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☆ RBI may deliver 'final' 25 basis point rate hike in February: Nomura
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailWe expect India's central bank to deliver a 'final' 25 basis point rate hike in February: EconomistSonal Varma of Nomura says that's because of "elevated core inflation," adding that it should be the last hike of this cycle.

☆ Asking prices for UK homes rise after "mini-budget" shock, Rightmove says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( Suban Abdulla | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Asking prices for British homes rose for the first time in two months as the housing market showed signs of calming after the turmoil triggered by former prime minister Liz Truss's "mini-budget", property website Rightmove (RMV.L) said on Monday. Asking prices for residential properties increased by 0.9%, or 3,301 pounds ($4,032.50) in the Dec. 4-Jan. 7 period from a month earlier, after a 2.1% fall over the previous month, Rightmove said. However, average asking prices were still 2% below their October 2022 peak. Two- and five-year fixed rates have fallen for a second month to 5.8% and 5.6% respectively, according to data from website Moneyfacts. In annual terms, property prices rose 6.3% in January, up from a rise of 5.6% the month before.

☆ Companies, Lenders Clash Over Loan Spreads in Switch From Libor
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Mark Maurer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

As part of the shift, companies typically propose changes to their loan agreements with lenders, adjusting for the price difference between SOFR and Libor. The adjustment of the credit spread adds basis points to the interest rate on a loan to make up for the fact that SOFR has traded lower than Libor. The difference between SOFR and Libor can be as much as 25 basis points for loans with maturities of five to seven years. There will likely be more disagreements over credit spread adjustments as companies stop using Libor prior to its end. “There’s no reason to burn bridges over a few basis points,” Mr. Kerschner said.

Japan's Nikkei (.N225) fell 0.4% and the yen, which surged 2.7% against the dollar overnight, kept going and rose about 0.2% further to 128.65 per dollar. "No change in policy this month would be a setback for the yen," said Rabobank FX strategist Jane Foley. "However, we would look to buy the yen against the dollar on dips on anticipation of another (policy) move ... in the spring." INFLATION IN RETREATBeyond Japan, market sentiment was dominated by overnight U.S. December inflation data that landed more or less on consensus expectations. The U.S. dollar dropped 0.9% to a nine-month low of $1.0868 per euro and the risk-sensitive Australian dollar rose to a roughly five-month high at $0.6984.

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice forcefully rejected Bill Hwang's claim that it sandbagged him by concealing its plan to charge him with fraud over the collapse of his $36 billion Archegos Capital Management LP. In a Thursday night filing in Manhattan federal court, prosecutors said there was no basis to grant Hwang's motion to dismiss his indictment because of prosecutorial misconduct prior to his April 27, 2022, arrest. "Hwang's motion is predicated on a series of inflammatory claims about the government's conduct that are entirely baseless," prosecutors said. Archegos collapsed in March 2021 after failing to meet margin calls following trades through so-called total return swaps. In a separate Thursday night filing, prosecutors rejected the defendants' claims that they committed no crimes because Archegos' trading was legal.

☆ UK first-time home-buyers' mortgage costs highest since 2008: Nationwide
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Mortgage costs for first-time home-buyers in Britain have risen to their highest since 2008, reflecting a surge in interest rates over the past year, Nationwide Building Society said on Friday. The Bank of England started to raise interest rates in December 2021 - when they were just 0.1% - and they reached 3.5% last month, the fastest tightening in decades. Financial market turmoil caused by Liz Truss's September mini-budget had exacerbated the rise in mortgage rates, Nationwide said. "While wider financial market conditions had stabilised by the end of 2022, with market interest rates falling back towards the levels prevailing before the mini-budget, mortgage rates are taking longer to normalise," Nationwide economist Andrew Harvey said. House price to earnings ratios are down slightly from a year ago, reflecting falling house prices and faster wage growth.

TOKYO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Yields on Japan's benchmark 10-year government bonds breached the central bank's new ceiling on Friday in the market's most direct challenge yet to decades of uber-easy monetary policy. The central bank already holds 80% to 90% of some bond lines. REMEMBER THE RBAThere is talk in the markets that the central bank could shorten its yield target to three- and five-year bonds, but history abroad suggests the strain will remain. With the local economy recovering faster than expected and inflation accelerating, the RBA realised its pledge to keep three-year yields at 0.1% out to 2024 was no longer credible. So it abruptly dropped the whole thing and three-year yields spiked to 0.48%, an episode the RBA itself conceded caused "reputational damage" that would not be repeated.

☆ UK house prices set for 15% drop, Nomura predicts
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Andy Bruce | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - British house prices look on track to fall around 15% by mid-2024, economists from Japanese bank Nomura said on Thursday, a more severe drop than other forecasters have projected. The market is already showing signs of a reversal, after the COVID-19 pandemic and tax breaks spurred a 29% surge in house prices on the official measure. Mortgage lenders estimate British house prices are already 3.5% lower than their peak, Nomura said. British house prices were forecast to fall 4.7% in 2023, and drop by 10% from peak to trough. Nomura said slumping house prices would feed through into the Bank of England's monetary policy.

☆ Uniqlo goes out on a limb in salary hike
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

HONG KONG, Jan 12 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Fast Retailing (9983.T), owner of the Uniqlo clothing chain, announced it would hike wages by up to 40% for some roles on Wednesday. The bigger question, though, is how much of an outlier Fast Retailing will be. Although Japan’s labour market is tight, weak growth and rising prices have caused real wages to contract for eight consecutive months through November. Fast Retailing, set to announce earnings today, was a market outperformer last year and is preparing a 3-1 stock split. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

They projected their key policy rate would top out at between 5.00% and 5.25% this year, up from a current 4.25%-4.50% rate. Market pricing indicates investors remain wedded to a more dovish view, with the policy rate peaking below 5% around mid-June before falling in the second half of the year. Rieder believes policymakers will raise rates by 25 basis points at the next two meetings, with further 25 basis point increases possible, depending on data. Investors in short-term options had priced in a much sharper move of about 2% going into Thursday's CPI print, according to data from market maker Optiver. Tiffany Wilding, PIMCO's North American economist, believes the Fed is likely to raise rates just two more times this year before pausing.

☆ China state media warn of two-way volatility for yuan in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

"Even if the depreciation pressure has diminished, two-way volatility in the yuan exchange rate will still be the norm in 2023," the Securities Times said. "The shrinking current account surplus and yield gap between China and the United States will keep adding depreciation pressure on the yuan," it warned. The China Securities Journal of Beijing said improvements in China's economic expectations remained the most fundamental force in deciding the yuan's value. "After a reasonable correction, the yuan will likely continue to be subject to two-way volatility, gradually converging towards a reasonable range in the long run," the newspaper said. The Shanghai Securities News said the value of yuan would be determined mainly by domestic factors this year.

☆ The owner of Uniqlo is boosting pay for Japan employees by up to 40% as inflation bites
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Michelle Toh | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Hong Kong CNN —Fast Retailing, the Japanese giant that owns popular clothing brands Uniqlo and Theory, will start paying its employees much more this year. The company announced Wednesday that it would boost salaries in Japan by up to 40%, acknowledging that “remuneration levels have remained low” in the country in recent years. “Inflation in Japan is a factor in our considerations,” a Fast Retailing spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday. But the company is generally more focused on aligning “each employee’s remuneration with global standards, to be able to increase our competitiveness,” the representative added. The retailer has also been hiking pay for staff in some of its overseas markets, leading to pay bumps ranging from 5% to 25%, the spokesperson said.

☆ Alibaba shares hit 6-month high after Jack Ma cedes control of Ant Group, amid a broad rally in Asian shares
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The gains also come on the back of a broader market rally in Asian shares, thanks to China's reopening. A top Chinese central banker suggested over the weekend Beijing's tech crackdown is coming to a close. The Hang Seng Tech Index — an index that tracks the 30 largest tech companies listed in Hong Kong — closed 3.2% higher. Shares of Hong Kong-listed Chinese tech giants Tencent and NetEase closed 3.6% and 2.6% higher respectively. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index closed 1.9% higher, the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.6%, and the Shenzhen Composite Index rose 0.7%.

☆ Dubai announces $8.7 trillion economic plan to boost trade, investment and global hub status
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Natasha Turak | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Dubai on Wednesday announced a mammoth $8.7 trillion economic plan for the coming decade, aimed at turbocharging trade, foreign investment and its place on the map as a global hub. "Over 300,000 global investors are helping build Dubai into the fastest growing global city." Those include boosting foreign trade to 25.6 trillion dirhams from 14.2 trillion dirhams in the last decade, nearly doubling annual foreign direct investment to 60 billion dirhams yearly, and increasing government spending from 512 billion dirhams in the last decade to 700 billion in the next. The plan also aims to bring private sector investments up from 790 billion dirhams in the last decade to 1 trillion in the next and pledged 100 billion dirhams in annual contributions to the economy from digital transformation projects. The sheer size of the city's economic goals may draw some skepticism, but finance experts in Dubai believe they are achievable.

☆ Time travel is theoretically possible, calculations show. But that doesn't mean you could change the past.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Susie Neilson | Natalie Musumeci | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Time travel is possible based on the laws of physics, according to researchers. Put simply: It's theoretically possible to go back in time, but you couldn't change history. Thomas Peter/ReutersThe grandfather paradoxPhysicists have considered time travel to be theoretically possible since Albert Einstein came up with his theory of relativity. The most famous example is known as the grandfather paradox: Say a time-traveler goes back to the past and kills a younger version of his or her grandfather. Applied to the grandfather paradox, then, this would mean that something would always get in the way of your attempt to kill your grandfather.

☆ Indian markets may see FPI revival after worst-ever selloff in 2022- analysts
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Bharath Rajeswaran | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BENGALURU, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Foreign investors' selloff in Indian equities was the biggest on record in 2022, dragging the benchmark indexes to their smallest annual gain in four years, but analysts expect purchases by cross-border investors to rebound next year. Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold 1,219.08 billion rupees ($14.73 billion) worth of Indian equities in 2022, till Dec. 29, the biggest selloff in Indian shares in a year since 1993, when data became available. Reuters Graphics Reuters GraphicsThe second-worst FPI selloff was in 2008 at 529.87 billion rupees ($6.40 billion), which triggered a 51.79% fall on the Nifty 50 (.NSEI). Foreign funds purchased around 958.78 billion rupees worth of stocks in the second half of 2022, after being net sellers of shares worth 2,173.58 billion rupees in the first half. Reuters GraphicsDOMESTIC INVESTORS WEIGH INMeanwhile, domestic institutional investors net bought equities worth 2,734.60 billion rupees in 2022, their best year since data became available in 2008, according to National Stock Exchange.

☆ Asian shares slip as COVID surge in China makes investors uneasy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Ankur Banerjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

SINGAPORE, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Asian equities weakened slightly on Thursday as soaring COVID cases in China unsettled investors and cast doubt over chances of a swift recovery for the world's second biggest economy after the relaxation of stringent COVID curbs. Around half the passengers on two flights from China to Milan's main airport, Malpensa, tested positive for COVID on Wednesday. China shares (.SSEC) fell 0.3%, while Hong Kong's stock market (.HSI) slid 1%. State Street's Investor Confidence Index, which analyses buying and selling patterns of institutional investors, fell to 75.9 in December, the lowest since the pandemic began three years ago. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was down 2.2 basis points to 3.864%, not far off six-week high of 3.89%.

☆ Asian shares skid as COVID surge in China unsettles investors
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Ankur Banerjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was down 1.06%, and was set for a third straight week of losses. China shares (.SSEC) opened 0.4% lower, while Hong Kong's stock market (.HSI) fell 1%. The Fed raised interest rates by 50 bps earlier in December after delivering four consecutive 75 bps hikes but has said it may need to keep higher interest rates for longer. The two-year U.S. Treasury yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations, was down 1 basis point at 4.349%. Surging COVID cases in China has raised doubts over a fast recovery in fuel demand in the world's second-biggest oil consumer.

☆ Analysis: Fed's balance sheet drawdown could sunset next year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Michael S. Derby | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Analysts at investment bank Nomura see the Fed ending the balance sheet run-off in September of next year. The balance sheet drawdown, meanwhile, has been designed to run more or less on autopilot, in the background. Reuters GraphicsNomura said the U.S. central bank will likely get its balance sheet down to around $7 trillion, well above the pre-pandemic level. Reductions in the Fed balance sheet withdraw bank reserves from the system, in a regime that's dominated by many moving parts, swirling around each other unpredictably. It's something the Fed faced in September 2019, when it was in its latest chapter of balance sheet contraction.

☆ No spending spree likely in last full Indian budget before 2024 election: Reuters poll
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Vivek Mishra | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

BENGALURU, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The Indian government will focus on fiscal consolidation in its Feb. 1 budget, the last full one before a 2024 general election, according to a Reuters poll of economists who said slowing economic growth would limit it from spending more. That will likely limit the government's ability to provide relief to households and businesses facing an uneven recovery from the pandemic. Economic growth likely slowed sharply to an annual 4.6% in the December quarter from 6.3% reported in the preceding quarter. Sitharaman's expected fiscal prudence coincides with state assembly elections in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in 2023, which would likely discourage the government from making deep cuts to social welfare. Among those who expect it to be a more populist budget, some said the government would announce new subsidies, an increase in healthcare and rural spending to boost jobs.

☆ Nomura discusses the impact of the Bank of Japan's yield curve control policy tweak
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailNomura discusses the impact of the Bank of Japan's yield curve control policy tweakYujiro Goto of the financial services firm discusses the ripple effects that a stronger yen might have on regional currencies.

[1/3] Examples of Japanese yen banknotes are displayed at a media event in Tokyo, Japan, November 21, 2022. Those positions took a hit when Tuesday's Bank of Japan policy shift allowed 10-year yields to almost double to 0.47%. On Wednesday the long end of Japan's yield curve actually rallied, with 30-year yields down 2.5 bps to 1.545%. "The 10-year yield is still very low ... maybe they will invest in the 20-year." In Australia, where Japan is also the largest foreign player in the bond market, 10-year yields are up about 20 bps.

☆ Analysis: Kuroda's abrupt policy tweak opens door for bigger shift next year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Leika Kihara | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Waiting until next year would have forced the BOJ to combat intensifying market speculation of a near-term policy shift, or act when a deep U.S. recession could hit Japan's economy, they say. "When uncertainty is so high over the outlook for U.S. monetary policy, it probably wants to have a free hand on when next to act." POLITICS KEY TRIGGERThe abrupt timing of Tuesday's move also reflects growing political pressure for the BOJ to shift away from a policy narrowly focused on its 2% inflation target, the sources say. Hours before he met Kishida, Kuroda explained in parliament a framework on how the BOJ could exit ultra-easy policy in the future. Another dovish board member, Asahi Noguchi, also said earlier this month it "won't be surprising" for the BOJ to shift monetary policy.

Even home remedies such as canned peaches are being snapped up by people looking for ways to fight Covid. Macao is another special administrative region of China, while Zhuhai is a southern mainland Chinese city which it borders. Current rules don’t allow medicines to be mailed directly from Hong Kong to mainland China, according to the salespersons. Sending agents directly from Hong Kong, which also shares a land border with the mainland, isn’t feasible due to a lack of available agents, Simon said. In Macao, the drug regulator ordered pharmacies last week to limit purchases of pain relievers, fever medicines and antigen test kits.

☆ Traders will anxiously watch the Bank of Japan
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Pete Sweeney | Thomson Reuters | Asia Economics Editor Pete Sweeney Joined Reuters Breakingviews In Hong Kong In September Previously He Served As Reuters' Chief Correspondent For China Economy | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

HONG KONG, Dec 19 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Shorting the Bank of Japan (8301.T) is the trade of 2023. Gyrations in Japanese bond yields resulting from an abrupt increase in benchmark interest rates could force indebted domestic entities to dump overseas assets, roiling global markets. The question on traders’ collective mind is what happens when the central bank finally adjusts its “yield-curve control” policy, or YCC, which has held down government bond yields for more than six years. A higher-than-expected wage hike resulting from springtime negotiations could persuade officials that salaries are offsetting higher prices, bolstering the case for normalising interest rates. Meanwhile higher interest rates would allow Japanese companies to earn better returns on their 325 trillion yen ($2.4 trillion) cash hoard.

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