Russia is forecast to be the world’s largest exporter of wheat in 2023/24 for the fourth year in a row, with exports increasing by 1 million tons to a record 45.5 million, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Exact numbers are uncertain as the war in Ukraine has made it difficult to estimate exports across the Black Sea. Many countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East are reliant on wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Western countries have not imposed sanctions on Russia’s grain trade. However, the sanctions imposed on Russian banks, companies and individuals have made payment arrangements

The trade relationship between China and Russia is strengthening amid EU sanctions against Russia due to the war in Ukraine. China’s exports to and imports from Russia both increased by 19% in 2022. This contrasts with China’s global exports and imports, which decreased by 6% and 7% respectively, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs. There are mutual benefits for both countries, with China receiving discounted crude oil, and Russia increasingly exporting oil and gas to China to make up for European sanctions. Whereas China’s total imports of liquified natural gas decreased by 18% from January to November

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author, not necessarily those of Refinitiv Lipper or LSEG. China has long regarded Taiwan as a part of its sovereign territory, rebuking states that recognise the small island as an independent country. When Russia sent its troops into Ukraine, eyes turned to Beijing to see its reaction. What lessons can the international community draw from the unfolding Russia-Ukraine conflict on the prospects for a conflict between China and Taiwan? In this piece we discuss five such lessons. Lesson 1: The Russia-Ukraine conflict is likely to prove an opening salvo

Though the pandemic arrived in Russia later than western European countries, it quickly became the country with the third highest number of cases, and currently sits fourth behind the US, Brazil, and India. Last week, as economic concerns continued to mount, the Russian central bank cut interest rates to a record low of 4.25%. The Bank of Russia has opted for consecutive months of smaller cuts in order to protect the rouble, rather than the single larger cut approach of the Federal Reserve. Refresh this chart in your browser | Edit the chart in Datastream   Though inflation is running below the

Refresh the chart in your browser | Edit the chart in Datastream In contrast to many other countries, Russian inflation edged higher in March. Weaker demand on the back of lockdown measures and falling oil prices contributed to the declines in many countries. However, in Russia, falling oil prices have prompted a sharp depreciation of its currency, the rouble, whilst the country’s relatively late lockdown means the dampening of demand (and subsequent drag on inflation) will be felt later than in many other countries. With petroleum products accounting for more than 50% of Russia’s exports, the value of the rouble

On March 8, we published “Earnings Roundup: Will COVID-19 Lead to Lower Earnings?” Based on an updated review of analyst revisions data, it now seems clear that we are. The S&P 500 is expected to enter an earnings recession, which is defined as two consecutive quarters of year-over-year (Y/Y) earnings declines, starting in 20Q1. Analysts also anticipate that full year 2020 earnings will fall 2.0%. This outlook is meaningfully different from the pre-COVID-19 and crude oil price war view at the end of January. With earnings season quickly approaching, the question now is, should investors expect further downward earnings revisions?

Brent oil has entered into a bear market, as prices have fallen almost $30 a barrel since the beginning of the year. Initial worries over COVID-19 caused the largest weekly decline in Brent oil prices since January 2016, having declined 13.6% during the week of February 28. The sell-off intensified when OPEC+ concluded its meeting on March 6 without a deal to further cut oil production. As a result, Brent oil suffered its largest one-day drop since 1991, declining 24.1% ($10.9/barrel). Oil majors including Exxon, Chevon, BP, ENI, and Total have all seen downgrades to Q1 EPS estimates and are

Fathom’s Financial Vulnerability Indicator (FVI) is a tool that measures financial risk in 176 countries; a composite reading, made up of four underlying FVIs, is available on Refinitiv’s Chartbook. The FVI combines more than 40 years’ worth of high and low frequency, macro and financial market data in a rigorous analytical framework to provide an instant, comparable, intuitive measure of financial vulnerability. It also measures country risk to four different types of financial crisis in raw probability terms, own-country normalised terms (i.e. how risky that country is relative to its past, in z-scores) and global normalised terms (i.e. how risky

The World Cup kicks off this week, with Russia hosting FIFA’s quadrennial footballing spectacle. An estimated 3.4 billion viewers are set to tune in to watch some of sport’s biggest stars vie for international glory. On the surface, that type of exposure would appear to be invaluable to the host nation. However, most studies do not find any material economic benefit to hosts of large international events such as the World Cup. Asset prices are a slightly different story. Hosts’ equity markets tend to rally ahead of the event. Of the five previous hosts, only one, Brazil, did not experience

Fathom’s Sovereign Fragility Index (SFI) is an objective measure of fundamental sovereign credit risk, updated quarterly. It does not take account of the markets’ appetite for risk, or of the state of the business cycle. It does not capture the impact of unconventional monetary policy measures, or of promises (explicit or implicit), by central banks or other institutions to support or underwrite the value of certain government bonds. Instead, the aim of the SFI is to reveal the fundamental forces that are at work underneath those distortions and temporary influences. It reveals two broad classes of sovereign credit: economies in

*This article originally  published prior to the March Ist  announcement on tariffs by US President Trump One of the numerous criticisms directed towards President Trump is that he tends to view everything as a zero-sum game. Almost certainly informed by his years as a corporate deal-maker, every gain made comes at someone else’s expense. Such thinking seems to be behind the administration’s recent greenlighting of tariffs on US steel and aluminium imports. The recently issued reports[1] by Commerce Secretary Ross cited “national security concerns” for supporting the imposition of tariffs. However, Trump’s comments that he expects the measures to “create a lot

Facebook could do with more Sheryl Sandberg. Mark Zuckerberg’s right-hand woman on Thursday deftly fielded questions about Russia-backed ads and the social network’s broader role in society. It was a notable contrast to the bumbling way her boss handles the limelight, especially since the $500 billion company has come under greater scrutiny. Sandberg traveled to Washington to meet with U.S. legislators about the bombshell findings that Facebook ran more than 3,000 political ads placed by fake agencies with alleged ties to the Kremlin. The agitprop was designed to sway the U.S. presidential election last year. During an interview with news