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A stronger dollar is just what America needs

Until recently, President Donald Trump had wanted a weaker dollar because he romanticizes manufacturing. A weaker currency has been a temptation for world leaders since the early days of industrialization, as it’s generally believed it will provide a boost to exports and stimulate the economy in the short run. We all remember the beggar-thy-neighbor policies that led to competitive devaluations, ...

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Flipkart can bring in muscle to save money, live better

Flipkart’s bringing in the big guns. India’s leading e-commerce company looks set to team up with Walmart Inc., garnering the startup a valuation of as much as $20 billion in return for a stake that could be as large as 20%, Bloomberg’s Saritha Rai reported recently. There’s a lot that Flipkart Online Services Pvt could do with around $4 billion ...

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Sterling is soaring on imaginary smooth-Brexit

No doubt about it — The Bank of England is hawkish, and it is ready to embark on a rate-hiking cycle. Sterling took an instant leap higher to the dollar, and 10-year gilt yields rose to the highest levels seen since April 2016. Governor Mark Carney and the rest of the Monetary Policy Committee are leaving a lot to chance ...

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SpaceX once again achieves something unreasonable

‘It seems surreal to me,’ said Elon Musk, proprietor of SpaceX, and for once he was understating things. On Fenruary 6, his company blasted a 230-foot rocket into orbit, returned its two side boosters to Earth for a flawlessly synchronized landing, and — with exquisite nerd flair — propelled Musk’s own Tesla Roadster toward deep space, where it’s expected to ...

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The UK is down since Brexit, guess who’s up

When British voters decided in June 2016 to exit the European Union, investors who had anticipated the opposite result stampeded out of sterling and the currency plummeted a record 8.05 percent to a 31-year low. Almost 20 months later, the pound has mostly recovered, providing some satisfaction to commentators who’d predicted that Brexit would prove more distressing to the EU. ...

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The stock market is a lot like Bitcoin

Just as President Donald Trump had nothing to do with the stock market’s rise, despite the almost 60 boastful tweets he has posted about it since being elected, he has nothing to do with the recent stock crash. Instead, praise the machines—and blame them, too. Last year, Marko Kolanovic, global head of quantitative and derivative research at JPMorgan, estimated that ...

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This copycat biotech rally should carry a health warning

Biotech is bursting back to life in the US, and the enthusiasm is being felt across the Pacific. The crown jewel of the rally in Asia is South Korea’s Celltrion Inc., whose shares have soared 43 percent in the first month of 2018. While the surge has been driven partly by the stock’s impending upgrade from the small-and-mid-cap Kosdaq index ...

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Hedge-fund investors embrace Europe as economic woes retreat

Bloomberg Europe is suddenly the hot market for hedge-fund investment. After years of being overlooked, the continent is attracting capital from investors who want to take advantage of a recovering economy as the last effects of the euro-zone debt crisis disappear. Buyers are also piling in to diversify portfolios swelled by the stock-market boom — which after this week’s correction ...

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US junk-bond market sees worst loss in 2 yrs

Bloomberg A selloff in the market for speculative-grade corporate bonds accelerated amid turmoil in the stock market, handing investors their worst weekly loss since the oil slump two years ago. The bonds lost 1.5 percent on the week, the worst performance since February 2016, Bloomberg Barclays index data show. The average spread on high-yield bonds — or the premium investors ...

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Bank of Italy revises 2018 GDP forecast up

Bloomberg The Bank of Italy expects the nation’s economy to expand in 2018 at the same pace as last year since monetary policy “is working” and the ongoing reduction of economic slack has strengthened confidence, Governor Ignazio Visco said. The central bank expects Italy’s gross domestic product will expand about 1.5 percent this year and should remain above 1 percent ...

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