Bloomberg The New Year’s rally has pushed the S&P 500 Index to its best start since the administration of George W. Bush. Now it’s bumping against speed barriers that marked the upper limits of bull markets for decades. Up eight times in the first nine days of 2018, the S&P 500 has broken away from a trend line, its 200-day ...

Bloomberg The pound’s rally, spurred by hopes of a soft Brexit, may be vulnerable this week to heightened sensitivity to comments from European Union leaders on the prospects of such a deal. Sterling rose to its highest level since just after Britain’s EU referendum after signs emerged that some countries want a Brexit deal that keeps the UK as close ...

Bloomberg The European Union will spend one billion euros ($1.2 billion) to try to catch up to China, the US and Japan in supercomputing, the European Commission said. But as the initiative launches, uncertainty over Brexit is creating anxiety among British computer scientists that the UK may miss out on opportunities from the plan. The goal of the project is ...

Bloomberg GKN Plc rejected an unsolicited approach from Melrose Industries Plc and said it will split itself in two rather than accept a $9.5 billion takeover offer that it says undervalues the UK maker of aerospace and automotive components. GKN shares surged as much as 28 percent to an all-time high after the Redditch, England-based company, a key supplier to ...

Bloomberg Intel Corp., trying to defuse concern that fixes to widespread chip security vulnerabilities will slow computers, released test results showing that personal computers won’t be affected much and promised more information on servers. The chipmaker published a table of data showing that older processors handled typical tasks 10 percent slower at most, after being updated with security patches. The ...

Bloomberg Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc is seeking to raise as much as $700 million from the sale of a business that makes fuel injectors for diesel engines used in ships and industrial applications, people familiar with the matter said. The UK jet-engine maker began showing L’Orange unit’s financial data to potential bidders in December and is closing in on an agreement, ...

Bloomberg Companies pushing new virtual reality headsets talked a good game at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. Facebook’s Oculus touted new features in its upcoming $200 Oculus Go, a device designed to do for VR what the iPhone did for the smartphone, Google and Lenovo showed off a jointly designed headset that will sell for the half the price of ...

Bloomberg For US shale drillers who have seen prices climb almost 50 percent in six months, it’s been largely a rig-less recovery, a conundrum for traders seeking to forecast the future. Normally, you’d expect the rigs to return to the field in significant numbers as producers flush with added cash looked to boost output. But the weekly Baker Hughes tally ...

Bloomberg A BP Plc unit will pay $102 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the company of overcharging California for natural gas, the state’s attorney general said. The accord spared BP from facing a jury trial that was scheduled to start this week in San Francisco. A lawyer for the ex-employee who initially filed the complaint as a whistle blower ...

Bloomberg Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the South African power utility battling to maintain liquidity, said there will be a “major impact” from the regulator’s decision last month to grant only a quarter of its requested tariff increase. The National Energy Regulator of South Africa gave the cash-strapped utility permission to raise prices by 5.2 percent from April 1, far short ...