Aurelia Butler

Gold prices rose to an all-time high at $2,589.6 an ounce on Monday, supported by a weaker dollar and the prospect of a big rate reduction by the Fed.Markets are currently pricing in a 33% chance of a 25-basis-point U.S. rate cut at the Fed’s Sept. 17-18 meeting, and a 67% chance of a 50-bps cut, the CME FedWatch tool showed.”While we see some tactical downside to gold prices under our economists’ base case of a 25bp Fed cut on Wednesday, we reiterate our long gold trading recommendation and our price target of $2,700/toz by early 2025,” the investment bank said in a note. Goldman Sachs noted that while a structurally higher demand from central banks has reset the relationship at the price level, changes in interest rates continue to drive fluctuations in gold prices.It also indicated that exchange-traded funds backed by physical gold are consistently rising as the Federal Reserve’s policy rate diminishes. More

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The tech giant declared a quarterly dividend of $0.83 per share, reflecting an 8 cent, or 10%, increase over the previous quarter.Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) said it will hold its annual shareholders meeting on Dec. 10. In July, the company said it will spend more this fiscal year on AI infrastructure. It reported a 77.6% rise in capital spending in the quarter ended June 30, largely due to AI-related expenses. The company reported a slowdown in growth at its Azure cloud business in the reported quarter but said growth would accelerate in the second half of fiscal 2025.Big tech companies, including Microsoft and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google, are facing investor pressure to show a pay off for the billions of dollars they have been investing in AI infrastructure.Microsoft is one of the few big companies that break out AI contributions in their quarterly earnings, as most firms are yet to see a big boost from AI investments.Last month, it had restructured how it reports results for its business units, moving some search and news advertising revenue under the Azure cloud-computing unit.Among other big technology companies, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) unveiled a record $110 billion share buyback program in May after it reported upbeat quarterly results. Shares of Microsoft rose marginally in aftermarket trade. Stock has risen about 15% so far this year. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets.If deepening gloom around China and a surging Japanese yen are the local market drivers in Asia, the Fed’s upcoming interest rate decision hangs heavily over world markets as growing hopes for a 50 basis point cut push the dollar to new lows for the year.Wall Street lost ground on Monday even as bond yields edged lower, with jitters beginning to bubble up as Wednesday’s Fed decision draws closer.Rates traders are now putting a 60% probability on a half percentage point cut and expect 120 bps of easing over the three remaining policy meetings this year. That effectively implies two of them will deliver 50 bps cuts.This front-loaded dovishness is weighing heavily on the dollar, especially against the yen. The Japanese currency on Monday hit its strongest level since July last year, with the dollar falling below 140.00 yen before regaining that threshold.Indeed the MSCI index for emerging market currencies, which dates back to 2009, hit a lifetime high on Monday.The decline in U.S. implied rates and yields is putting Hong Kong interbank rates under downward pressure too. The overnight Hong Kong interbank offered rate or ‘Hibor’ on Monday hit a one-year low around 2.44%, and one-year Hibor touched its lowest in two years near 4.07%. Amidst all this, China’s outlook continues to darken.A “downward spiral”, reckons SocGen. “From bad to worse” and “a vicious cycle,” says Barclays. “Things could get worse before they get better,” warns Morgan Stanley.These are some of the reactions from analysts at global brokerages to the latest wave of weak economic data that shows not only is the world’s second largest economy in deep trouble, but the global spillover cannot be ignored either.Economists at Goldman Sachs and Citi lowered their 2024 GDP growth forecasts for China to 4.7%, a level notably below Beijing’s target of around 5%. Others may well follow suit, and for most of those that don’t, the risk to their outlook is firmly to the downside.Uniformly weak industrial, consumer and house price data on Saturday followed soft bank lending figures on Friday, bolstering the case for aggressive stimulus to shore up demand and growth. The trouble is few analysts expect Beijing to deliver the scale of fiscal and monetary support required. Some analysts point to the U.S. and European housing crashes in the Global Financial Crisis and say it could be a decade before China fully emerges from its property sector implosion.The Chinese 10-year bond yield fell below 2.05% on Monday for the first time ever, nearing a much more symbolically significant break below 2.00%. The two-year yield around 1.35% is near the lows plumbed at the height of the pandemic. Here are key developments that could provide more direction to Asian markets on Tuesday:- India wholesale price inflation (August)- Indonesia trade (August)- Japan tertiary index (July) More

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OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ruling Liberals, trailing badly in the polls, face a struggle on Monday to retain a once-safe seat in a special election where failure to win could boost calls for a new party leader.The election in the Montreal parliamentary constituency of LaSalle—Emard—Verdun was called to replace a Liberal legislator who quit. Normally Trudeau’s party could count on an easy win there but surveys suggest the race is tight. If the Liberals lose, the focus will fall squarely on Trudeau, who has become increasingly unpopular after almost nine years in office.Unusually, some Liberal legislators are breaking ranks to call for change at the top. Alexandra Mendes, a Liberal lawmaker who represents a Quebec constituency, said many of her constituents wanted Trudeau to go.”I didn’t hear it from two, three people – I heard it from dozens and dozens of people,” she told public broadcaster Radio-Canada last week. “He’s no longer the right leader.”Trudeau, who insists he will lead the party into an election that must be held by the end of October 2025, suggested voters on Monday would be drawn to vote by anger over elevated prices and a housing crisis.”Canadians right now are facing difficulties with the high cost of living. They are very frustrated,” he said last Wednesday when questioned about the vote and his future.Questions about Trudeau’s future intensified in June after the party lost a safe seat in Toronto in a special election.Polls suggest that the Liberals will lose badly to the right-of-center Conservatives of Pierre Poilievre in the next federal election. A Leger poll last week put the Conservatives on 45% public support, a level of broad support rarely seen in Canada, with the Liberals in second place on 25%.In the 2021 general election, the Liberals won LaSalle—Emard—Verdun with 43% of the vote, far ahead of the separatist Bloc Quebecois on 22% and the New Democratic Party on 19%. Polls now show the three parties are neck and neck in the constituency.Voting ends at 9 p.m. (0100 GMT). Early results would normally be ready within 90 minutes, but around 80 activists, angry that Trudeau broke a 2015 promise to change Canada’s voting system, are also on the ballot. That means counting votes will likely take several hours longer than usual.Trudeau’s popularity has sagged as voters struggle with a surge in the cost of living and a housing crisis that has been fueled in part by a spike in arrivals of temporary residents like foreign students and workers.Poilievre is promising to axe a federal carbon tax he says is making life unaffordable and last week vowed to cap immigration limits until more homes could be built.Liberals concede the polls look grim but say they will redouble efforts to portray Poilievre as a supporter of the Make America Great Again movement of former U.S. President Donald Trump as an election approaches.Poilievre, an acerbic career politician who often insults his opponents, also says he would defund CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster. In April he was ejected from the House of Commons after he called Trudeau “a wacko.” More

The bread, one of a handful of still subsidized basic food products in Cuba, will be reduced from 80 grams to 60 grams (2.1 oz), or approximately the weight of an average cookie or a small bar of soap. Its price, too, was slightly reduced, to just under 1 peso, or 1/3 of a cent.Still, many Cubans, who earn around 4648 pesos a month, or around $15, can scarcely afford to shop for more expensive bread on the private market, leaving them with few alternatives.”We have to accept it, what else can we do?” Havana-resident Dolores Fernandez told Reuters while she stood outside a bakery on Monday. “There’s no choice.”Cuba last week said it had run short of the wheat flour it needs to produce the bread, a predicament the government blames on the U.S. trade embargo, a complex web of restrictions that complicates Cuba’s global financial transactions. The Caribbean island nation is suffering from extreme shortages of food, fuel and medicine, shortfalls that have primed a record-breaking exodus of its citizens to the nearby United States.Cuba’s ration book, or “libreta,” as it is known among island residents, was once considered a hallmark of Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, providing a range of deeply-discounted products to all Cubans, including bread, fish, meat, milk, and cleaning and toiletry supplies.Today, the crisis-racked government offers just a fraction of those products, and often, they arrive late, in poor quality or not at all.Bernardo Matos, of Havana, said he had not detected a change in bread size on Monday, but said he was unhappy with the quality.”The quality is terrible,” he said shortly after purchasing his ration. “The flour tastes like acid.” Cuba’s government has said it planned to reinforce inspections at state bakeries to assure quality does not suffer.Cuba earlier this year sought help from the World Food Programme to guarantee the supply of subsidized powdered milk for children, another key staple of the Cuban ration book that has recently grown scarce.Beyond the few remaining centrally planned economies like Cuba’s and North Korea’s, rationing is typically only used during war-time, natural disasters or specific contingencies. More