February, 2018

• 10 February

  India’s wheat imports to surge to 40 percent

  Bloomberg India’s wheat imports are set to surge as lower plantings and poor rain threaten output in the world’s biggest grower after China. Imports may total 3.5 million metric tons in the year from April 1, according analysts. That compares with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimate of 2.5 million tons for 2017-18. Output is seen falling to a three-year ...

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• 10 February

  EU warns of Brexit chaos as transition talks stumble

  

  Bloomberg Brexit negotiations broke up in acrimony when the European Union’s chief negotiator raised the prospect of the UK crashing out of the bloc next year into a legal limbo. Michel Barnier’s comments provoked an angry reaction in London, and the pound fell. Barnier said he was waiting to hear what the UK wanted to achieve from the talks and ...

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• 10 February

  Key to Tesla’s battery making still in Germany

  

  Bloomberg Tesla Inc. has all the tools to meet its planned Model 3 production rate in the first quarter. The problem is that a key to its future battery manufacturing is still in Germany. The electric-car maker — which still plans to make about 2,500 of the cars a week by the end of March — designed a new automated ...

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• 10 February

  UK factories post best year since 2014

  

  Bloomberg UK factory production extended its record run in December, capping the strongest year since 2014. Manufacturing rose 0.3 percent from November, the Office for National Statistics said. Overall industrial output slumped a larger-than-forecast 1.3 percent after the closure of a key North Sea pipeline led to a steep drop in oil output. Separate figures show construction output rose 1.6 ...

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• 10 February

  Maersk drops as it misses estimates after an ‘unusual’ year

  Bloomberg A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S fell short of earnings expectations last year but promised its shareholders profit at the world’s biggest shipping company will grow as much as 43 percent in 2018. Maersk opened about 5 percent lower in Copenhagen, making it the day’s worst performer on Denmark’s index of benchmark stocks. In a note to clients, Clarksons Platou said Maersk ...

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• 10 February

  Uber agrees to pay Waymo $245 million equity to settle suit

  

  Bloomberg Uber Technologies Inc. agreed to give Waymo about $245 million in closely held stock to cut short a trade-secret theft trial, ending a high-stakes conflict that already cost the ride-hailing giant its top driverless car engineer and threatened to further embarrass the company. The deal will give the Alphabet Inc. driverless-car unit 0.34 percent of Uber equity, Waymo said. ...

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• 10 February

  America’s prudence deficit

  

  Well, we just kicked the can down the road again — to quote former President Barack Obama, who developed into an expert can-kicker during his eight years in the White House. The bipartisan budget agreement reached last week by Congressional leaders is nothing if not a huge evasion of responsibility. Neither party will make the unpopular choices necessary to pay ...

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• 10 February

  Bad news for bonds is terrible news for stocks these days

  

  It’s time for markets to grow up. An important element in the current volatility tantrum is the return of inflation. Last Friday’s US payroll report kicked it off, and the struggle at this week’s 10-year and 30-year US Treasury auctions suggests fixed-income investors don’t spy an end to the rout. This means the next key event for them is U.S. ...

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• 10 February

  Janet Yellen asks the right question about Wells Fargo

  

  In her final hours in charge at the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen raised an issue central to the health of the US financial system: Can banks grow too big and complex to manage? Wells Fargo, the case in point, certainly makes you wonder. And it isn’t alone. The world’s biggest financial institutions run myriad lines of business, with hundreds of ...

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• 10 February

  Amid market turmoil, China is absent from conversation

  China is eroding American dominance in many arenas — just not the one that’s been fixating the world for the past week. With global capital markets in turmoil, China has been largely absent from the conversation. Plenty of players are in the mix, from the Federal Reserve, to inflation, to volati ity, to earnings, to stretched valuations. But China has ...

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