January, 2019

• 2 January

  Tropical cyclone hits far north Australia near Rio Tinto mine

  

  Bloomberg Tropical Cyclone Penny slammed into the far north coast of Australia’s Queensland state near Rio Tinto Group’s Weipa bauxite mine, triggering warnings of flash flooding and damaging winds. The category 1 cyclone, with wind gusts of up to 100 kilometers per hour, is expected to weaken into a tropical low later Tuesday evening as it crosses Cape York Peninsula, ...

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• 2 January

  Sydney’s housing slump to deepen as prices drop

  

  Bloomberg The downturn in Sydney’s property market is set to deepen this year as tighter lending standards and the worst slump in values since the late 1980s cause nervous buyers to sit on the sidelines. Average Sydney home values have fallen 11.1 percent since their 2017 peak, according to CoreLogic Inc. data — surpassing the 9.6 percent top-to-bottom decline when ...

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• 2 January

  After $46bn drop, China drugmakers face pressure

  

  Bloomberg Even after a plunge last month that wiped $46 billion off Chinese health-care stocks, domestic drugmakers may be far from their floor as a Beijing-led policy shift gathers pace. China’s plan to drive down generic drug prices through a centralised bulk procurement programme is set to redraw the industry by forcing its thousands of small generic drugmakers to streamline ...

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• 2 January

  Coal’s $100 heyday fades in Europe as curbs tighten

  

  Bloomberg Coal’s three-year run of blistering gains in Europe is set to end, clobbered by a combination of weakening demand and energy polices aimed at phasing out the dirtiest fossil fuel. After prices more than doubled since 2016 as Asian importers drove demand, coal is expected to fall more than 10 percent to $76.50 a tonne this year in Europe, ...

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• 2 January

  UK manufacturing sector grows to six-month high

  

  Bloomberg UK manufacturing growth unexpectedly improved to a six-month high in December 2018, as companies built up inventories and boosted new orders in preparation for a potentially disruptive Brexit. IHS Markit’s Purchasing Managers Index for the industry rose to 54.2, more than the 52.5 expected by economists. Still, the average reading for the final three months of 2018 was the ...

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• 2 January

  Canadian consumer confidence dips heading into election year

  

  Bloomberg Canadians enter 2019 far less optimistic about the economy than a year earlier. The Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index, based on weekly telephone polling, ended 2018 at 55.1, down from 62.2 at the close of 2017. The change was driven more by Canadians’ views of the overall outlook than of their own finances — 39.6 percent expect the domestic ...

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• 2 January

  Humming US factories end 2018 on sour note amid trade war

  

  Bloomberg Five Federal Reserve indexes of regional manufacturing all slumped in December 2018, the first time they’ve fallen in unison since May 2016 and the latest evidence that a pillar of the US economy has started to wobble heading into 2019. The Dallas Fed’s factory index unexpectedly contracted, falling to a two-year low of minus 5.1 from 17.6 in November, ...

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• 2 January

  Trump’s trade strategy on China isn’t working

  

  The Trump administration’s willingness to push the Chinese harder on trade has struck a bilateral chord. Beijing is listening. So far, so good. Now the question is what the US wants to achieve. Answer: the total destruction of China as a competitor. That isn’t a trade goal, and the demands being made contradict one another. This aim also unnecessarily awakens ...

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• 2 January

  Bond giant has $15bn to play with

  

  This year heralds a brave new world for euro credit spreads. The continent’s biggest buyer of corporate debt is calling a halt after amassing a 180 billion euro portfolio in just two and a half years. The European Central Bank’s Corporate Sector Purchasing Program (CSPP for short) is ending net new buys after gorging on investment grade euro corporate bonds. ...

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• 2 January

  A warming world will require more N- power

  In light of the recent stark warning from the United Nations that the world is on course to reach the limit of tolerable warming in a scant 21 years, nuclear power is getting some overdue attention and enthusiasm. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is coming around to the view that nuclear power has a crucial role in climate ...

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