August, 2018

• 27 August

  US stocks hit records; Mexico’s peso rises on new trade pact

  

  Bloomberg US stocks added to all-time highs, and Mexico’s peso rallied versus the dollar as the Trump administration closed a bilateral trade deal with America’s southern neighbor. Treasuries fell. The S&P 500 Index rose as President Donald Trump unveiled details of the agreement that he says will replace Nafta. The peso rallied Mexico. European shares advanced, though a British holiday ...

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• 27 August

  Top-performing stock fund prefers Macy’s to Amazon

  

  Bloomberg One of the world’s top-performing global stock funds is betting against Amazon.com. It’s not so much that Amazon won’t flourish, but that the recent rally in global technology behemoths has made brick-and-mortar retailers cheap in comparison, according to Norwegian fund Storebrand Global Multifactor. The valuations right now are “too pessimistic for the retailers and too optimistic for Internet retailers,” ...

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• 27 August

  Malaysia PM bans foreigners from $100bn property project

  

  Bloomberg Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said foreigners won’t be allowed to buy property at Country Garden Holdings Co.’s $100 billion project, or be granted visas to live there. The Forest City project near Singapore had targeted buyers from China for its mixed-residential development, as well as investors from Indonesia and Thailand. Malaysia’s My Second Home programme allows wealthy foreigners ...

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• 27 August

  Billionaire Adani nears acquisition of GMR power plant

  

  Bloomberg Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s energy unit is nearing a deal to acquire a 1,370-megawatt thermal power plant backed by GMR Infrastructure Ltd., according to people with knowledge of the matter. Adani Power Ltd. will take over about 38 billion rupees ($543 million) of loans out of a total of 58 billion rupees that GMR Chhattisgarh Energy Ltd. owes, said ...

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• 27 August

  Nirav Modi-linked US firms tied to India fraud

  

  Bloomberg Three bankrupt US companies with links to Indian billionaire Nirav Modi were “directly involved” in transactions related to the alleged multibillion-dollar international fraud for which Modi has been charged by Indian authorities, according to an investigation by the court-appointed examiner. The examiner, John J. Carney, found “substantial evidence” that senior officers and directors at Firestar Diamond Inc., A. Jaffe ...

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• 27 August

  Floods in India’s top buyer may hit wedding gold demand

  

  Bloomberg Jewelers in India’s biggest gold-buying state expect sales to drop during the peak festival and wedding season after heavy rains and floods caused more than $3 billion of damage. The usual spend of 200 grams to 1 kilogram of gold per wedding in Kerala may drop 50 percent in the next month, B. Govindan, president of the All Kerala ...

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• 27 August

  India debt under scrutiny over bankruptcy deadline

  

  Bloomberg A deadline set by India’s central bank to restructure an estimated $52 billion of stressed loans may push dozens more companies into bankruptcy. The Reserve Bank of India in February introduced new rules and a 180-day timeline for banks to recast loans once payments are missed, scrapping previous methods that could take an indefinite amount of time. Companies that ...

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• 27 August

  China’s yuan steady after central bank signals its support

  

  Bloomberg China’s yuan was stable in the onshore market following Friday’s surge, after the central bank signalled that it’s taking action to support the currency through its daily fixing. Starting this month, banks resumed using an adjustment in the daily pricing of the currency against the dollar, known as the counter-cyclical factor, to mitigate the bias towards a weaker yuan, ...

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• 27 August

  Best-performing China bank stock may have room to rise by 23 percent

  

  Bloomberg President Xi Jinping’s push to spur lending in his economy stands to benefit Postal Savings Bank of China Ltd., whose ubiquitous green-fronted outlets have been luring deposits across the nation. This branch network, the widest in the world, has become a source of cheap funds for the lender, ensuring it’s better placed than rivals amid the government’s crackdown on ...

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• 27 August

  Canada, UK have this gauge to fear amid turmoil: Goldman

  

  Bloomberg One under-appreciated indicator is flashing red for some developed markets, Goldman Sachs analysts say. The private-sector financial balance — an economy’s total income minus the spending of all households and businesses — has proven more powerful in predicting crises than the current-account balance, Goldman analysts led by Jan Hatzius, the bank’s global head of economics, wrote in an August ...

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