Thursday February 4 2016 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

U.S. IPO Market on Track for Slowest Month Since Recession – (www.bloomberg.com)  Zero: That’s how many initial public offerings have started trading on U.S. exchanges so far in 2016. At this rate, January is on track for the slowest month for IPOs since December 2008, when no companies filed after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Inc. Compare that to January 2015, when 19 companies listed on American exchanges. The busiest month in the past eight years was July 2014, when 54 companies started trading. The culprit? Whipsawing equity markets have made it challenging to price public offerings. Volatility has intensified, driven by the slowing economy in China, a depressed commodities industry, turmoil in the high-yield bond market and lingering uncertainty around how higher interest rates will affect the financial system. 

Greece Hits Back at `Lies' as Europe's Refugee Crisis Simmers - (www.bloomberg.com) “There’s a big and unfair blame game against Greece,” Mouzalas told reporters at a meeting of European Union interior ministers in Amsterdam on Monday. Europe, he said, has shortchanged Greece by providing smaller-than-promised numbers of everything from cots and fingerprinting machines to border guards.The continent-wide name-calling harked back to the worst days of the debt crisis when Greece’s membership in the euro zone was imperiled. Germany and Austria pressured Greece to seal off its Aegean Sea border with Turkey, warning that the unchecked march of refugees from the Middle East would lead to longer-lasting passport controls at internal borders in western Europe.

Asset Managers Are Hard Hit – (online.wsj.com)  The market’s glum start this year is the latest problem to beset the large, publicly traded U.S. asset managers. Firms like BlackRock Inc., T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Franklin Resources Inc., which manage funds for small and large investors and financial advisers, have grown larger and more prosperous since the financial crisis. But as a group, their shares have fallen further than the market in recent months as they contend with industry shifts and economic woes that few analysts expect to disappear soon.

PBoC in a quandary over capital controls - (www.ft.com)  When the Bank of Japan’s governor said that capital controls could prove “useful” to Beijing in its efforts to calm fears about China’s currency and monetary policy, he was going against international — and recent Chinese — orthodoxy. But Haruhiko Kuroda was also shining a spotlight on the impossible trinity that Beijing now faces: the ability to manage interest rates and the exchange rate while simultaneously moving towards a free capital account. Beijing officially maintains that it has no plans to roll back capital account reforms that recently earned the renminbi IMF recognition as an official reserve currency. But reluctance at the People’s Bank of China to loosen liquidity and anecdotal evidence of tighter foreign exchange management suggests that behind closed doors it, too, shares Mr Kuroda’s concerns. “December was a shock,” says one person who advises Chinese policymakers. “The reserves loss has changed the game.”

Emerging Market ETFs Lose More Than $1 Billion Led by China Flow - (www.bloomberg.com)  Investors pulled more than $1 billion out of U.S. exchange-traded funds that invest in emerging-markets as a third week of outflows left the ETFs down $3.9 billion this month. Redemptions from emerging-market ETFs that invest across developing nations as well as those that target specific countries totaled $1.17 billion in the week ended Jan. 22, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While losses narrowed from $2.12 billion the previous week, the outflows so far this month are the most since August, when they reached $6.1 billion. Stock funds lost $1.12 billion and bond funds declined by $51.9 million. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index advanced 0.2 percent in the week.

OTHER STORIES:

A Struggle to Quell Investor Fears Over Unsettled Emerging Markets - (www.nytimes.com)
Deutsche Bank: Chinese Stocks Are More Distressed Than During the Financial Crisis - (www.bloomberg.com)
China 10-Year Bonds Slump as Yuan Concern Curbs PBOC Easing Bets - (www.bloomberg.com)
Russian economy contracts 3.7 percent in 2015, slump set to continue - (www.reuters.com)

Future Land Development Shares Plunge 14% on Chairman Probe - (www.bloomberg.com)
US junk-rated energy debt hits two-decade low - (www.ft.com)
EU Ministers Openly Clash Over How to Contain Migrant Flow - (abcnews.go.com)