China Caixin services purchasing managers’ index (PMI) on Wednesday showed growth slowed in June, as new order volumes weakened, but it continued to show rising demand. The June Business Activity Index came in at 51.6, down from May’s four-month high of 52.8, with the release from Caixin and PMI by IHS Markit saying it pointed […]
Read moreGrowth in shadow banking in China is slowing due to coordinated government action to contain systemic financial risks, a development that will benefit banks, although it will also bring adjustment risks, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report Tuesday. The ratings agency’s analysis showed the effectiveness of coordinated measures by authorities by the central bank, […]
Read moreMark Pincus and Reid Hoffman want to hack the Democratic Party. Not literally. Not the likes of what befell the team behind Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, resulting in scores of private emails being published online — and countless news stories that helped seal her defeat. No, Pincus, the co-founder of Zynga, and Hoffman, the brains […]
Read morePrime Minister Edouard Philippe told lawmakers on Tuesday that it was time to end France’s addiction to public spending and rein in debts that he said were at an unacceptable level. France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, sees taming France’s spending and reducing its budget deficit was key to winning the trust of European Union partner […]
Read moreTWO not entirely unrelated pieces of aviation news have come out of the Gulf in the past few days. The first is that America has lifted its laptop restrictions on Etihad. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) imposed a ban on large electrical devices in the cabins of planes flying from ten Middle Eastern countries […]
Read moreCurrency, United States Finance
UK broadcaster BBC invests $44 million to compete with Facebook, Netflix and Amazon
The U.K. public service broadcaster BBC announced it would spend £34 million ($44 million) on children’s programming over the next three years to face off competition from global media giants like Facebook, Amazon and Netflix. Proposals to draw young audiences away from the Silicon Valley firms include multimedia content such as video, live online programming, […]
Read moreRussian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Tuesday called North Korea’s latest test launch of a ballistic missile a breach of a U.N. Security Council resolution, the RIA news agency reported. It also cited Ryabkov as saying that tensions with Pyongyang risked leading to catastrophic developments and that the missile launch showed that the only […]
Read moreGrilling burgers may be fun on the Fourth of July, but less so if hot grease is your daily grind. Enter Miso Robotics. The southern California start-up has built a robotic “kitchen assistant” called Flippy to do the hot, greasy and repetitive work of a fry cook. Flippy employs machine learning and computer vision to […]
Read moreMicrosoft launched a new keyboard with a built-in fingerprint reader on Monday. The keyboard, officially known as the Microsoft Modern Keyboard with Fingerprint ID, lets you easily log in to a Windows 10 machine with the tap of a finger. It supports Bluetooth, which means you don’t need to plug it in and can easily […]
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Goldman Sachs: War or recession typically required to buck trend of low volatility
Central banks tightening is supportive of risk appetite but historically a large shock such as a war or recession has been required to snap low market volatility, according to strategists at Goldman Sachs. The low volatility “regime” currently plaguing the equity market is comparable to the last 14 cases since 1928, strategists Christian Mueller-Glissmann and […]
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