July, 2018

• 30 July

  Trump’s auto proposal would raise fuel use by 500,000 barrels a day

  

  Bloomberg A draft proposal by federal regulators to roll back US automobile efficiency requirements contends that their preferred plan would reduce ‘societal costs’ by roughly half a trillion dollars through 2029, while increasing US fuel consumption by 500,000 barrels per day. The assertions are detailed in an undated draft of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Environmental Protection Agency ...

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• 30 July

  Siemens plans innovation centre outside Germany

  

  Bloomberg Siemens AG is leaning towards building a 600 million euro flagship innovation center outside Germany, rather than in its historic stomping ground of Berlin, according to a person familiar with the matter. The engineering giant confirmed a report that it’s planning a complex called Siemens City, but a spokesman said the company hasn’t yet chosen a location. German news ...

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• 30 July

  Foxtons to prioritise rentals as London property woes increase

  

  Bloomberg Four years ago, Foxtons Group Plc was riding the crest of London’s housing wave as surging demand sent home values in the UK capital soaring. Since then, the estate agent’s share price has fallen by almost 90 percent as the city’s residents and landlords hold off on buying homes, while overseas demand remains damped by a series of tax ...

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• 30 July

  Sweden’s economic growth accelerates

  

  Bloomberg Sweden’s economic growth unexpectedly accelerated in the second quarter as consumer spending and exports picked up. Gross domestic product advanced 1.0 percent in the period, accelerating from a revised 0.8 percent in the first three months of 2018 and beating the 0.5 percent estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. GDP grew 3.3 percent from a year earlier. The ...

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• 30 July

  Nokia Q2 operating profit fell 42%

  

  Bloomberg Nokia Oyj plunged after saying customers aren’t quite ready to increase spending on faster networks and are demanding price cuts. In the second quarter, Nokia’s operating profit fell 42 percent to 334 million euros ($391 million), short of the 374.5 million-euro average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Suri said he expects market conditions to improve further in the ...

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• 30 July

  London traders are frogs boiling in a Brexit pot

  

  The news that the Deutsche Bank AG has transferred about half of its business clearing euro-denominated derivatives to Frankfurt from London shouldn’t come as a surprise. But it’s another reminder that money flows to where it feels most welcome and stays where it’s well treated — and post-Brexit London is set to be a more hostile environment for finance. Even ...

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• 30 July

  Hedge funds suffer from metal fatigue

  

  Commodity funds are going soft. The investors who helped bid up the price of LME copper to a four-year high of $7,348 a metric ton last month are beating a path to the door. Holdings of investment funds in Chicago copper futures this month crashed to a net short position for the first time since the election of US President ...

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• 30 July

  Initial coin offerings are getting a bad rap

  Initial coin offerings are a hot topic, but the focus tends to miss the most important innovation. Attention naturally is on the 81 percent that are frauds, but the honest ones raised $7 billion for cryptocurrency initiatives in 2017. Those were predominately for double-block-chain ideas, which is blockchain funding to support a blockchain project. Frauds permeate crypto projects because they’re ...

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• 30 July

  Trump hasn’t fixed the border crisis he created

  The Trump administration claims that it has mostly met a court-ordered deadline to reunite migrant families separated at the border. Even to the extent that’s true, this is a story without happy endings. More than 700 of the nearly 3,000 children originally separated from family members remain in government hands, either because their parents have already been deported or they ...

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• 30 July

  The pound finally has a friend in Mark Carney

  

  Don’t accuse Mark Carney of being a currency manipulator (anymore). True, the Bank of England Governor has something to answer for. He announced an interest-rate cut in August 2016, just as the Brexit vote sent sterling reeling. That worsened the devaluation, and proved he was no friend of the currency. It was complicated. Now, they’re back on speaking terms. The ...

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