Business

Yesterday's Japan flash-crash inspired selling continues for a second day, with global equities - and bonds - sliding early Friday on concerns U.S. tax reform - and corporate tax cuts - will be delayed after Senate Republicans unveiled a plan that differed significantly from the House of Representatives’ version. After suffering their biggest plunge in 4 months on Thursday, European stocks failed to find a bid along with Asian stocks, while U.S.

This certainly doesn’t bode well for Uber’s prospects in the UK, it’s largest European market.

The ride-share giant suffered its latest serious setback, when its appeal of an unfavorable employment tribunal ruling was thrown out on Friday, increasing the possibility that Uber might be forced to pay its drivers in holiday pay and the minimum wage, expenses that Uber says would require it to make major changes in its business model.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Mises Institute,

The ECB faces the Devil’s Alternative that Frederick Forsyth mentioned in one of his books. All options are potentially risky. Mario Draghi knows that maintaining the so-called stimuli involves more risks than benefits, but also knows that eliminating them could make the eurozone deck of cards collapse.

The writing was on the wall two weeks ago when retail employment tumbled along with CBI-reported retail sales, but tonight's BDO High Street Sales Tracker should be the icing on the cake for any looming rate hike as like-for-like sales crashed 5.2% - describe by BDO as "the most horrific" October on record.

It was the worst month since right before Brexit in April 2016.

This week we discussed Algebris Investments’ ranking of the world’s largest financial bubbles. London property ranked second on the list, behind Australian property (see here). There is growing evidence the former is bursting. In its October 2017 survey, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) reported the largest proportion of respondents seeing a drop in London house prices versus the previous month since 2009. The net balance at nearly two thirds (-63%) in the capital contrasted sharply with a national average which was marginally in positive territory (+1%).