Business

The Chinese authorities’ efforts to contain leverage and reduce risk across the nation’s financial system took another step forward overnight with the ban on approvals for mutual funds that plan to allocate more than 80% of their portfolios to Hong Kong stocks. This looks like a response to surging capital flows into the territory from the mainland and the equity market euphoria in Asia, which saw the Hang Seng index cross the 30,000 mark last Wednesday for the first time in 10 years.

The Dumbest Dumb Money Finally Gets Suckered In

Posted with permission and written by John Rubino, Dollar Collapse

Zero Hedge readers might have noted our increasingly bearish tone on all things Australian – economic that is, since the cricket team just whipped the English in the first test match in Brisbane. The focal point of our concern is the housing market and, earlier this month, we discussed how the world’s longest-running bull market – 55 years – in Australian house prices appears to have come to an end.

Hong Kong property was in Algebris Investments’ top tier of six most inflated bubbles from its longer list of the world’s fourteen biggest bubbles. The territory is ranked as the most expensive housing market in the world for the seventh successive year in 2017, with the medium home price selling for 18.1 times the median household income, according to Forbes. Last week, we discussed how the record price per square foot for a Hong Kong residence was smashed twice on the same day by the same buyer.

After reporting last month that Wells Fargo’s foreign-exchange unit was being investigated by regulators and that the bank had fired four employees – and demoted another – after discovering certain unspecified improprieties in its FX shop, more details about the exact nature of the bank’s latest scandal – which follows revelations that the bank’s retail division created millions of fake customer accounts, and its auto lending unit overcharged borrows – have finally been unearthed by the Wall Street Journal.