Aurelia Butler

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The ministry cites prolonged weakness in Sweden’s economy, the largest in the Nordic region, and heightened global uncertainty as the reasons for this revision.The country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is now anticipated to grow 2.2% in the next year on a calendar-adjusted basis. This is a decrease from the previous forecast of 2.8% made in September, according to a statement released on the ministry’s website on Wednesday.The ministry also expects economic expansion to pick up speed in 2026, reaching a growth rate of 2.7%. However, this is still a decline from the earlier prediction of 2.9% growth.This revision follows a series of mixed data regarding the future of Sweden’s economy, which relies heavily on exports and has been nearly stagnant for approximately three years. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C. More

The new funds will be utilized to recruit more engineers to further the company’s mission.The company, chaired by former Google chief Eric Schmidt, was established less than three years ago as a spin-off from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc. SandboxAQ has established partnerships with corporate giants such as Accenture (NYSE:ACN) and Deloitte to expand its customer base.Investment firm Alger and Yann LeCun, a well-known name in the AI field, are among the new investors participating in the latest funding round. Existing backers also include T. Rowe Price, Breyer Capital, Thomas Tull’s USIT, and Schmidt himself, as announced by the company in a statement on Wednesday.SandboxAQ is carving out a niche in the rapidly growing field of AI innovation, a top priority for tech venture capital. The company sets itself apart by adopting different methods from prevailing approaches, such as those used by OpenAI. Currently, SandboxAQ runs quantum physics algorithms on graphics processing units, but plans to transition to more advanced machines in the future.This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As you gear up for last-minute holiday shopping at any big box retailer, there is a good chance you will be offered a store credit card with a nice discount on today’s purchase and even a 0% interest rate for an introductory period.What’s not to like, right?Alas, some store credit offers are tripwired with something called ‘deferred interest,’ which can be a nasty little debt bomb.So how does it work? “If you don’t pay off the balance in full by the end of the promotional period, you’ll owe interest on the entire purchase amount from the original date,” explains Melissa Caro, a New York City financial planner and founder of the platform My Retirement Network.That means you could end up paying 27.5 times more compared to general-purpose credit cards, which do not use deferred interest, according to a new study by financial information site WalletHub.The site reviewed store cards offering 0% introductory rates and found 85% of them are using deferred interest.“Deferred interest is the most misleading thing that currently exists in the credit-card market,” says Odysseas Papadimitriou, WalletHub’s founder and CEO.Of course, consumers rarely read the fine print of those credit-card agreements, and the person at the checkout counter likely is not going to know about financing details, either. In fact, 61% of people do not even know how deferred interest works, according to the WalletHub survey.The other problem here: Interest rates on store cards are typically extremely high. The current average is over 33%.So how can consumers protect themselves from a high-interest surprise? Here are five factors to consider. NOT ALL STORE CARDS ARE ALIKESome store cards will not whack you with deferred interest. Among those, according to the WalletHub survey: The Gap, Williams Sonoma, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN), Costco (NASDAQ:COST), Target (NYSE:TGT) and Pottery Barn.Others may not right now but reserve the right to do so in the future. So ask about deferred interest before you sign on the dotted line.Here is one potential clue: 95% of all deferred interest credit cards are issued by just three banks – Synchrony, Citi, and Comerica (NYSE:CMA), WalletHub says.OPT FOR NON-STORE CREDIT CARDS If it is the 0% introductory offer that is appealing to you, fine – just get it from somewhere else, like your own bank, instead of a retailer-branded one.“The simplest advice we have is, give preference to a regular general-purpose credit card with a 0% offer on it,” said Papadimitriou.Not only will it not come with deferred interest, but the eventual interest rate will likely be lower as well. Average interest rates for general-purpose credit cards are currently 20.37%, according to the latest data from financial information site Bankrate.BE REALISTIC ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN AFFORDAs of November, nearly half of Americans were still paying off holiday debt from last year, according to WalletHub.So if you realistically do not see yourself paying off a purchase before the introductory period expires – then do the hard thing, and do not buy the item in the first place.USE STORE CARDS FOR REWARDS, NOT FOR FINANCINGNot all store cards are bad, and there may be good reasons to use them. For instance, maybe the retailer has an excellent rewards program, or offers significant discounts on merchandise whenever you pull it out.Or maybe you are using a store card to build your credit record, which might be incomplete or spotty. Fine – but then try to pay off balances right away.“Store cards are great credit-building tools and rewards tools, but horrible financing tools,” says Papadimitriou.AUTOMATE YOUR PAYMENTSIf you leave credit card payments up to Future You … well, Future You may not have enough cash. And if that happens on a deferred-interest card, watch out.“The introductory rate can benefit the card user if they are alert,” advises Erika Safran (EPA:SAF), founder of Safran Wealth Advisors in New York City.What is the best way to handle the typical offer of a 12-month, no-interest new card? “Divide the expense by 12, and schedule automatic monthly payments from your bank account to credit card,” Safran says. “You now have a zero-interest 12-month loan.” More

The SREP process provides an overall assessment of the challenges that significant lenders face, resulting in solvency requirements and other supervisory measures they are expected to comply with for the year ahead.Here are the SREP requirements for 2025 disclosed so far by the Italian banks:BANK 2025 SREP CET1 2024 SREP CET1 CET1 RATIO REQUIREMENT REQUIREMENT END-SEPT BPER BANCA 8.93% 8.54% 15.8% CREDEM 8.01% 7.60% 15.8% FINECOBANK 8.27% 8.19% 27.3% INTESA 9.89% 9.32% 13.9% SANPAOLO BANCA POPOLARE 8.93% 8.57% 16.3% DI SONDRIO BANCO BPM 9.18% 9.07% 15.5% UNICREDIT 10.27% 10.03% 16.1% MONTE DEI 8.78% 8.56% 18.1% PASCHI MEDIOBANCA 9.03% 8.15% 15.2% More

LONDON (Reuters) -Stock market peaks typically coincide with troughs in cash holdings – but a regional skew to that picture may be messing with the signal for anyone still wary of U.S. equities.The overwhelming, almost unnerving, bullishness about Wall Street stocks for 2025 is now pretty clear. Not one of 16 annual outlooks collected by Reuters from top brokers and investors sees the S&P500 lower in 12 months’ time, for example.And yet the vanishingly small number of “refuseniks” point to one significant reverse indicator to support their case – near historically low global allocations to cash.Bank of America’s closely-watched survey of asset managers around the world this week spotlighted that average cash levels in portfolios fell below 4% in December for only the second time since June 2021, triggering what it considered another “contrarian” sell signal for equities.Pointing to 12 such signals since 2011 that resulted in an average global equity loss of more than 2% in the subsequent month, BofA underscored the finding by showing that net cash allocations relative to funds’ benchmarks had plummeted by the most in five years to a record 14% underweight, versus 4% overweight in November.Underweight cash positions even close to this month’s record were in the past marked by deflating equity markets in early 2002 and 2011. Tallying with nose-bleed levels of record U.S. equity exposure and economic optimism, where only 6% of funds see a “hard landing” over the next 12 months, the global rotation out of cash and into stocks in the month since the election of Donald Trump has been the biggest in more than 10 years.Nervous?Well, that alarming picture masks a number of factors that don’t quite fit the bill.For a start, it seems to fly in the face of still swelling assets under management at cash-like U.S. money market funds, which at a record $6.77 trillion last week have jumped by a quarter of a trillion dollars since the election and are up a cool trillion over the past 12 months.While there may be a number of factors driving that persistent rise in money fund AUM – such as reinvested interest earnings or households’ ongoing migration from lower-yielding commercial bank savings accounts – it hardly reflects the sort of drop seen in global funds’ cash levels and allocations.What’s more, the money fund coffers have continued to expand even since the Federal Reserve began reducing short-term interest rates in September – and amid expectations it will execute its third cut in the cycle on Wednesday.TRANSATLANTIC FLOWThe clue lies in seemingly unshakeable faith among global investors in the “exceptional” U.S. economic and investment story – also clearly reflected in this month’s BofA survey.The poll showed funds at their most overweight U.S. equities relative to euro zone stocks in 12 years – the nadir of the euro debt crisis.What’s more, a subset survey cut of just European asset managers shows where the depth of the cash aversion really lies – with average cash levels among regional funds there almost a full point below global levels and near the lowest in more than a decade.That figures, given the speed and depth of European Central Bank and Swiss interest rate cuts compared with the relative foot-dragging at the Fed. The ECB and SNB have cut four times each already, with the latter now 160 basis points below the Fed’s policy rate and the Swiss base rate almost back at zero.With the European economy set to lag the United States significantly again next year, exposed to Trump’s promised trade wars and domestic political upheavals, and rates expected to tumble further as the Fed hesitates, cash appetite is bound to differ.But judged by the record 36% of European asset managers who report being overweight U.S. equities, and the 30% who expect U.S. stocks to be the best-performing global asset next year, that rundown of cash is heading straight across the Atlantic.That flow has likely been underway for months and explains much of outsize 6% surge of the dollar against the euro over the past three months, the parallel Wall Street outperformance against euro stocks and the 60-basis-point widening of the transatlantic 10-year debt spread.And those flows may have further to run.The key point is the low global cash level reflects the European picture more than the U.S. one.If the Fed stalls on further rate cuts after this week, then U.S. cash levels could well remain high while they are cut elsewhere in the world – leaving the apparently strange sight of rising U.S. stocks and cash levels intact. Only some revision to those extreme assumptions of U.S. exceptionalism – possibly involving some radical rethink of the stubborn Fed view – would start to balance that picture.Neither look likely early next year, but mid-2025 might throw a different light.The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.(By Mike Dolan; Editing by Jamie Freed) More

The far-right AfD is in second place with 18%, followed by the Social Democrats at 16%. The Greens and the far-left BSW are trailing behind with 13% and 6% respectively. The liberal FDP is polling at 4%, suggesting a potential failure to cross the required 5% threshold, which could result in them not being represented in the next Bundestag.These opinion polls align with the UBS Evidence Lab Political Probability Monitor, a tool that tracks implied probabilities based on betting odds from leading bookmakers. The monitor currently shows an 86% probability of the CDU/CSU winning the most seats, followed by AfD at 15% and SPD at 11%.It’s worth noting that in 2021, the polls saw significant shifts in the two months leading up to the election. In July 2021, the SPD was trailing the CDU/CSU by a similar margin as present (15% and 30%, respectively). However, on the election day, the SPD managed to secure a win with 25% of the votes, surpassing the CDU/CSU who secured 22%.This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C. More