| Xi faces skeptical minds at home. Sydney property prices rise. Goldman's investor day falls flat. Here's what you need to know today. As Xi Jinping prepares to begin his second decade as China's president, he's facing a new phenomenon: A much more skeptical public. The political consequences of China's Covid u-turn, which triggered a wave of sickness and death across the country, remain unclear. But the credibility deficit for Xi is evident in finance and trade hub Shanghai. We interviewed more than a dozen people there, and their insights reveal a deep lack of trust about the path forward under Xi and his right-hand man Li Qiang. Get the full story here. Meanwhile, Xi is preparing to overhaul government agencies; the US is preparing a raft of China-related sanctions bills, and China wants to limit the time young people spend watching short videos. Sydney property prices, the bellwether of the Australia market, advanced for the first time in 13 months in February in a positive sign for home values that have been under pressure from rising interest rates. Prices in
Sydney climbed 0.3% last month, their first increase since January 2022, while Melbourne and Brisbane slipped 0.4% apiece, CoreLogic data showed. Meanwhile, Australia's government plans to double the tax rate on large pension balances to 30% from 2025-26, saying the change will impact less than 0.5% of account holders.  | At a Goldman Sachs investor day Tuesday, top brass offered a glossy portrait of the firm's strengths and underscored it can consistently belt out predictable profits in years ahead. But a lack of ambitious new targets and mixed messages over what's to happen with the troubled consumer business underwhelmed the market, sparking a 3.8% stock slide. CEO David Solomon got visibly flustered as analysts pressed him to explain the apparent divergence between promising to scale up operations such as credit cards, while signaling parts of the consumer business could also be sold. Twelve years after one of the worst nuclear disasters in history shook Japan and turned the public against atomic power, a global energy crisis is encouraging the country to switch its reactors back on. Faced with rising heating bills this winter after a sweltering summer spent worrying about blackouts, more people are now reappraising the benefits of cheaper and more stable energy. Our Big Take looks at how even some of those living near nuclear plants such as the now-decommissioned Fukushima Dai-ichi are looking beyond their fears of another radioactive disaster in a bid for stability. Asian shares are poised for a cautious open after US equities closed lower, rounding out a turbulent month that saw global stocks drop about 3%.
Futures for Australian and Japanese benchmarks point to small declines Wednesday while contracts for Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index suggest modest gains. Government bond yields advanced in Australia and New Zealand, following small gains in the closing levels of Treasury yields. Over the month, the two-year Treasury yield climbed more than 10 basis points and the 10-year rate rose more than 40 basis points. The US dollar came roaring back in February as the Federal Reserve pivot narrative was rapidly quashed by robust data and even more robust hawkish rhetoric from policymakers. That also flipped on its head the strong expectations that 2023 would be a year for emerging-market stocks to outperform developed-market peers. The MSCI EM gauge bottomed out in October at its lowest in more than 20 years relative to the DM gauge. Equities in advanced economies are offering better returns (smaller losses in February) than EM peers, after January's everything rally looked to be on the verge of setting up a sustained period of superiority for developing-nation stocks. This is more than just a direct currency-valuation effect too — the recent outperformance is more marked if you use the MSCI World excluding US gauge. Tighter Fed policy hits emerging markets harder, so it looks like those assets face a much rougher 2023 than the hopeful outlook that reigned in January. Garfield Reynolds is Chief Rates Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Asia, based in Sydney | 
No comments:
Post a Comment