Aurelia Butler

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Jamie McGeever.A smattering of inflation data, PMIs and an interest rate decision will grab investors’ attention in the Asian session on Wednesday, against an increasingly gloomy backdrop following the latest warning that the U.S. economy is losing steam.Annual consumer price inflation in the Philippines and Thailand is expected to slow; purchasing managers index surveys for Japan, Australia and India will be released; and New Zealand’s central bank is expected to slow the pace of rate hikes to 25 basis points. New Zealand interest rates https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/xmvjkjgkzpr/RBNZ.jpg Investors go into Wednesday on the defensive. U.S. stocks, the dollar and Treasury yields all dived on Tuesday after figures showed a surprise fall in U.S. job openings to the lowest level in nearly two years.The monthly ‘JOLTS’ report comes a day after figures showed that not only did U.S. manufacturing activity shrink in March at its fastest pace in three years, all components of the Institute for Supply Management’s survey fell below the 50 growth/contraction threshold for the first time since 2009.Global factory activity and global demand are weakening.Rates markets no longer expect the Fed to raise rates again and are pricing in 75 basis points of easing this year. But falling yields and increased rate cut expectations are not supporting stocks and risk assets – recession fears are growing.If the Fed does pause tightening campaign, it will be following the Reserve Bank of Australia, which kept its cash rate unchanged at 3.6% to break a run of 10 straight hikes.Australian policymakers said they want time to assess the impact of past increases as the economy slows and inflation peaks. A similar message could come from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand on Wednesday, although it is still expected to hike by 25 bps.Investors will scrutinize the accompanying commentary for any hints of an end to its tightening cycle. A slowing U.S. and global economy, and reverberations of last month’s banking shock, could tempt policymakers to ease up sooner rather than later. New Zealand GDP, inflation and rates https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/myvmojmgmvr/NZ.jpg Here are three key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Wednesday:- New Zealand interest rate decision- The Philippines inflation (March)- Thailand inflation (March) (By Jamie McGeever; Editing by Josie Kao) More

The token, born as a satire of a cryptocurrency frenzy in 2013 and has no fundamental use, on Tuesday surged to 10 cents around 1500 EST from 7 cents as Elon Musk indicated in a tweet he had delivered on his promise of changing the social media app’s logo to dogecoin’s dog.With a market capitalization of $13.7 billion, dogecoin is now the seventh biggest cryptocurrency, according to data site CoinMarketCap.com. Its market value stood at around $10 billion before the news.Musk, who is ranked the second-richest person in the world by Forbes, is a vocal proponent of cryptocurrencies and has heavily influenced prices for dogecoin and bitcoin in the past.The Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) boss on Friday asked a U.S. judge to throw out a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support dogecoin.Dogecoin more than doubled in October after Musk, dubbed “the dogefather” by retail traders, sealed a $44 billion deal to take over Twitter.Cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which invested $500 million into Musk’s buyout of Twitter, had said it was brainstorming strategies on how blockchain and crypto could be helpful to Twitter.”A year later, Twitter has yet to announce any crypto specific initiatives,” said Stéphane Ouellette, Chief Executive at digital asset investment platform FRNT Financial.”It remains to be seen whether the appearance of the DOGE logo is more than a joke.”The shiba inu token, a spinoff of dogecoin which trades in fractions of cents, rose 5.6% to $0.000014 on Tuesday. (This story has been corrected to change the day to Monday from Tuesday in paragraph 1) More

LONDON (Reuters) – Most British businesses expect their sales to rise over the coming year – an improvement from late 2022 – despite seeing no sales growth over the past three months, the British Chambers of Commerce said on Tuesday.The BCC said its survey of 5,200 mostly small and medium-sized businesses showed gloom was concentrated in the retail and hospitality sectors.After a slump in business confidence in the second half of 2022, business sentiment improved as political turmoil and inflationary pressures showed some signs of easing, David Bharier, the BCC’s head of research, said.”However, this comes from a very weak base, and while confidence has improved, this is yet to translate into an overall improvement of business conditions,” he added.Britain’s economy grew just 0.1% in the final quarter of 2022, when former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s short-lived government created financial market turmoil, and inflation hit a 41-year high. It shrank by 0.1% in the third quarter, partly due to business closures to mark Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.The BCC said 52% of firms surveyed between Feb. 13 and March 9 expected sales to rise over the coming year, up from a low of 44% in the third quarter of 2022.However, over the past three months only 34% had seen sales rise, compared with 24% who suffered a drop in sales and 41% whose turnover stagnated.Falls in sales were more common for shops and hospitality firms, where 38% and 32% respectively reported a drop. British inflation remains above 10% but the Bank of England has forecast it will drop below 4% by the end of this year as energy costs fall.The BCC said businesses’ concerns about inflation had fallen for the first time in two years, and the proportion planning to raise prices had dropped to 55% from 60%.Even so, energy bills will remain high for households and businesses, while the effect of past BoE interest rate rises will become more widely felt as homeowners refinance short-term fixed-rate mortgages. Deutsche Bank (ETR:DBKGn) on Monday revised up its forecast for Britain’s economy this year, predicting zero growth rather than its previous prediction of a 0.2% contraction in output. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The U.S. government on Tuesday filed criminal charges accusing Charlie Javice, the founder of the now-shuttered college financial aid company Frank, of defrauding JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) into buying the startup for $175 million in 2021.Javice, 31, was charged by the Department of Justice with repeatedly lying to the largest U.S. bank by claiming that Frank had lined up 4.25 million student customers when in fact she had data for only about 300,000.Prosecutors in Manhattan said that when JPMorgan asked for a list of names, Javice paid an unnamed data science professor $18,000 to fabricate the other customers.JPMorgan has said it learned of Javice’s fraud after sending marketing materials to people who she claimed were real, and finding that just 28% were delivered and 1.1% were opened, far fewer than in other similar campaigns.The bank shut down Frank in January, and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon branded the acquisition a “huge mistake” in a Jan. 13 conference call with analysts.Javice, of Miami Beach, Florida, was charged with bank fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy, each of which carries a maximum 20- or 30-year prison term.She appeared briefly on Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses in Manhattan, who set bail at $2 million. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed related civil charges.”Javice engaged in a brazen scheme to defraud JPMorgan Chase,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan said in a statement. “She lied directly to (the bank) and fabricated data to support those lies – all in order to make over $45 million from the sale of her company.”A spokesman for Javice in an email said, “Charlie denies the accusations.” Her lawyer, Alex Spiro, declined to comment.’30 UNDER 30’Founded in 2017, Frank was marketed as a tool to help simplify for students and their parents the often complex college financial aid process.JPMorgan called it the “leading college financial planning platform for students” when it bought Frank in September 2021 and, according to prosecutors, paid Javice $21 million for her equity stake.Javice, who studied at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, had earlier received much media praise for her work, showing up in 2019 in Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30” finance list and Crain’s New York Business’ “40 Under 40” list.Prosecutors said that after using the sham customer list, Javice tried to cover up her fraud by paying just $105,500 for real data about 4.5 million students.But the list was missing email addresses for 2.04 million people, which Javice had told JPMorgan were in Frank’s possession, prosecutors said.Javice was arrested on Monday night in New Jersey.In December, JPMorgan sued Javice and Olivier Amar, who was Frank’s chief growth officer, in Delaware federal court.Javice filed counterclaims in February, accusing JPMorgan of having “compromised her reputation” and wrongfully withheld $28 million of retention payments and equity.Amar is seeking to dismiss JPMorgan’s case against him. More