For a few people in the business world—Elizabeth Holmes, Martin Shkreli, and the Mast brothers, to name some—2015 was a very bad year. But there were plenty of bad years out there, especially among the poor asset managers trapped on the wrong sides of the worst trades in the worst-performing asset classes over the past 12 months. Here are five you hopefully avoided.
The Nikkei 225 has been a world-beater this year.
Argentina is peeking back into the global financial system. The country’s economy has been in rough shape since it lost a battle with hedge funds last year and went into default (and cut itself off from borrowing money abroad) rather than pay back certain of the creditors on whom it had defaulted on more than a decade prior. The fracas that ensued, among other things, led to Mauricio Macri winning the presidency over the hand-picked replacement of former president Cristina Kirchner.
Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has been ordered to stand trial in a corruption scandal that dates all the way back to 1993. The order came down from France’s Court of Justice of the Republic, which hears cases against ministers accused of committing crimes while in office.
The Energy Information Administration’s weekly look at oil in America just came out (pdf), and commercial crude stockpiles are at 490.7 million barrels. That’s just 200,000 barrels short of the record 490.9 million barrels set back in April.
Things keep getting worse and worse for Brazil.
The Federal Reserve is going to raise interest rates. The market thinks so. Economists think so (paywall). Based on all the talking she’s done, Fed chair Janet Yellen wants you to think so, too.
Oil prices have taken a break from their most recent nosedive, with international benchmark Brent crude rising above $38.50 a barrel and US benchmark West Texas Intermediate bubbling above $37 today (Dec. 15).
Oil prices keep on falling. On Monday (Dec. 14), US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude briefly touched a new 2015 low, falling below $34 a barrel, and international benchmark Brent crossed $37 a barrel, a hair above its financial crisis-era low.
Next week the Federal Reserve will, in all likelihood, raise its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2006.
Another day, another dramatic fall in oil prices.
If you’re a black Airbnb user that’s had a sneaking suspicion hosts are giving you the run-around when you try to book a rental, you might be on to something.
In less than a week (December 16th) the Federal Reserve’s open market committee will get together and, in all likelihood, raise America’s benchmark interest rate for the first time in nearly a decade.
Another day, another gigantic merger between titans of corporate America.
The year-long slump in oil prices has countless victims, and Exxon Mobil is certainly among them. The oil giant lost its spot among the five biggest US companies by market cap to Amazon on Tuesday (Dec. 8). At a market value of $318 billion (to Exxon’s $311 billion), the e-commerce giant is now only smaller than Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Berkshire Hathaway.
You can’t blame OPEC for this one—their meeting ended last week. US shale producers can’t be blamed either—new data on US oil production isn’t due until tomorrow (Dec. 8). And yet oil prices are sinking again.
China’s massive pile of foreign exchange reserves is shrinking, to the effect of $87 billion in November. That’s the largest monthly outflow since China devalued the yuan back in August.
The single biggest factor in oil prices for the last year has been the pitched battle between OPEC and US shale producers. Each faction has been pumping unsustainably massive amounts of oil out of ground in the hopes that the other would cut production (and market share) once crude became too cheap.
It’s a rough day in Calgary.
Soon after the RushCard prepaid debit card debacle that saw customers losing access to their money emerged, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it would monitor the situation. RushCard’s parent company, UniRush, quickly felt the government agency was being too demanding.
It’s that time of the week when the Energy Information Administration releases its weekly peek (pdf) at US oil production. For the past year or so it’s been a dizzying climb as stockpiles climbed to record highs. Though supplies had begun to fall earlier in the year as shale producers finally pumped the brakes on their pumping, the latest figures show that commercial supplies are fewer than 2 million barrels shy of a fresh record high.
