Opinion

Analysing Apple’s earnings can, on occasion, feel like looking at a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing. Consider the quarter ended in June: The fact that a slight dip in sales from Apple’s all-important hardware segment was offset by growth in its services segment — the App Store, advertising, etc — received a lot of attention when the ...

The latest raft of technology earnings is starting to show a clear divide between areas that may continue to grow and those that will most certainly suffer at the hands of a global economic slowdown. Whether the more resilient sectors succumb, or conversely, drive a rebound in the parts that slumped, will be a key issue to watch over coming ...

  Ever since traders erroneously interpreted Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s July press conference as dovish, US short-term bond yields have completed a round trip, with the market now essentially back to where it started a week ago. That gets bonds closer to realistic pricing in the face of the worst inflation in 40 years, but much more upheaval could ...

The Ukraine war is entering its third phase, and this one could well be decisive. Phase one was Russia’s failed blitzkrieg, meant to destroy the Ukrainian state. Phase two, which continues in desultory fashion, was Moscow’s push to seize all the Donbas area along the Ukraine-Russia border. Phase three will feature a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. If Ukraine can ...

The economy is weakening, and so is demand for advertising — at least, that’s how Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc justified its first-ever quarterly decline in revenue last week. Social-media rivals Snap Inc and Twitter Inc echoed the gloom, worsening this year’s share-price slump in the sector. Strange, then, that some of advertising’s more old-school players in Europe, from “Mad ...

  As quickly as it blew up, the food crisis of 2022 appears to be receding. Indonesia halted exports of palm oil in April in the face of a price spike. Prices are now down more than 40% from the peak. Corn prices fell by nearly a quarter since the start of May. Sugar and coffee beans have hit respective ...

  HSBC Holdings Plc is hoping to buy off dissenting investors with a boost to dividends and a forecast for higher returns. The promises made at the half-year results sent the bank’s stock sharply higher, but the shareholders agitating for big changes are likely to want more — and soon. The London- and Hong Kong-based bank is facing breakup calls ...

European banks appear to be having a bit of a moment, but investors shouldn’t get over-excited by a string of forecast-beating profits this week. There is little common in many of the good-news stories: BNP Paribas SA of France, NatWest Group Plc and Standard Chartered of the UK, and BBVA of Spain all turned out strong second-quarter numbers, following better ...

McDonald’s Corp has just raised the price of a cheeseburger in its UK restaurants for the first time in 14 years, by a supersized 20% to £1.19 ($1.43) from 99p. Something must be done. The rising cost of a beef patty is symptomatic of the surge in prices that should prompt the Bank of England (BOE) to hike its official ...

  There’s a perfectly good reason to break open the secrets of social-media giants. Over the past decade, governments have watched helplessly as their democratic processes were disrupted by misinformation and hate speech on sites like Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc’s YouTube and Twitter Inc. Now some governments are gearing up for a comeuppance. In the next two years, ...