A tisket, a tasket yuan has its own basket

Pull of the yuan: China’s heft as the world’s largest trading nation gives the yuan considerable influence, especially on Asian nations that comprise China’s industrial supply chain and on commodity exporters in South Africa and Latin America. – Reuters

THE new year is here and Yellen has raised US interest rates a notch (by one-quarter of 1% or 25 basis points) – no big deal really, even though it’s the first rise in nine years.

It’s also the festive tradition at this time for the finance industry to deliver market forecasts which no one takes seriously. Indeed, fund managers and investors treat these prognostications with the scepticism they deserve. To me, their value is in the ideas some thinking analysts generate. Not the numbers they throw together and guess where the FBM KLCI will end in 2016; or what will happen to the price of oil and the ringgit exchange rate; or whether the US dollar will strengthen soon enough to reach parity with the euro.