China

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.

Seemingly in capable of heeding Senator John McCain's advice to stop whining and "just shut up," failed US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton slammed both U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in remarks via video to a conference in Beijing on Tuesday.

As Bloomberg reports, Clinton said the Trump administration had retreated from diplomacy.

BRICS Gold Trade Settlement To Begin in 2018?

Posted with permission and written by Rory Hall, The Daily Coin

The traditionally illiquid post-Thanksgiving week has started with a series of whipsaws across stocks and bonds, as European stocks turned positive after starting the day on the back foot, initially mirroring a slide in Chinese stocks and price action in U.S. equity futures as investors look to a possible - and absolutely critical - tax-plan vote in the Senate this week.

In early November, we discussed how commentators were disturbed by the sell-off in Chinese government bonds after the Party Congress, which saw yields rise to 4.0%. The anomaly was that yields in less-liquid, unsecured Chinese corporate bonds had barely moved. Some sleuthing on the part of the Wall Street Journal discovered that the most likely explanation was that redemptions in China’s shadow banking sector, especially in the infamous $4 trillion Wealth Management Products (WMP), meant that cash needed to be raised…quickly. Highly liquid government bonds were the easiest option.