Opinion

That sound you heard was a sigh of relief from Google investors. Parent company Alphabet Inc. delivered a second-quarter financial report that showed both another impressive stretch of revenue growth and a moderation in the pace of spending that had been making stockholders panic. Google isn’t supernatural, but it has shown that recent investor pessimism about the company has been ...

Besides Twitter — especially of the ALL-CAPS variety — President Donald Trump has another way of influencing troublesome oil prices: Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The question is which is more influential. In theory, those 660 million barrels stashed at four sites along the Gulf Coast should count for more than 280 characters in the ether. But if the aim is ...

Isn’t lithium meant to be a mood stabiliser? That’s certainly not what’s happening in the stocks of companies that produce the element used in rechargeable batteries and psychiatric medications. News this week that Tesla Inc sent a memo to some suppliers asking them for payment rebates to help it become profitable shook shares in lithium miners. The Solactive Global Lithium ...

The planned delisting of Megafon PJSC, Russia’s second-biggest mobile operator, from the London Stock Exchange is no ordinary event. The company is one of the most liquid Russian stocks trading overseas, and its exit is further evidence that the country’s businesses are turning inward as exposure to the West becomes increasingly problematic. In 2011, almost 70 Russian companies’ depositary receipts ...

A few months ago, I cautioned that Americans should be patient before deciding what effect President Donald Trump’s tax cuts have had on the economy. It takes a while for companies to make investment decisions, more time for those decisions to be implemented and even more time for the resulting changes in labor demand to bid up workers’ wages. It ...

The Federal Reserve is highly unlikely to raise rates at its policy meeting next week. The view that the event will be a snoozer, with little potential to move markets significantly, is reinforced in two ways: The semi-annual report to Congress on monetary policy by Chair Jerome Powell last week that involved comprehensive written submissions and hours of Q&A; and ...

As far as cyberhacks go, those in health care are particularly irksome. The notion that some stranger, a malicious one at that, has accessed our medical data gets under most people’s skin. Even beyond financial and employment data, there’s nothing more personal than our history of diseases, diagnoses and medicines, including possibly psychological or even terminal conditions. News at the ...

In a long-awaited decision, the European Commission fined Alphabet Inc’s Google a record 4.3 billion euros ($5 billion) for unfair business practices. The commission won some praise for standing up to big tech. But theatrics aside, this decision is misguided, harmful to consumers, and almost entirely beside the point. Start with the alleged offenses. Google licenses its Android software to ...

China has suffered a series of diplomatic blows lately. Relations with the US are at a multi-decade low as a trade war escalates. This month, Malaysia suspended four Chinese-backed projects as its prime minister tries to pull away from Beijing’s orbit. From Myanmar to Sri Lanka to Vietnam, China’s overseas investm-ents are being met with a growing backlash. These are ...

Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s strategy for expanding WeChat Pay globally is pretty straightforward: Follow the (tourism) money. Grace Yin, operations director of WeChat Pay’s international business, summarised Tencent’s approach at the RISE Conference earlier this month in Hong Kong: If a place has a Chinese tourist, then this place is our target. It’s a smart strategy. Simple, elegant and actionable with ...