Bloomberg Its last day may have been a washout, but the first quarter just took its place among the best of the lengthening bull run for US stocks. Even with a 0.2 percent decline, the S&P 500 Index surged 5.5 percent in the three months ended March 31, the biggest advance since shares jumped 6.5 percent at the end …

  Bloomberg Puente Hnos SA, the largest local brokerage in Argentina, is weighing selling shares of its UK holding company in Buenos Aires before the end of the year. The company is still considering an initial public offering in New York or London, Federico Tomasevich, Puente’s global chairman, said in an interview. Selling the securities in Argentina is preferred because …

  It isn’t often that economics raises the most profound questions of human existence, but recent work of economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton (husband and wife, both of Princeton University) comes close. You may recall that a few years ago, Case and Deaton reported the startling finding that the death rates of non-Hispanic whites aged 50 to 54 had …

  I’m taking you on a nostalgia trip. Remember the olden days (2016), when it seemed outlandish investments in technology startups were a thing of the faraway past (2015)? Snap out of it. Just look at the headlines of the past few weeks. China’s on-demand ride king Didi Chuxing is considering a $6 billion investment backed by SoftBank. Airbnb finalized …

  Given the usual speed of economic reform in India, it’s remarkable that the biggest change in years might actually start on schedule. “Start,” though, is the operative word. If the country’s new national goods-and-services tax does go into effect in July, which looks more likely now that Parliament has passed the requisite legislation, that will be worth celebrating. The …

  As the debate over Russian scandal rages, Trump aides are volunteering to testify to Congress without even being asked for. First it was ex-Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was fired in January for misleading the White House about his conversation with Russian envoy Sergei Kislyak, offered to testify if granted immunity. Flynn initially lied to Vice President …

  With the bankruptcy this week of Westinghouse Electric Co., the future of big nuclear power plants in the US isn’t looking good at all. But maybe, just maybe, there is hope for something smaller. Westinghouse, which was acquired by Japan’s Toshiba Corp. in 2006, has been building the only nuclear power plants currently under construction in the US: two …

  BlackRock shook the world of active management when it announced that it had fired five of its 53 stock pickers. BlackRock will also move $6 billion of the $201 billion invested in traditional active management to quant strategies. The announcement may not sound earth-shattering, but it augurs a larger trend: Traditional active management is dying, but perhaps not for …

  Airlines operate in such a brutally competitive market that it’s sometimes tempting to view them as an undifferentiated group. The most richly valued of the big three US carriers, United Continental Holdings Inc., trades on a forward price-earnings ratio of 9.8; the cheapest, Delta Air Lines Inc., is on 8.7. The clustering is even tighter in China, where Beijing-based …

  Bloomberg Four years ago, Canada’s government tried to keep state-owned companies out of Alberta’s oil sands. Now, they may be around for a while. ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc decided this month to sell most of their oil sands to Cenovus Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. That leaves firms such as China’s Cnooc …