Facebook and Twitter have been significantly punished by investors following figures about users which created doubts about the performance of both companies in the future. In the first case, the number of users active per month increased 1.74% in 2018 to pass from 2.196 millions to 2.234 million, disappointing market expectations and delivering the smallest increase since Facebook provided figures.
Financial markets in developed countries have suffered several difficult months of August this century. Therefore we should never be confident about August and this year there are reasons to face it with caution. In a brief series which starts today, Intermoney identifies the key elements of these potential risks.
Yu Yongding via Caixin | Washington launched its trade war against Beijing in part because of China’s long-running trade surplus with the U.S., but it turns out that the surplus isn’t as large as advertised. U.S. President Donald Trump has said that his country has an annual trade deficit of $500 billion with China. This is nonsense.
Benjamin Cole | Fed Chair Jerome Powell has stated the Fed’s 2% target is symmetric, which may be code words for “inflation a little above 2% is tolerable.” The US central bank may find fighting inflation resembles heart surgery with a chainsaw.
Eelke Heemskerk and via The Conversation | Who holds the power in international politics? Most people would probably say it’s the largest states in the global system. Yet multinationals like Apple and Starbucks still wield phenomenal power. They oversee huge supply chains, sell products all over the world, and help mould international politics to their interests.
America’s interests — not to mention image — took a major hit in Helsinki during the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is more than sufficient to provoke America’s concern about the direction Donald Trump is taking the country.
On the few occasions the Fed’s former chairman Ben Bernanke speaks in public, which makes him feel physically sick- , he resorts to metaphors. It is what he did in May when he declared that “in 2020 the coyote is going to leap off the precipice and is going to look down”. Bernanke was referring to Wile E.Coyote, the coyote in the Roadrunner, a series of Warner cartoons which ran in the 50s and 60s.
Where the euro may go in 2018 is such a central question and will have implications for global asset markets around the world. Christopher Gannatti, head of research at Wisdom Tree, thinks that “forecasting currencies is very much like putting together a puzzle”, at times requiring just as much art as data.
In the middle of all the trade battles of the US against the rest of the world, the European Union has considered a new strategy of collaboration with other regions and have signed with Japan its largest trade agreement ever. The deal will create an open trade zone covering over 600 million people.
The performance rating of countries for the last month demonstrates the concerns of investors about the price to be paid for a de-globalization of the world by those countries whose companies focus on exports. Alphavalue offers a ranking of these countries according to its coverage