Business

It’s LME Week and there’s cause for celebration in metal markets. European mining stocks rose to a 4-year high as the nickel price surged more than 5% intraday to a two-year high and rose by the daily limit in Shanghai trading today. Metals used in electronic vehicles, like lithium, cobalt, copper and nickel, are hot right now and a focal point of discussion at the LME gatherings. As Metal Bulletin noted, the 2017 event has seen record attendance.

Just over a week ago we highlighted how China’s financial regulator had instructed companies to delay the reporting of bad corporate news until after the Party Congress. As Bloomberg noted...

China’s securities watchdog has asked some loss-making companies to avoid publishing quarterly results this week as authorities seek to ensure stock-market stability during the Communist Party Congress, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

It's official: according to most news sources, tomorrow Trump will announce that Fed governor Jerome "Jay" Powell is Janet Yellen's replacement as the next bank-friendly Fed chair. Since Powell has served as Federal Reserve governor for the past five years, starting May 2012, he has had ample opportunities to express his views about the policies he will oversee if the Senate confirms him as the central bank’s next chairman.

With the appointment of the next Fed Chairman imminent, the WSJ investigated whether knowing his/her identity and policy stance would have led to successful investment decisions. Spoiler alert – it’s often paid to do the opposite.

When the NAR won the battle over keeping State and Local Tax deductions "as is", in the process denying the proposed GOP tax reform more than a trillion in revenue over the next ten years, it effectively doomed the most important provision of the republican tax bill set to be unveiled tomorrow: the reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. Or rather the permanent reduction in the corporate tax rate.