Crypto News: Foreign policy in focus

The clocks have gone back, giving us all an extra hour of morning light. Hopefully the Bank of England won't do anything to darken the mood with its next decision on rates this Thursday. A few months back it had been expected this Autumn would see ever-increasing interest rate hikes. Now most expect the Bank to stick at 5.25%, with fresh data out today suggesting that the 14 previous hikes are already doing their job.

Online property site Zoopla shows house prices are down in four out of every five local areas in September. Six months ago that was just one in 20. Mortgage rates may not be up at their recent highs but they are still triple the cost of early 2022. Isn't it cruel? Just as prices put properties nearer the reach of first time buyers, the rates push them further away again. The other startling stat in my colleague Damian Shepherd's piece is that, according to Zoopla, cash buyers are set to account for 1 in 3 home sales this year compared to 1 in 5 over the past 5 years.

Semi-detached houses line a street in New Addington, Croydon borough of London, UK Photographer: Vivian Wan/Bloomberg

It's not just house prices flashing red but the supply of money too. Bloomberg's economic reporting team has winkled this out of the official data: "M4 money supply… fell 4.2% in September from a year ago, the second decline in at least 13 years. Monetarists — who foresaw the surge in inflation by looking at the money supply data — now argue a collapse in the figures points to recession." For others, it's already started.

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The stories you need to know about this evening

Sam Bankman-Fried is testifying over the collapse of FTX.
German GDP fell in the third quarter, stoking recession risk.
Putin called a meeting to discuss an anti-Israel mob in Dagestan.
Citadel's Ken Griffin flies Asia-based staff to Disney in Tokyo.
UK confirms plans to bring crypto under stricter regulation.
FIFA bans ex-Spanish football chief Luis Rubiales for three years.

This time next year the world will be days away from the 2024 US presidential election. That vote, already on a knife-edge, will now fall 12 months on from this weekend's start of Israel's ground offensive.

The Israel-Hamas war may have been wound up long before but sadly, that's likely to be wishful thinking. As this brilliant long read by Bloomberg's Lisa Beyer brings out, the conflict is different in terms of bloodshed and strategic aims: "Both display a new level of commitment to destroying the other."

In the UK, today the security services warn of an increased terror threat. The weekend saw yet more pro-Palestinian marches — sympathy for the Palestinians understandable, calls for "jihad" untenable. Community tensions are uncomfortably high and Jewish families speak of fear and alienation. This is a problem for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — not only is it terrifying for him to learn that a deeply loved community feels uneasy in modern Britain, but he also needs to keep control of UK streets. And if he can't police the rampant hate speech that is currently being directed at them, he's failing.

Problems are mounting for Labour as well. Over the weekend it was pointed out that the war in the Middle East stands to be to Labour what Brexit was to the Conservatives — a deep rift that divides the party and wrong-foots the leadership. The vibe up until now from Starmer's Labour had been that they were ready for power, and all that remained was the formality of exchanging keys. Many of the fundamentals remain the same but having members of your front bench openly defy their leader does not bode well for coherent government either.

And the effects on US foreign policy are already being felt. For some weeks now, the focus has been on the pivot the Americans had been trying to pull off — the tilt from the near east to the far east and China. When does that shift get pronounced derailed? According to Bloomberg Opinion's Hal Brands, that time is about now: "Biden's foreign policy vision is officially dead."

The City of London has fewer finance jobs to offer after a post-pandemic hiring boom left companies overstaffed while economic uncertainty caused a sense of gloom among workers and businesses alike.

Financial services job postings in the Square Mile dropped almost a third in the quarter through September from a year earlier. The decline extends a downward trend in vacancies seen since the end to the hiring frenzy of 2021 and early 2022, when financial firms were desperate to bolster their workforce.

Israeli stocks. Israel's war effort is giving the economy a Covid-like shock due to military call ups and partial economic freezes.

Arch rivals. Rolex is trolling Omega with a deal to buy a flagship store.

Baby got (buy)back. HSBC will begin buying back an additional $3 billion of shares, taking total stock repurchases for the year to $7 billion.

Think thin. Krispy Kreme is worried that weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy will hit donut demand.

"If you're going to insulate the US, Europe and Canada from the global fuel cycle, which is heavily dependent on Russia and China, the best way to do that is to build new mines, new conversion capacity, new enrichment capacity."

Arthur Hyde

Portfolio manager at Segra Capital

On uranium's growing appeal, where prices have soared 125% since the end of 2020.

One key story, every weekday

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani Photographer: JACQUELYN MARTIN/AFP

It took just a few hours after Hamas's assault on Israel for Qatar's prime minister to assemble a team at an undisclosed location in the capital, Doha. As images emerged of missile attacks, gunmen on motorbikes and hostages seized across the border from Gaza, the Gulf state's leadership knew what it needed to do.

As the days unfolded from Oct. 7, the round-the-clock operation worked the phone lines — one to Hamas, another to the Israelis — to mediate as retaliatory bombs rained on Gaza, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

For Qatar, the time had come to step up. The nation has spent more than a decade trying to position itself as the Middle East's indispensable go-between, criticized by its neighbors for housing Hamas leaders while maintaining channels to Israel.

It's that status in an unstable region that Qatar sees as key to the security of the tiny peninsula, sandwiched between the two great rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. The crisis in Gaza — with Israel launching a ground invasion — has now become the ultimate test of Qatar's ability to show its Western allies they need it as much as it needs them.

Read The Big Take.

Allegra Stratton worked for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor and runs an environmental consultancy, Zeroism.

Please send thoughts, tips and feedback to readout@bloomberg.net. You can follow Bloomberg UK on X.

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