Bloomberg One of this year’s best-performing stock markets has just hit a fresh record. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index reached its highest level, having added about $239 billion in value this year as investors cheered a dovish central bank, a surprise federal election victory by the incumbent center-right government and skyrocketing iron ore prices. The gauge rose 0.3 percent to close …

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc is preparing to cut hundreds of jobs in its trading division — stark new evidence that an industrywide slump in revenue this year may be more permanent than the tweets and policy moves rattling clients. The New York-based bank plans to slash jobs across its fixed-income and stock-trading operations over the course of 2019, according to people …

Bloomberg Sweden’s economy unexpectedly shrank in the second quarter, casting further doubts on the Riksbank’s plans to continue to raise rates. Gross domestic product contracted 0.1 percent in the second quarter from the first, according to preliminary numbers from Statistics Sweden. Economists had predicted an expansion of 0.3 percent. Annual growth was 1.4 percent while economists and the Riksbank had …