RALEIGH (REUTERS) – US shoppers spent slightly less online during Black Friday (Nov 26) this year, with many venturing back to physical stores despite coronavirus fears, tight supplies and retailers’ efforts to encourage earlier holiday purchases. For the first time ever, online spending during Black Friday – traditionally one of the biggest shopping days of the year – fell, reversing the growth […]

LONDON (REUTERS) – Oil prices rose after the United States-coordinated release of emergency petroleum stocks was announced on Tuesday (Nov 23), as the volume of extra petroleum offered to the market proved smaller than traders anticipated. The US will make available 50 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), with deliveries beginning in the middle of next month and […]

SINGAPORE – Fixed asset investment (FAI) commitments in Singapore rose to $3.7 billion in the July to September period this year, according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Economic Survey released on Wednesday (Nov 24). The commitments, garnered by the Economic Development Board, are up from $3.6 billion in the previous quarter and $2.07 billion for the same period […]

WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG, REUTERS) – Traders are pricing in a ramp-up in tapering bond purchases by the US Federal Reserve and the potential for a June liftoff on rate hikes after President Joe Biden selected Jerome Powell to serve another four years as the central bank’s chair. Futures on the federal funds rate, which track short-term interest rate expectations, have fully […]

SINGAPORE – Expecting the global Great Resignation phenomenon to play out in full next year, employers in Singapore are reverting salary increments and payroll budgets to near pre-pandemic levels in a bid to hold on to their employees, as well as fill vacancies next year. Publishing its Mercer’s 2021 Total Remuneration Survey last Wednesday (Nov 17), Mercer Singapore said workers […]

BEIJING (BLOOMBERG) – China’s economy could enter a period of “quasi-stagflation” with relatively slow growth and excessively high producer-price inflation, said Liu Shijin, an adviser to the nation’s central bank. Such a scenario is “very likely” if demand remains weak, producer prices stay high, corporate profits are squeezed, and existing risks in the economy are “released too quickly,” he told […]

LONDON/HANOI (BLOOMBERG) – On an industrial park about an hour’s drive toward the South China Sea coast from Ho Chi Minh City sit giant mounds of raw metal shrouded in black tarpaulin. Stretching a kilometre in length, the much-coveted hoard could be worth about US$5 billion (S$6.8 billion) at current prices. In the esoteric world of aluminum, those in the […]

WASHINGTON (REUTERS) – The Biden administration’s push for a coordinated release of oil stockpiles serves as a warning to the Opec+ production group that it should pump more oil to address concerns of high fuel prices in powerhouse economies like the United States, China and others. For weeks, the White House and administration officials had urged the Organization of the […]

WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) – Some US lawmakers are seizing on the energy price surge to revive long-standing legislation that would subject the Opec oil cartel to the same antitrust laws used more than century ago to break up Standard Oil’s monopoly. The “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act” – known as NOpec – would allow the US government to sue […]