Opinion

  One simple chart is creating a lot of buzz in markets. It shows that for the first time in history, one bitcoin is worth more than one troy ounce of gold. Despite the flurry of discussion this factoid has generated, many are stupefied, not quite knowing what to do with this information or how to trade on it. Maybe …

  Theresa May’s defeat in the House of Lords on Wednesday doesn’t quite compare with the scale of Donald Trump’s judicial thrashing over his travel ban. But that’s not an entirely ludicrous parallel either. The Lords voted to force the government to guarantee that the nearly 3 million EU nationals living in Britain can stay. May’s position is that she …

  As President Donald Trump visited a Boeing Co. factory two weeks ago and pledged to “fight for every last American job,” the aerospace giant was working on cutting more than 1,000 positions. Boeing has earned multiple pats on the back from Trump in the past few weeks including a “God Bless Boeing” acclaim at the end of that South …

  Some European regulators have come up with a viable plan to alleviate the region’s chronic financial paralysis. If only European politicians, particularly in Germany, would listen. The European Union’s leaders have spent much of the past decade debating —but never fully resolving — what to do about the huge pile of bad loans that EU banks are sitting on, …

  In what appears to be a change in strategy, Philippines Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II visited the US aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson patrolling the disputed South China Sea on the invitation of the US Navy. The visit marks a stark deviation from Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s independent foreign policy. …

  A major factor behind the soaring growth of risky wealth-management products in China is that investors typically think the government stands behind them. Lately, nervous regulators have been emphasizing that this isn’t so. But they’ll have to do a lot more to change expectations in a state-dominated economy. Wealth management products are short-term, high-yielding investments that are issued by …

  Disputes between Mexico and the United States over the North American Free Trade Agreement are not new. In March 2009, after years of litigation, the US government abruptly suspended a pilot program that allowed Mexican truck drivers to deliver goods across the border. Mexico retaliated, imposing tariffs as high as 45 percent on $2.4 billion worth of US goods …

  Not-for-profit industries are hardly associated by most investors with rising returns. Not so in China, whose private-school sector has become initial public offering gold in Hong Kong. Two of the city’s five biggest IPOs so far this year have been of Chinese nonprofit school operators: China Yuhua Education Corp., which made its trading debut this week, and Wisdom Education …

  After months of uncertainty and some false starts, President Donald Trump seems to have picked someone to be the head of his Council of Economic Advisers. That someone is Kevin Hassett, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank. This is a great move, for a number of reasons. First, along with the hiring of H.R. …

  Everything China has, India wants — except perhaps its communist rulers. Right now, the object of the southern neighbour’s envy is oil. Or, to be precise, very large energy gorillas. Beijing possesses three, and New Delhi none. So the latter wants to merge its smaller companies into bigger groups. There’s only one problem with the plan: shareholders. When China …