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Trade spat sent metals to oversold territory

Bloomberg Escalating trade conflict between the US and China has sent industrial metals to oversold territory. Invesco Ltd.’s Jason Bloom is counting on President Donald Trump’s playbook to reverse those losses. Bloom isn’t alone. Citigroup Inc. metal analyst Max Layton is optimistic that the standoff could end within months. Economists at ING Bank are hopeful Trump’s rhetoric will calm down ...

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Pound investors fear currency slide if UK premier’s leadership challenged

Bloomberg It’s not just Theresa May who’s worried about being toppled. Pound investors say the threat of Conservative party turmoil is one more reason to avoid the UK currency. Amid reports that the British Prime Minister faces ministerial resignations if she fails to achieve a solution to a Brexit deadlock, strategists warn sterling could fall as low as $1.25 if ...

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Mexico’s next finance chief to fight use of co-ops to evade tax

Bloomberg Mexico’s next president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, plans to fight tax evasion and boost revenue by clamping down on companies that take advantage of special rules for cooperatives to avoid paying tax, according to his pick for finance minister. The next government will put an end to use of cooperatives by “unscrupulous people” to evade tax, Carlos Urzua told ...

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US agency freezes ‘Obamacare’ payments

Bloomberg The US agency that administers Obamacare is freezing payments to insurers that cover sicker patients, saying a federal court ruling ties its hands. The move brought a sharp response from health insurers warning of market disruptions and higher costs. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said that the February action by the trial court in New Mexico “prevents ...

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Mario Draghi, what you really need is a barbell

The answer to one of Mario Draghi’s problems lies in a dusty corner of a basement gym. Though the European Central Bank is ending new net bond purchases through quantitative easing, its sti-mulus packages are still very much under discussion. One issue concerns the maturities it will target when it reinvests its substantial slug of maturing debt and coupon payments ...

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Cyclicals’ drop isn’t hard fall for economy

Investors appear to be losing faith in an economy that does not yet appear to be losing steam. For the first time since late 2015, cyclical stocks are all of a sudden the market’s biggest losers. The Vanda Cyclicals-Defensives US in-dex, which as the name suggests measures the relative performance of cyclical stocks against defensive ones, is down 7 percent ...

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Singapore property market curbs are a tap, not a blow

A sledgehammer to swat a fly. That’s how OCBC Investment Research is describing the unexpected curbs on Singapore’s property market announced. While the imposition of additional buyers’ stamp duties and tighter loan-to-value norms on home lending so early in the cycle does indeed smack of overkill (especially after a less than 10 percent recovery in residential prices following a long ...

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Bond traders are jittery, but Fed shows no fear

If bond traders still questioned whether Jerome Powell’s Federal Reserve would truly stay the course, no matter how choppy the waters, minutes of the central bank’s June meeting should erase all doubt. Fed officials said they realised the Treasury yield curve was rapidly heading toward inversion, according to the Federal Open Market Committee minutes. Many saw downside risks from emerging ...

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Samsung gritting its teeth spells pain for South Korea

Samsung Group is showing how corporate governance reform in South Korea — despite what had seemed some initial momentum — will be like pulling teeth. Samsung Life Insurance Co is under pressure to sell its stake in Samsung Electronics Co, a holding that’s key to the Lee family’s control of the smartphone and semiconductor giant, Bloomberg News had reported. The ...

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Unicorns are China’s innovative cavalry in Trump’s trade war

A trade war can be fought on many fronts. As China breeds unicorns, they are being asked to stay at home rather than gallop overseas to enrich US investors. The US pipeline of Chinese IPOs has been light since President Donald Trump started making noises about tariffs in early March. The only billion-dollar offering is the pending sale by e-commerce ...

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