug":"february-favours-emerging-markets-and-aluminium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2012\/02\/01\/february-favours-emerging-markets-and-aluminium\/","title":{"rendered":"February favours Emerging Markets, And Aluminium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<strong>&#8211; Emerging markets historically the best equity performers in February<br \/>\n\t&#8211; <span>Aluminium<\/span> the best of the commodities, natural gas the worst<br \/>\n\t&#8211; USD likely to struggle against the yen this month<br \/>\n\t&#8211; Tough month for some Australian and US bonds<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tBy Chris Shaw<\/p>\n<p>\n\tEmerging markets tend to be the pick of equity markets in February according to an analysis of seasonal monthly trends by Barclays Capital, while European markets typically struggle. The technical analysts are predicting similar performance this year in suggesting the Shanghai Composite has the best odds of an advance at 76%.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThis compares to a 54% chance of a gain for the <span>FTSE100<\/span> and a 48% chance for Germany&#039;s DAX, while US indexes are seen as a little better than even money to post gains this time around. Performance is likely to be mixed elsewhere, Barclays suggesting the Nikkei and Toronto markets offer 55% chances respectively of gaining this February, against just a 47% chance for the All Ordinaries.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tCommodities are also likely to deliver mixed performance, the technical analysts at Barclays noting while <span>aluminium<\/span> tends to be the best performer, offering a 63% chance of advancing this time around, natural gas has its worst month of the year and has only a 43% chance of posting a gain. Gold is likely to do better given a 56% chance of gaining, while oil is given similar odds of ending the month higher.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tNone of the major currency pairs have strong odds of advancing this February, though Barclays notes both the AUD\/USD and EUR\/<span>GBP<\/span> pairs tend to outperform. Both are given 56% chances of advancing this month. In contrast, the USD\/<span>JPY<\/span> pair has the lowest odds of posting a gain at just 37%, while the EUR\/<span>JPY<\/span> is given only a 44% chance of finishing February at higher levels.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn fixed income markets February is the worst month of the year for Australian 10-year and US 5-year and 2-year bonds as measured by median and average yield changes, all of which Barclays suggests have a better than 50% chance of posting yield increases this month. At the other end of the spectrum, Canadian 10-year bonds and 3-month Short Sterling have the lowest odds of a yield increase at just 33% and 36% respectively.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tFrom a yield curve perspective, the most likely to deliver a <span>steepening<\/span> are EU <span>2v10<\/span> year securities, while similar securities in the US are likely to show a flattening of the curve. In relative value terms, spreads are most likely to widen between US and both EU and UK 2-year securities.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<br \/>\n\t<em>Find out why <span>FNArena<\/span> subscribers like the service so much: &quot;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/index4.cfm?type=dsp_newsitem&amp;n=29EB960D-9DFF-C00E-7F6B464E5D52E250\">Your Feedback (Thank You)<\/a>&quot; &#8211; Warning this story contains unashamedly positive feedback on the service provided.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barclays Capital has analysed seasonal trends for February and found emerging markets are usually the best equity performers with aluminium the best among commodities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[21,29,24,22],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}