February, 2019

• 25 February

  Indonesia is too wedded to monetary stability

  Bank Indonesia wants you to know it really, really likes stability. The stoutness, on display when the central bank kept interest rates unchanged, does nothing to address Indonesia’s inflation problem. The problem is that it’s too low. Like a lot of emerging-market central banks, Bank Indonesia has the ability and capacity to cut rates. It made no bones about why ...

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• 25 February

  Chinese tourists won’t be weapons for much longer

  

  This was supposed to be the China-New Zealand Year of Tourism, but the celebration appears to be off. An influential Chinese state-owned newspaper reported that Chinese tourists were having second thoughts about traveling to New Zealand thanks to suggestions that its government might bar Huawei Technologies Co. from the country’s next-generation wireless networks. A senior official at China CYTS Tours ...

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• 25 February

  Don’t stress over China’s ban on Australian coal

  

  Stop worrying about China’s ban on Australian coal. A Reuters report that the northern port of Dalian had banned imports from China’s biggest supplier of the black stuff sent ripples through global markets, driving the Australian dollar down as much as 1.3 percent after a whipsawing day of trade. London-listed shares in Glencore Plc, Anglo American Plc and BHP Group ...

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• 25 February

  Galaxy Fold, Samsung’s $2,000 bid to be king of cool

  

  The smartphone with a foldable screen, which Samsung will start shipping at the end of April, is far more than an expensive gimmick. With the release of the $1,980 Galaxy Fold, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd challenges Apple’s claim to premium pricing and unleashes, in what looked like a mature market, the same kind of race that Apple Inc. started with ...

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• 25 February

  Stocks climb as China soars on optimism over trade

  

  Bloomberg US equity futures advanced alongside stocks in Europe and Asia after President Donald Trump postponed the date for boosting tariffs on Chinese imports, taken as a sign of progress in the trade talks. Bonds fell and the dollar retreated. Contracts on the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P all climbed, while the trade headlines boosted carmakers in Europe, fueling an advance ...

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• 25 February

  China’s stock surge puts world-beating bond rally in shade

  

  Bloomberg A surge in equities is blunting the attraction of China’s world-leading bond rally, prompting analysts to recommend clients pile into stocks rather than debt. News that the US will extend a tariff truce is likely to fuel that momentum. The rally since January 3 has added more than $1 trillion to the value of the country’s equities, while China’s ...

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• 25 February

  Key Fed officials support new approach to meet inflation goal

  

  Bloomberg Two Federal Reserve officials highlighted the benefits of an approach to monetary policy called average inflation targeting, which would entail accepting overshoots of the central bank’s 2 percent price goal to make up for times when inflation was too low. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly and John Williams, who preceded her in that role before shifting to run ...

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• 25 February

  Barclays CEO vows buyback as trading outperforms rivals

  

  Bloomberg Barclays Plc’s Jes Staley promised more buybacks and dividends to shareholders as the bank’s traders outperformed most of their Wall Street and European peers. Fourth-quarter income at the London-based firm’s markets unit fell 2.5 percent from a year earlier to 945 million pounds ($1.2 billion), a performance that beat many of the bank’s rivals. While the last quarter of ...

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• 25 February

  StanChart to take $900 million charge over US, UK regulatory investigations

  

  Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc is booking a $900 million charge tied to regulatory probes in its fourth-quarter results, a move that will erode earnings as its top executive prepares to unveil a turnaround plan. The provision will cover the UK bank’s estimates for potential penalties from investigations over US sanctions violations, currency trading issues and financial-crime controls, the company said. ...

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• 25 February

  Philippine central bank stays hawkish on policy

  Bloomberg The Philippines central bank remains guarded on monetary policy and is keeping a hawkish bias, Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said, indicating it’s not ready to cut interest rates just yet. “We are more on the hawkish side in the sense that we recognize the risks on the market,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Nejra Cehic from ...

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