Leveraged
Money Spurs Selloff as Record Treasuries Trade - (www.bloomberg.com) When
markets are buckling and volatility is signaling a crisis, you sell what you
can, not what you want. That’s what happened last week on Wall Street, where
slowing economic growth in Europe, Ebola anxiety and escalating conflicts in
the Middle East and Ukraine tore through the calm with a force not seen in
three years. Loath to find out what their record holdings of corporate bonds
and leveraged loans were worth as liquidity thinned and markets slid,
professional traders turned to stocks and Treasuries to defuse risk. The result
was a frenzy. U.S. government debt volume surged
to an all-time high of $946 billion at ICAP Plc, the world’s largest
interdealer broker, more than 40 percent above the previous record.
Two
Female Japan Ministers Resign in a Day in Blow to Abe - (www.bloomberg.com) Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rushed to appoint two new members of his cabinet
yesterday, after two female ministers were forced to resign as he confronts
some of the most difficult decisions since he took office. Trade and Industry
Minister Yuko Obuchi, 40, and Justice Minister Midori Matsushima, 58, quit over
allegations of financial impropriety. Abe picked Yoichi Miyazawa, a 64-year-old
man, for the trade position and Yoko Kamikawa, a 61-year-old woman and former
gender equality minister, for the Justice Ministry.
IBM
Plunges as CEO Abandons 2015 Earnings Forecast - (www.bloomberg.com) International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) plunged the most in more than four years
after abandoning an earnings forecast for 2015, as the company struggles to
transform fast enough to handle the shift to cloud computing. IBM said it will
provide an update on its projections in January, ditching a five-year plan to
boost profit. The shares tumbled as
much as 8.4 percent, dragging down the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Warren
Buffett,
IBM’s biggest shareholder, had as much as $1 billion of his investment wiped
out. While Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty had been banking on a strong
second half of the year, IBM instead faced weaker-than-expected software sales
and lower productivity in services in the third quarter. With technology
customers moving from owning hardware to storing data in the cloud, IBM is now
cutting more jobs, reducing its forecast for free cash flow and offloading an
unprofitable chip unit to Globalfoundries Inc.
Ebola
Front-Line Doctors at Breaking Point - (www.bloomberg.com) At 3:30 a.m. in the world’s biggest Ebola
treatment center, Daniel Lucey found the outbreak reduced to its essentials: patients
lying on mattresses on the floor and vomiting in the dark, visible only by the
wavering flashlight beam of a single volunteer doctor. “I don’t see a light at
the end of the tunnel,” said Lucey, a physician and professor from Georgetown Universitywho is halfway through a five-week tour in
Liberia with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the medical charity known in English as
Doctors Without Borders. “The epidemic is still getting worse,” he said by
phone between shifts.
OPEC
Finding U.S. Shale Harder to Crack as Rout Deepens
- (www.bloomberg.com) OPEC is resisting pressure to cut oil
production while demand slumps as it tests how low prices must go to make U.S.
shale oil unprofitable. As producers become more efficient, that floor is
sinking. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries boosted output by
the most in 13 months in September, even as crude plunged into a bear market
and demand growth weakens to a five-year low, according to the International
Energy Agency. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the largest and third-largest members
of OPEC, indicated the price slump doesn’t warrant immediate production cuts,
the IEA said. While OPEC acted as a “swing producer” over the past decade,
responding to surpluses by cutting output, it’s now letting oil slide to see if
North American production can withstand lower prices, said Antoine
Halff,
head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets division. So far drillers are
showing no signs of cracking, with the U.S. government forecasting record
shale output in November, helping boost the nation’s crude supply to
the highest level since 1986.
Russia
Won’t Accept Terms to End Sanctions Over Ukraine - (www.bloomberg.com)
Hong Kong’s Leader Blames Foreigners for Fanning Protests - (www.bloomberg.com)
Hong Kong’s Leader Blames Foreigners for Fanning Protests - (www.bloomberg.com)
Japan METI minister Obuchi announces resignation - (www.reuters.com)
Germany's Schaeuble wants more investment but no new debt - (www.reuters.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment