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Typically regarded as the more vulnerable currencies in Asia to external shocks, the ringgit, baht, and rupiah are proving the most resilient on their relatively lower exposure to China and a dovish Federal Reserve.

The Malaysian, Thai and Indonesian exchange rates are the top three performers among Asia’s emerging markets over three months. That’s a reversal of fortune from 2013’s taper tantrum when they trailed their northern counterparts as the U.S. central bank indicated it would wind down unprecedented stimulus.

“The market has moved away from being wary of Fed tightening to pricing in a Fed relent and that’s benefiting countries with higher-yielding assets like Indonesia for now," said Mallika Sachdeva, a foreign-exchange strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in Singapore. “North Asian currencies are being treated as proxies for China currency stress.” The German lender favors the rupiah and the ringgit over the South Korean won and Taiwan dollar, she said.

Slowing inflation and faster growth in Indonesia are luring foreign funds to the country, while Malaysia’s government managed to keep its budget deficit within target and exports have held up even as oil prices slumped. A lot of negatives had already been priced into these exchange rates because of the plunge in commodity prices in 2015, said Nizam Idris, head of strategy for fixed income and currencies at Macquarie Bank Ltd. in Singapore.

John Cryan, Deutsche Bank AG’s co-chief executive officer, called the company’s balance sheet “rock solid” this week after the firm’s shares and bonds tumbled, pointing to a “strong capital and risk position.” By one gauge, Cryan still lags behind every one of his main competitors.

The leverage ratio, a standard introduced globally by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision after the 2008 financial crisis, measures Tier 1 capital as a percentage of total assets. Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, at 3.5 percent, is half a percentage point behind its closest competitor.

That gap might look small, but closing it would require a capital increase of 7 billion euros ($8 billion), or a jump of 15 percent. Alternatively, Deutsche Bank could reduce its assets by 178 billion euros -- lending less, engaging in fewer derivatives transactions or holding a smaller inventory of bonds. It can choose to do neither, since the bank is already in compliance with the rule’s 3 percent minimum.

Ronald Weichert, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, declined to comment on the leverage ratio.

The biggest U.S. banks do better than the European ones on the leverage measure, which doesn’t take into account the riskiness of a firm’s holdings. That’s because they face a higher minimum -- 5 percent -- and because U.S. regulators have been more aggressive since the financial crisis in encouraging the accumulation of capital. U.S. banks are also able to sell most of their mortgage loans to government-backed housing-finance firms, while European firms hold them on their balance sheets.

New York-based Citigroup Inc. ranks first among global investment banks, at 7.1 percent. Wells Fargo & Co., which focuses more on domestic lending, had a 7.8 percent ratio as of September, the latest data available from the San Francisco-based company.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures CLc1 also gained as much as 6 percent and were still up about a dollar at $27.20 per barrel at 0753 GMT after hitting lows not seen since 2003 in the previous session.

Oil prices jumped on Friday after comments by the energy minister of OPEC-member United Arab Emirates sparked hopes of a coordinated production cut, yet analysts said such a move remained unlikely and that oversupply would persist.

Friday's jump in Brent came after the United Arab Emirates energy minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazrouei said the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was willing to talk with other exporters about cutting output.

OPEC members were ready to cooperate with other producers on a cut, the minister said, although he added that cheap oil was already forcing some output reductions which would help rebalance the market itself.

Despite higher Brent and WTI, analysts said they saw little chance of OPEC and non-OPEC producers agreeing on a common policy, and that low prices as a result of oversupply would likely persist.

"Comments from the UAE energy minister that OPEC was willing to cooperate on production cuts had little impact. We view this as further jawboning, with the likelihood of a coordinated response on supply cuts very low," ANZ bank said on Friday.

While prices have been low, volatility has been high since the beginning of the year, with 10-20 percent price rises and falls common within only a few trading sessions.

"We expect recent crude volatility to persist," investment bank Jefferies said on Friday, adding that it expected oil markets to start rebalancing in the second half of the year.

Yesterday, Janet Yellen, said "Energy prices have continued to move down. I feel that eventually they will stop moving down and stabilize. Exactly when that will be, when that happens, when that eventually happens and the dollar stabilizes, inflation will begin to move up. It's hard to predict exactly when that will be and there can be and have been surprises.' 

Reference: Reuters, Bloomberg