Aurelia Butler

(Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes were set to open higher on Monday and extend gains from the previous week after a slide in commodity prices allayed concerns about an overly aggressive Federal Reserve that is seeking to tame inflation. All three key indexes posted solid gains last week, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rising 7.5% as investors bet the retreat in oil prices from the three-month highs hit in June could ease inflationary pressures and push the Federal Reserve to moderate its aggressive policy tightening. “I think there is an overwhelming feeling that inflation may be coming down and the Fed may not have to be as aggressive as anticipated moving forward,” said Thomas Hayes, managing member at Great Hill Capital LLC in New York.”As early as a week ago, unequivocally, everyone did feel that 75 basis points was guaranteed. I think now those probabilities have come down a little bit and it’s kind of an open story.” The U.S. central bank has rapidly raised interest rates to rein in 40-year-high inflation, stoking fears its actions could tip the world’s largest economy into a recession.After the benchmark S&P 500 index earlier this month recorded a 20% drop from its January closing peak to confirm a bear market, investors have been trying to gauge when the market might hit its bottom. “The rebound in markets is a reminder of the merits of staying invested in line with a long-term plan. But volatility is likely to remain elevated until we see strong evidence that inflation is moderating, recession risks are receding, and geopolitical threats are declining,” Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management wrote in a client note. Haefele added that the main driver of the markets in the second half of 2022 will be investor perceptions of whether we are headed for stagflation, reflation, a soft-landing, or a slump.Shares across the board gained in premarket trading on Monday, with tech-focused growth stocks including Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Inc, Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) up between 0.5% and 1.5%. At 08:25 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 79 points, or 0.25%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 14.5 points, or 0.37%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 58.25 points, or 0.48%. Shares of Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD) Markets rose 2.4% after media reports said Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) upgraded the retail broker’s stock to “neutral” from “sell”.Goldman Sachs, however, cut rating on Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) Global Inc to “sell” from “buy”, according to media reports, sending shares of the cryptocurrency exchange lower by 5.7%. More

The temporary workers, who would be offered accommodation and a standard wage, would have to fulfil the same security and reliability checks as other staff such as baggage handlers, which in general take about two weeks, the spokesperson said at a regular government news conference in Berlin on Monday.Travellers across Europe are facing especially long queues this summer as travel demand is back in full force after COVID-19 lockdowns, and airports and airlines are having trouble maintaining enough staff to handle the crunch.According to the ADV airport association, about one in five jobs in security, check-in and aircraft handling is unfilled.Airports are expected to announce their exact needs in the coming days, but the head of the ABL association of aircraft ground handling employees expects 1,000 to 2,000 workers will be allowed in for three months, most likely starting in August.”A time limit of a maximum of six months until the end of the year would have been nice,” said Thomas Richter in an interview with Reuters. “It doesn’t solve the problem, but it certainly helps.”At odds with the desire to quickly bring in help is the need to ensure airport security, with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser emphasizing that there would be no cutbacks in that regard.Andreas Rosskopf, the chairman of Germany’s police union, said newly recruited foreign workers could be used for jobs such as baggage handling, but warned against trying to put them into positions requiring additional security. “We are talking about people who have to be intensively screened and briefed in terms of security. That takes a certain amount of time,” Rosskopf told the Rheinische Post newspaper. More

LONDON (Reuters) – Russia may have defaulted for the first time on foreign bonds since the Bolsheviks refused to pay on a vast debt pile after the 1917 Revolution, but its $1.8 trillion economy is showing no sign of sinking just yet.The sanctions imposed by the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine delivered the biggest external shock to Russia’s economy since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, but the economy has – so far – been remarkably resilient.Russia’s 2022 “default”, announced by the United States on Monday but rejected by the Kremlin, is very different to debt crises of previous years: in 1918 the Bolsheviks didn’t want to pay and in 1998 Russia could not pay its domestic debts. This time, Moscow can pay and says it is ready to but the West is preventing it. Following are five signs that the Russian economy is still resilient:* The strongest currency in the world: The rouble, which for decades even Russians shunned because it was so weak and volatile, is by far the world’s top performing currency against the U.S. dollar year-to-date. http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/GLOBAL-CURRENCIES-PERFORMANCE/0100301V041/index.html The rouble has been driven higher by proceeds from commodity exports, a drop in imports and capital controls which have shielded the currency from a broader sell off. The rouble hit a 7-year high against the dollar and euro on June 22.Russia ran a current account surplus of $110.3 billion in the first five months of 2022, up from $32.1 billion in the same period last year, central bank data showed.* Oil – The lifeblood of Russia’s economy has been trading above $100 a barrel since Russia invaded Ukraine. Brent crude oil was trading at $112.99 on Monday.With high oil prices, Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and world largest exporter of natural gas, has a trillion-dollar-a-year cushion against sanctions.For sure, Russia’s Urals blend of crude sells at a discount to Brent but is still high. Western sanctions have forced Russia to sell its oil at large discounts up to $40 a barrel to China and India. But U.S. officials have said Moscow was still earning more money from its energy exports today than before the war.* Rates – Russia’s central bank cut its key interest rates to the pre-crisis level of 9.5% on June 10 – and has kept the door open to a further easing as inflation slowed. Just after the invasion, Russia hiked rates to 20%. But that is still far below the astronomical rates of 150% imposed just before the August 1998 devaluation. * Food and no panic – There is still food in the shops of Moscow and few signs of panic.Immediately after the invasion, there was some panic buying of things like sugar. But that has subsided: there is ample food in the shops of Moscow and no run on the banks. That is a sharp contrast to the panic buying which accompanied the 1998 devaluation and the food shortages which accompanied the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.Back in 1990, to alleviate Russian food shortages, the United States started supplying chicken legs to Russia that became known as “nozhki Busha” – or Bush legs – after President George H. W. Bush who signed the deal with Mikhail Gorbachev. * Unemployment – just 4%, a record low, in April. Some fear unemployment could be understated as big companies have yet to cut staff but for now at least, just 3.0 million are without a job. A new reading for May is due shortly. More

Yulin, a city of 5.8 million known for its annual summer dog meat festival, will recommend a home buyer for more than three jobs, The Economic Observer, a weekly newspaper, reported on Sunday.First-time buyers will also be offered subsidies.Yulin city government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.The Yulin city government hopes to sell 8,000 housing units to villagers this year, the paper said, pointing to the collapse in urban demand.But rural residents in the Guangxi autonomous region, which includes Yulin, on average earn only about 5,000 yuan ($748) a year, less than half of what urban residents make, official statistics show.Yulin’s civil servants have also been told to persuade their relatives and friends to buy properties to help meet the target, it said.Yulin is not alone in taking unusual steps to lure home buyers. In a city in central China’s Henan province, a desperate developer has offered to take wheat and garlic as part of the down payment for properties.Property markets in China’s third- and fourth-tier cities remain bleak even after steps to stimulate weak demand, with new home prices falling for a ninth consecutive month in May and inventories rapidly ballooning.The oversupply is particularly severe in Yulin, where the destocking cycle is more than 10 years, according to a real estate company cited by The Economic Observer, compared with up to three years normally in China.($1 = 6.6869 Chinese yuan renminbi)(The story corrects source of wage information in paragraph 6 to official statistics, not the paper; states that Guangxi is an autonomous region, not a province.) More