Rex Tillerson is off to an agonizingly slow start as secretary of state. That matters, because if Tillerson doesn’t develop a stronger voice, control of foreign policy is likely to move increasingly toward Stephen Bannon, the insurgent populist who is chief White House strategist. Tillerson’s State Department has been in idle gear these past two months. He doesn’t have …

  The odd thing about India’s stock market rally is just how little faith investors have in it. The Nifty 50 Index is barely 2% away from its all-time intraday high, but unlike the S&P 500 Index, which has closed at records 13 times this year, the Indian benchmark is struggling to break free of scepticism. Given the froth in …

  Chinese President Xi Jinping seems interested in embracing the role of global steward — champion of the liberal political and economic order the U.S. administration seems uninterested in promoting. Now is his moment to prove he’s serious. China’s erstwhile client North Korea has become an urgent threat to stability — Xi’s stated top priority — from one end of …

  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clinched a landslide victory in key state elections that are seen as a referendum on the performance of Modi’s three-year-old government. BJP won 311 out of 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. The historic verdict would boost Modi’s chances of winning another term as India’s prime minister in …

  To committed readers of the financial press, it was almost impossible to miss the proclamations that a milestone had been passed: The bull market, as of yesterday, was eight years old. For a sampling of examples see this, this, this, this, this or this. This formulation is wrong, since it misconstrues the definition of a bull market. Rather than …

  Global asset markets may not be taking Janet Yellen’s warnings on rate increases too seriously, but Singapore got Fed-ready with the surprise announcement that the city is easing property curbs. Starting in 2009, those restrictions on buying, selling and financing real estate came in waves of increasing severity after Singapore found its open economy inundated with cheap money printed …

  The trigger of Article 50 is the event traders have been waiting for since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. Yet as Prime Minister Theresa May approaches her end-March deadline for launching Brexit, there is no consensus on what it means for markets. The pound has slumped 18 percent and the country’s benchmark equities index has rallied …

  DUBAI / Reuters Speculation over a possible merger between Dubai-based Shuaa Capital and Bahrain’s GFH Financial spurred heavy turnover in their shares on Monday, while the banking and insurance sectors dragged the Saudi Arabian stock index lower. Shuaa climbed 3.2 percent to a seven-year closing high of 1.93 dirhams, bringing its gains to 18.4 percent since Sunday. The Dubai-listed …

  Bloomberg For sale: stakes in oil fields. Bids from world class energy companies preferred. Pipelines and terminals associated with the deposits only blown up about a dozen times in the past year. Deal may depend on crude prices. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s government on March 7 proposed a plan to jump start the economy by, among other things, selling …

  Bloomberg The future of the Canadian oil sands is looking a lot more Canadian. Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. said it will spend C$12.7 billion ($9.4 billion), its biggest purchase ever, to buy Alberta oil fields and facilities that process the sticky bitumen from oil sands from Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Marathon Oil Corp. “At the time you …