October, 2019

• 9 October

  Free trade is expanding, just not with the US

  

  New US tariffs on as much as $7.5 billion of exports from the European Union (EU) have brought another reminder of how trade wars and protectionism dominate the news. Yet in the last two years, countries accounting for more than one-third of global output have signed more than a dozen trade treaties. When historians look back, they may depict this ...

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• 9 October

  Investors are caught in a tug of war

  

  More than anything else, last week’s market gyrations illustrated the tug of war that has dominated US stocks in recent months and confined them in a range despite significant developments in the underlying dynamics. The intensifying tension between the two macro forces could lead to greater volatility and pose increasing challenges for investors. The first part of the week was ...

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• 9 October

  Virtue’s worth trying, but vice may pay more

  Fund managers are grappling with how to incorporate environmental, social and governance considerations into their portfolios. A movement that started in equities has spread across asset classes. For credit investors, the trick to investing with a conscience without hurting returns may lie with which corporate bonds they load up on as much as with those they choose to shun. Chris ...

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• 9 October

  Cash is no longer a king trading strategy in Japan

  Cash is king, unless you are in Japan. One successful trading strategy there has recently lost its luster, thanks to the Bank of Japan’s never-ending obsession with negative interest rates. When a global recession looms, investors tend to hug stocks that pay handsome dividends. Cash rewards also have appeal at corporate headquarters. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the S&P ...

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• 9 October

  Recession fears seeping into the stock market

  

  Last week brought lots of bad news about the American economy. The stock market treated each new data point suggesting that activity was slowing down as bad news. And that, in itself, is bad news. Here’s why: Grim tidings for the economy aren’t necessarily so bad for investors, because they tend to lead to lower interest rates. That, in turn, ...

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• 9 October

  In war against plastic, America is a big threat

  

  How much do you care about the scourge of plastic waste, and how much more might you pay for a bottled drink in order to reduce it? We may be about to find out. The cost of brand new polyethylene terephthalate, or virgin PET (the stuff used to make plastic containers and fibers for clothing), fell below the cost of ...

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• 9 October

  DBS is losing Asia fintech deals to foreign banks

  

  Southeast Asia’s largest lender happens to be its most tech-savvy. Why then is Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings Ltd. missing out on some of the region’s hottest deals in digital banking? In recent years, technology has played a large role in the bank’s profitable pivot away from trade financing to corporate cash management. One of its application programming interfaces that hooks ...

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• 9 October

  Stocks advance on hopes of fresh trade deal; dollar dips

  

  Bloomberg US index futures jumped along with stocks in Europe as China revived hopes of progress in trade talks with America this week despite a host of potential headwinds. Gold slipped with Treasuries. Contracts on the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq 100 indexes extended gains after a report that China is still open to a partial trade deal with ...

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• 9 October

  Stock revival on hold with investors wary of Ghana polls

  

  Bloomberg First, a deep cleanup of its banking sector battered Ghana stocks. Now, investors already appear to have a wary eye on elections due next year, curbing the prospects of any revival. The Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index, the world’s third-worst performing equities benchmark in 2019 in dollar terms, has suffered as a government-led reorganisation of banks that ended this ...

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• 9 October

  Boeing invests $20m in Virgin Galactic’s space travel program

  

  Bloomberg Boeing Co agreed to invest $20 million for a minority stake in Virgin Galactic, a startup that is preparing to fly its customers into space next year. The relationship is designed as a collaboration aimed at shaping the future of human space travel, the companies said in a statement. Virgin Galactic also is setting longer-term sights on shuttling airline ...

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