Diamond News Archives

(IDEX Online) – Royal Asscher has opened a new flagship boutique in Fukuoka Tenjin, the leading downtown shopping district in the Kyushu region. <?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

Replicas of Great Britain's Crown Jewels will be on permanent display in the store. 

The collection lineups include the new limited edition European Architecture Collection, high jewelry and diamond jewelry featuring bridal jewelry. 

Royal Asscher has a 55 year history in the Japanese diamond and jewelry market, with over 150 retail doors. The company opened their first flagship store in Tokyo's prestigious Ginza district in November 2017. The Fukukoa location is the company's second Japanese stand alone store, in its fifth largest city.   

Mike Asscher says, "Fukuoka is a short flight from Hong Kong and Taiwan, a ferry ride from South Korea, and closer to Shanghai than Tokyo and is seeing year on year record tourism numbers – which is great for exposing our brand further to audiences from these countries. Fukuoka has also developed itself to attract young innovative entrepreneurial people, it has bargain rents, low taxes, special visas and trade incentives. All of which helped us identify this city as an ideal location for our second flagship in Japan.  

"It's another rich milestone moment for us to celebrate. With our international retail strategy we are giving consumers across the world a richer experience of our brand than ever before and gaining market share with the right audience consumer and retail audiences." ...

Markets were roiled overnight and through the NY morning hours by a further collapse in the Turkish lira (5.53 – 6.80), after negotiations between US and Turkish officials over the detention of a US Pastor yielded no progress.

Turkish President Erdogan, in response to the lira’s fall, put kerosene on the fire by calling for citizens to convert euros, dollars and gold “beneath your pillows” to lira, and dismissed concerns over the plummeting currency, saying “if they have their dollars, we have our people, our God”. Trump added more fuel to the fire by tweeting the following:

I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will now be 20% and Steel 50%. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!

8:47 AM - Aug 10, 2018^[1]

Global equities tumbled, with the NIKKEI off 1.3%, the SCI was unchanged, Eurozone shares were off from 0.7% to 1.6%, and S&P futures were -0.4%.

The euro was slammed lower ($1.1535 - $1.1415 fresh 1-year low), as fear of heavy Eurozone bank exposure to Turkey weighed on the common currency. Investors flocked to the usual safe havens, with the yen advancing to a 2-week high (111.15 – 110.50), and the yield on the US 10-year bond sank from 2.93% to 2.87%.

The US dollar rallied strongly, blowing through stops over 95.66 (7/19 high) to reach 96.30. Gold initially sold off on the dollar strength, slumping down to $1205.80 where support at the 8-bottom low from $1205-08 held. However, safe haven bids joined the bargain hunters, and drove gold to back through $1209 (down trendline from 6/14...

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References

1. ^{^} Skip to main content (www.zerohedge.com)

Old bad habits die hard: The dangerous relationship of mutual dependence between governments and banks.

By Don Quijones^[1], Spain, UK, & Mexico, editor at WOLF STREET^[2].

In June, as the ECB cut back on its purchases of Italian government bonds, Italian commercial banks added to their holdings, continuing a trend that began in May, analysts at Dutch bank ABN report^[3]. Total holdings in June rose by €17 billion to €381 billion. That came on the heels of a €28 billion surge in May, which was the single largest month of Italian bank purchases of Italian bonds in history, according to Deutsche Bank

For the first time in a long time, Italian banks’ purchases of Italian bonds dwarfed those of the Eurosystem (the ECB and the national central banks of Eurozone countries), which in May and June bought a comparatively paltry €3.6 billion and €4 billion of multiyear Treasury bonds (BTPs) respectively, though the average maturity of its cumulative purchases was higher at just under 8 years. This happened as pressure on Italian government bonds rose following the unexpected formation of an anti-EU coalition government. In the space of two months the yields on 10-year bonds surged from 1.8% to 3.1%, and are now just below 3%.

It’s a big jump by today’s standards but still far lower than the 7.56% the Italian government was paying in November 2011, during the peak of the Eurozone debt crisis. Nonetheless, a two-year trend appears to be in the process of reversing.

By March this year, the Bank of Italy, on behalf of the ECB, had bought up over €350 billion of BTPs. At one point the scale of its holdings even overtook those of Italian banks, which had...