The Hang Seng Index reversed its downward trend in Hong Kong on Thursday (February 12th), weakening by around 0.9% to around 27,000 after a strong session earlier. This decline halted the momentum of the short term rally, as investors began to reduce risk in large cap stocks. Among the index's contributors, Tencent was a major drag, with its shares falling by around 2.3%, putting pressure on the technology sector, which has recently been a driving force behind market gains. Weakness in large cap companies like this typically quickly impacts sentiment due to their significant weighting in...
US President Donald Trump said Thursday he will nominate Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran to fill the final months of a vacant seat on the Federal Reserve, as the White House seeks a permanent member for the central bank's board of governors and continues its search for a new Fed chairman. Miran has called for a complete overhaul of Fed governance and will take over from Fed Governor Adriana Kugler following her surprise resignation last week, as she returns to her tenured professorship at Georgetown University. The term expires January 31, 2026, and must be confirmed by...
Russia's deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin may meet with U.S. President Donald Trump next week, but said he was not aware of any planned meeting between Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy. "As far as I heard, there are a number of locations, but they agreed to something that they don't want to disclose. The timeline is, I think, next week, but that's again judging from what presidents said themselves," Polyanskiy told reporters about the Putin-Trump meeting. "I haven't heard about any meeting planned with...
Raphael Bostic of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta warned that rising price pressures over the next six to twelve months could intensify the Fed's challenges. A ton of economic scenarios that could play out, hard to assign probabilities.Outlook is for the economy to continue slowing, but also expect real uncertainty about what that means for jobs and inflation. Firms are still in a wait-and-see pattern around employment.Likely to be upward pressure on prices for six to 12 months; that puts pressure on the Fed. The most important question for the Fed is whether tariffs will shift prices...
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller is emerging as a top candidate to be the central bank's next chair, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Waller has met with members of President Donald Trump's team, who are impressed with him, though he has not met with the president, Bloomberg News reported. A Fed spokesperson had no comment. "President Trump will continue to nominate the most competent and experienced individuals to deliver on his pledge to Make America Wealthy Again," White House spokesperson Kush Desai said. "Unless it comes from...
Initial jobless claims in the US rose by 7,000 from the previous week to 226,000 in the last week of July, firmly above market expectations of a softer increase to 221,000. In turn, outstanding jobless claims soared by 38,000 to 1,974,000 on the previous week, well above market expectations of 1,950,000 to mark the highest level of unemployment since November 2021. The results consolidated the view of a sharp slowdown in hiring and a softening labor market. Source: Trading Economics