Finance

A job seeker fills out an application form during a restaurant and hospitality career fair in Torrance, California, on June 23, 2021.Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe number of Americans out of work for at least a year jumped by 248,000 in June, underscoring persistent challenges for some households even as the broader labor market is improving.Nearly 2.9 million people have been jobless for 52 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The agency only reports these figures without an adjustment for seasonal factors.)That represented about 29% of all unemployed workers last month.Such workers are among the long-term unemployed, or those experiencing a period of joblessness lasting six months or more. It’s a risky financial time for affected households, which may experience income loss, greater difficulty finding a new job and a reduction in future earnings potential.”There are many people who lost their jobs early on in the recession who’ve been unemployed ever since,” according to Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor during the Obama administration.More from Personal Finance:The upside to inflation: rising wagesThe stock market is falling. Should you sell?It’s the best summer for teen jobs since 1953The increase in yearlong unemployment comes as the U.S. added 850,000 jobs in June, the most since August 2020.But the jump makes sense given the contours of the Covid labor market, Shierholz said.Layoffs, which began en masse in March and April 2020, were still about 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels over the following two months, she said.(Layoffs are a different metric than net jobs gained or lost, and are reported separately from the monthly jobs figures.)  A jump in 52-week unemployment therefore reflects the elevated layoffs a year ago. The numbers will likely soon decline, since layoffs had normalized by July, she said.”As the overall unemployment rate comes down, I expect the long-term unemployment rate will come down,” according to Shierholz.Those out of work for an extended duration are likely among the hardest-hit industries, like leisure and hospitality, Shierholz said.The category, which includes bars and restaurants, accounted for 40% of the job gains in June. However, the industry is still down 2.2 million jobs (13%) versus pre-pandemic levels.Black workers were most likely to be unemployed at least six months — about 45% were jobless for 27 or more weeks in June. The shares were a bit lower for Asian, Latinx and white workers, at 43%, 39% and 38%, respectively.(The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t report data on yearlong unemployment for these groups.)Households may have largely escaped the immediate financial challenges of long-term joblessness during the Covid pandemic due to enhanced unemployment benefits.States generally pay benefits for up to six months, but the federal government extended the duration three times during the pandemic in separate relief measures.Roughly two dozen states opted to end federal assistance for the long-term unemployed in recent weeks — meaning affected residents may face financial hurdles if unable to find a new job.There was one job opening for every unemployed person in May, according to most recent federal statistics. More

In this articleSOFIOnline finance company SoFi warns crypto customers before every purchase on its platform to be wary of volatile digital currencies, CEO Anthony Noto told CNBC on Thursday. “We take a very structured and serious approach to consumer protection. We ensure that consumers are educated. We focus on suitability,” Noto said on “Squawk Box.” “Every time someone enters a buy action, we have a warning that says it’s an unproven asset, it’s highly volatile, and you could lose all of your money.” Noto joined CNBC’s Julia Boorstin from Sun Valley, Idaho, where tech and media CEOs are back for an influential annual conference after last year’s cancellation due to Covid.The new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, told CNBC in May that more investor protections are needed surrounding bitcoin and other crypto assets. Gensler said at the time that regulation was needed to prevent fraud and other issues. He previously taught classes about blockchain and other financial technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.SoFi, short for Social Finance, is one of many free trading platforms, including Robinhood, that are increasingly prying open Wall Street and giant investment firms. The fintech company, which was created in 2011 with a focus on student loan refinancing, went public on June 1 following a SPAC merger with blank-check company Social Capital Hedosophia Corp V. Noto also said SoFi has focused on providing its members with awareness of payment for order flow, the compensation a broker gets for routing trades for execution. Customers are “getting the bulk of the vast majority of that price improvement from payment for order flow,” Noto said. “It’s a widely used piece of the financial models that allow for fractional shares, that allows for paying no commissions. But it needs to be adequately disclosed. It’s a very, very small percentage of our revenue.”The company, which ranked No. 8 on the 2020 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, is also seeing a “strong appetite” in investing coupled with broad-based participation across investments, according to Noto.The significant growth in new accounts and activity accelerated in the beginning of the pandemic and has remained relatively strong since, the CEO noted, saying that increased participation in markets is being driven by individual interest in long-term financial health.”I think we’re seeing a generation of people that realize the importance of investing, and as an industry, we’ve given access to investing to more people. And so you see more 20-to-30-year-olds participating in the markets, and I think that will continue,” Noto said. More

THE SPECTACLE of the SPAC, or “special-purpose acquisition company”, has preoccupied bankers on Wall Street over the past year. This is in part because the vehicles, which list a shell company on stockmarkets and raise a pot of capital before hunting for a private company to merge with, are often touted by their backers as an alternative to an initial public offering (IPO). Big banks make meaty fees from their IPO businesses. For some, the fact that SPACs have muscled in is an unwelcome development. As voracious buyers of private firms, though, SPACs are attracting as much attention among the private-equity (PE) barons on New York’s Park Avenue as on Wall Street.Since the start of 2020 SPACs have gobbled up almost $200bn in capital. The way they are constructed makes them prone to overpaying for firms. Creators see no compensation unless they strike a deal with a merger target, which must often be done within two years. The founders’ payoff is usually 20% of the shares the SPAC helps issue in the newly public firm, which are given to them for a nominal fee. This means that even if the shares plunge after the shell company merges with its target, the founders are still well compensated. Their incentive is thus to do any deal they can, at lofty prices if necessary.This tendency to overpay is both a blessing and a curse for PE. If a PE firm is looking to offload one of its portfolio companies, then finding a SPAC to buy it is an attractive prospect. In March Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners, two PE shops, tripled their money when they sold Paysafe, a payments platform, through a SPAC merger led by Bill Foley, an insurance executive. After Blackstone achieved record first-quarter earnings of $1.75bn Jon Gray, its president, noted on an earnings call that SPACs had emerged as a new exit option.But PE firms also need to purchase private companies for their new funds, ideally at low valuations if they are to make the juicy returns their investors have come to expect. Little is known publicly about the deals that PE firms miss out on, but reports abound of SPACs bidding 20-50% more for companies than the most optimistic valuations by analysts in PE shops.A further complication in the relationship between blank-cheque vehicles and PE is that some PE giants are setting up SPACs themselves. Apollo, for instance, has launched five in recent years. That could pose a dilemma: should a target firm be bought through the private arm, to the benefit of the investors in the PE fund, or by the public arm, to the benefit of the investors in the SPAC? The SPAC frenzy might yield juicy returns for PE investors who bought into a fund a decade ago. But tricky choices loom.This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Frenemies” More

THE GLOBAL financial crisis of 2007-09 was socially divisive as well as economically destructive. It inspired a resentful backlash, exemplified by America’s Tea Party. That crisis at least had the tact to spread financial pain across the rich as well as the poor, however. The share of global wealth held by the top “one percent” actually fell in 2008. The pandemic has been different. Amid all the misery and mortality, the number of millionaires rose last year by 5.2m to over 56m, according to the Global Wealth Report published by Credit Suisse, a bank. The one percent increased their share of wealth to 45%, a percentage point higher than in 2019.The wealthy largely have central banks to thank for their good fortune last year. By slashing interest rates and amassing assets, central banks helped the price of shares, property and bonds rebound. Their economic-rescue effort was, in many ways, a triumph. Yet central banks are not entirely at ease with the role they have played in comforting the comfortable. In October Mary Daly of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco contrasted America’s full financial rebound with its incomplete economic recovery. “It seems unfair,” she acknowledged. “Another example of Wall Street winning and Main Street losing.” Her speech fits a trend; central bankers are mentioning inequality more often (see chart). The latest annual economic report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central banks’ bank, devotes a whole chapter to the distributional effects of monetary policy.In the past central banks would argue that inequality was primarily the result of structural forces (automation, say, or globalisation) that lie beyond their mandate or their power. They have only one policy instrument, they would point out. They cannot set different benchmark interest rates for rich and for poor. And their workhorse economic models often featured a single “representative” household that was meant to stand in for everyone. A model will struggle to assess a policy’s impact on the distribution of income if there is, in effect, only one household to distribute to.In keeping with this tradition, the BIS warns its members not to overreach. Central banks best serve the cause of combating inequality by sticking to their traditional goals of curbing inflation, downturns and financial excess. Tacking on inequality as another objective could compromise the achievement of these aims. Monetary policy will find it harder to fight cyclical forces if it is too busy flailing against structural forces such as technology and trade.Moreover, the age-old fight against inflation, recession and speculation is not necessarily inegalitarian. High inflation is often a regressive tax, harming those who rely on cash the most. “[I have] seen first-hand the havoc that high inflation can wreak on the poorer segments of society when I grew up in Argentina,” said Claudio Borio of the BIS in a recent speech. Fighting downturns is also an egalitarian endeavour. Recessions worsen inequality and inequality worsens recessions, in a cycle of “perverse amplification”, as Mr Borio puts it. Deeply divided societies suffer larger drops in output in bad times and respond more slowly to monetary easing. The effect of policy on the economy is impaired partly because the very poor cannot access credit, and therefore cannot borrow (and spend) more when interest rates are cut. Meanwhile, the very rich do not spend much more either, even though looser policy pushes up the prices of their assets.There is, then, no need to give central banks a new, more egalitarian set of goals. But that leaves open the question of how central banks should meet those goals. Some approaches and tools may be better for social cohesion than others. And central banks might reasonably favour those that, all else equal, serve their mandate more equitably than others.The Fed, for example, last year adopted a less trigger-happy interpretation of its inflation target. A side-effect of this approach should be lower income inequality. It will allow the Fed to find out whether people on the economic sidelines can become employable if hiring remains strong enough for long enough. To guide their thinking, central banks are turning to economic models that include “heterogeneous” households, a step beyond the “representative-agent New Keynesian” model (otherwise known as RANK). They also now have a bewildering variety of tools to choose from. Some buy equities, which are largely held by the rich. Others provide cheap funding to banks that lend to small firms. (The Bank of Japan does both.) Each tool will make a different contribution both to the level of spending and the distribution of income.A tool of the manyYet there are limits to what monetary policy alone can achieve. Even a central bank that sticks to its customary role, the BIS notes, may face awkward trade-offs, pitting income inequality against wealth inequality and inequality now versus inequality later. Bold monetary easing may lead to a more uniform distribution of income by preserving jobs. But it will boost the price of assets, increasing wealth inequality, at least in the short run. In addition, these expansive monetary policies can, the BIS argues, contribute to financial excesses that could go on to result in a deeper, more protracted recession in the future. And that would ultimately be bad even for income equality.The BIS’s answer is to bring a wider range of policies to bear, including better financial regulation to curb speculative excesses and more responsive fiscal policy, where public finances permit. By spending more, governments allow central banks to buy less. Ben Bernanke, a former Fed chair much maligned by populist critics, put it this way: “If fiscal policymakers took more of the responsibility for promoting economic recovery and job creation, monetary policy could be less aggressive.”If central banks have worsened inequality in their efforts to rescue the economy it is partly because they have borne an unequal share of the job. With more help from fiscal policy, central banks will find it easier to take away the punch bowl before the tea party gets going. ■This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Stabilité, libéralité, égalité” More

IN THE MIDDLE of March last year, as the coronavirus pandemic was taking hold, a private-equity boss in America was asked how his industry would deal with the shock. The businesses owned by buyout firms would first look to raise debt wherever and however they could. Drawing equity from private-equity investors would be a last resort. “I think you’ll see the same in public markets—a lot of convertible issues,” he said. Sure enough, there was soon a rash of big convertible-bond sales by cruise lines, airlines and retailers.A convertible is a bond with an option to swap for shares of common equity. Last year $159bn-worth were issued worldwide, according to figures compiled by Calamos Investments, an asset manager. This was around twice the value of convertibles issued in 2019. So far this year around $100bn-worth have been issued. An asset class that had fallen out of fashion is back in vogue. That is because convertibles are well-suited to fast-changing conditions.To understand why, start with some basics. A convertible bond has the usual features of a garden-variety bond: a principal to be repaid on maturity, an interest-rate coupon paid once or twice a year and so on. In addition the issuer grants the bondholder the right to convert the principal into a fixed number of shares. This number, known as the conversion rate, is typically set so that it would be worthwhile to exercise the option only if the share price rose by 30-40%. The option is thus “out of the money” when the convertible is issued. A company with a share price of, say, $15 might set the conversion rate of a $1,000 bond at 50. At that rate it would begin to make economic sense to swap the bond for equity only if the share price reached $20 (ie, $1,000 divided by 50). In exchange for the equity option, convertibles pay a lower rate of interest. A rule of thumb is that they have a coupon roughly half that of a regular bond.Convertibles may be complex securities, but in some circumstances they have clear advantages over straight debt or equity for both issuers and investors. This is the case for unproven firms in capital-hungry businesses. (Until recently Tesla was a big issuer of convertibles, for instance.) The founders of such firms are often reluctant to issue equity, because it dilutes their ownership. They would prefer to issue debt. But bond investors might demand a steep interest rate to compensate for the risk of default. Convertible bonds can be an ideal compromise. Investors are willing to accept a lower interest rate in exchange for a piece of the equity upside. For business owners, convertibles are less dilutive than straight equity. New shares are issued later at a much higher price, if at all.Around 60% of the volume of issues so far this year is by firms that have been listed for less than three years, says Joseph Wysocki of Calamos. But old-economy cyclical firms are issuers, too. Some, like Carnival Cruises and Southwest Airlines, used convertibles last year to raise “rescue” finance at lower interest rates and without immediate dilution. Others are using them to finance investment: Ford Motor sold $2bn of convertible bonds in March, for instance.This flurry of issuance is quite a shift. The market for convertibles was previously rather moribund, even as high-yield bonds and leveraged loans enjoyed a boom. The absence of meaningful inflation meant that long-term interest rates steadily fell. Bond investors enjoyed healthy capital gains. At an aggregate level, the trend in American corporate finance was to swap equity for debt, and not the other way round.Today’s challenges are different. A big concern is that inflation and interest rates are at the start of an upward trend. A world of high inflation would be a trickier one in which to raise capital by issuing corporate bonds. The nominal value of the bond at redemption would be a lot lower in real terms. By contrast, convertible bonds offer some protection. They are “nominal assets which come with an embedded call option on a real asset”, writes Dylan Grice of Calderwood Capital, an alternative-investment boutique. The option to convert to equity affords the bondholder a degree of indexation to rising consumer prices.Convertibles have already proved their worth. They were almost tailor-made for the circumstances of spring 2020. Big changes call for flexible forms of capital. And it is easy to imagine further economic dislocations on the horizon. Convertibles are the asset class for the times.This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Classic convertible” More

In this articleBTC.CM=The logo of cryptocurrency exchange Binance displayed on a phone screen.Jakub Porzycki | NurPhoto via Getty ImagesLONDON — Britain’s move to block Binance is boosting rival cryptocurrency exchanges, which have reported a surge in new users in the country recently.The Financial Conduct Authority recently announced a crackdown on Binance, the world’s top crypto exchange by trading volume, restricting the company from carrying out regulated activities in the U.K.Binance withdrew its application to register as a licensed crypto asset firm in the U.K. in May due to not meeting anti-money laundering requirements, the markets watchdog said.While Binance is technically allowed to continue offering crypto trading to Brits, it was ordered by regulators to add a notice to its website saying it is not authorized to operate in the U.K.For its part, Binance said the measures only targeted its U.K. entity, Binance Markets Limited, and would have no impact on services provided in the country by Binance.com.But following the FCA’s restrictions, Binance has suffered subsequent setbacks in Britain. Customers were temporarily unable to make card withdrawals due to an issue with the U.K.’s Faster Payments system. Meanwhile, the bank Barclays has blocked customers from sending payments to the crypto exchange.Binance’s woes in the U.K. have been a boon to its rivals, though, some of which have seen user numbers double since the FCA restrictions were announced.”We’re seeing an increase in customers in the U.K. coming to us, with no changes in marketing,” Julian Sawyer, CEO of Luxembourg-based exchange Bitstamp, told CNBC.As of Tuesday, Bitstamp had seen its customers grow 138% since the FCA issued its notice about Binance on June 25. Binance declined to comment on this story when contacted by CNBC.”I think it’s a flight to safety,” Sawyer added. “If you’re told that the bank you’re with is less secure, you move the money out of the bank and move it into the next bank which is super secure.”Meanwhile, U.S.-based exchange Kraken has also benefited.”The percentage share of signups from the U.K. has approximately doubled in the last couple of weeks, compared to signups in Kraken’s other leading markets,” a Kraken spokesperson told CNBC.Gemini, the digital currency exchange started by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is one of the few companies listed on the FCA’s list of registered crypto asset firms.”We have seen tremendous user growth as consumers look towards approved firms when entering the market,” Blair Halliday, Gemini’s head of U.K., told CNBC.Read more about cryptocurrencies from CNBC ProInvesting in Ethereum? What you need to know about it and why it’s not just another bitcoinBitcoin’s ‘mining difficulty’ is about to fall. Here’s what that means for the cryptocurrencyMost investors see bitcoin ending the year below $30,000, CNBC survey shows”We expect to see exchanges and custodians registered with the FCA continue to gain market share due to the value placed on the approval process,” he added.Coinbase, America’s largest crypto exchange, declined to comment on this story.Crypto crackdownBinance’s woes haven’t been limited to the U.K.On Tuesday, Binance said it had temporarily suspended euro bank deposits through the Single Euro Payments Area payments scheme, due to “events beyond our control.”And regulators in Canada, Japan and Thailand have also issued warnings to the company about it operating without authorization.Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known in the industry as “CZ,” said in a blog post Wednesday the exchange “still has a lot of room to grow” and that it hasn’t always gotten things right.”Compliance is a journey – especially in new sectors like crypto,” Zhao said, adding Binance is hiring more compliance staff and localizing operations to better meet its regulatory obligations.It follows a number of steps taken by regulators in China to clamp down on the crypto industry. Several regions in the country have moved to stamp out energy-intensive crypto mining operations, amid concerns over their environmental impact.Earlier this week, Beijing called for the shutdown of a company suspected of providing software for virtual currency transactions, reiterating its tough stance on crypto.Digital currencies rallied at the start to the year, with bitcoin jumping to an all-time high of almost $65,000 in April. But they’ve since fallen sharply, with the overall crypto market losing more than $1 trillion in value in the last two months. More

Chengdu city street vendors, like this one pictured on June 18, 2020, were mentioned by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during COVID-19 as an example of economic recovery.Yuyang Liu | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesBEIJING — China’s top executive body surprised investors late Wednesday by saying the central bank would stimulate the economy by cutting the amount of funds banks need to hold in reserve.”We think this policy signal suggests the economy likely slowed in June,” Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist, Pinpoint Asset Management, said in a note. He said policymakers likely already know what retail sales and other macroeconomic data for June look like.Economic data for last month and second-quarter gross domestic product are due out on Thursday next week.Investors may already have some clues. On Monday, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said passenger car sales in China likely fell 14.9% in June from a year ago. Autos are a major component of retail sales.The People’s Bank of China last cut the reserve requirement ratio, or RRR, in April 2020, when the country was emerging from the height of its struggle to contain the domestic spread of Covid-19.China managed to quickly control the domestic outbreak and was the only major economy to grow last year. But the persistent spread of the disease overseas and a surge in commodity prices have added to uncertainties at home.In the last two months, consumer spending — which China is trying to rely more on for growth — grew slower than expected and authorities have kept up their efforts to support smaller, privately owned businesses, which generate a significant share of jobs.The State Council meeting on Wednesday, chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, stuck to the same tone of support.”Given the impact of higher commodity prices on business production and operation, the meeting decided to maintain the stability of the monetary policy and enhance its effectiveness, without resorting to massive stimulus,” a press release of the meeting said.Read more about China from CNBC ProHedge fund manager Dan Niles says he’s given up on Chinese stocks for now due to crackdownCramer questions why anyone would buy a Chinese IPO ever again after Didi debacleJPMorgan picks its favorite Chinese stocks on everything from hydrogen to EV batteries”Cuts in the required reserve ratio and other policy tools will be introduced as appropriate, to intensify financial support for the real economy, especially micro, small and medium-sized businesses, and promote steady decrease of overall financing costs,” the release said.Authorities also decided to lift household registrations restrictions to allow those working in gig economy-positions outside their hometowns to get access to local pension and medical insurance plans. The leaders said they would test occupational injury insurance, primarily for ride-hailing, food delivery and rapid delivery drivers.RRR cut not a givenFollowing the meeting, Nomura’s Chief China Economist Ting Lu and his team said in a note they now expect the central bank to cut the reserve requirement ratio across the board by 50 basis points “in coming weeks.”They also expect the government will speed up its bond issuance, after only using 2.5 trillion yuan ($385.72 billion) in the first half of a total allotment of 7 trillion yuan.However, Lu pointed out a cut is not a given — noting that the State Council’s mention of a possible RRR cut in June 2020 did not result in one. However, six other mentions since the middle of 2018 have been followed by an RRR cut, he said in the note.Lu expects “downward pressure on growth to increase” in the second half of the year, particularly the fourth quarter. Nomura forecasts 8.1% year-on-year GDP growth in the second quarter, 6.4% in the third quarter and 5.3% in the fourth quarter, for an annual growth rate of 8.9%.China’s signal of easier monetary policy comes as the U.S. Federal Reserve considers plans to tighten policy and gradually move away from stimulus measures made in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. More

A customer makes a payment using China’s digital currency, or e-CNY, at Wangfujing Department Store on February 11, 2021 in Beijing, China.VCG | Visual China Group | Getty ImagesBEIJING — China’s central bank is “quite worried” about risks to the global financial system from privately developed digital currencies, particularly so-called global stablecoins.These digital currencies are tied to a fixed value, such as a government-backed currency like the U.S. dollar. One popular example is Tether, which has raised concerns in the U.S. government and ranks third in market capitalization behind well-known cryptocurrencies bitcoin and ethereum.”Some commercial organizations’ so-called stablecoins, especially global stablecoins, may bring risks and challenges to the international monetary system, and payments and settlement system, etc.,” Fan Yifei, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, told reporters Thursday in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation.”We are still quite worried about this issue, so we have taken some measures,” Fan said.On Tuesday, the central bank’s business development arm and Beijing city authorities ordered a local company to shut down on allegations it provided software services for cryptocurrency transactions.The move followed a national-level call in late May to crack down on bitcoin mining and transactions, which has sent miners looking to move operations to the U.S. and other countries. Mining is the energy-intensive computer process for facilitating bitcoin transactions. Operators can get bitcoin as a reward.Since bitcoin’s launch in 2009 as the first application of blockchain technology, the digital currency has seen cycles of interest, with the latest wave sending it briefly above $60,000 earlier this year. Bitcoin traded near $33,000 on Thursday.”These (digital) currencies have themselves become speculation tools,” Fan said, adding there are potential threats to “financial security and social stability.”He noted that his work at the central bank included digital currencies. The PBoC is developing a digital version of the Chinese yuan, which has been tested in several parts of the country in the last year.So far, the invite-only digital yuan system has more than 10 million users, Fan said.In contrast with bitcoin’s decentralized system, the PBoC’s digital yuan is controlled by the central bank.Scrutiny on payments doesn’t end with AntHowever, the more immediate challenge to the PBoC’s control of currency transactions has been the rise of bank account-linked mobile payments in China. In the last several years, apps run by Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group and Tencent’s WeChat have become the dominant forms of payment in the country, replacing cash.Regulators abruptly suspended Ant’s massive IPO last fall, and the central bank forced the company — which portrayed itself as a financial technology player — to restructure as a financial holding company.The PBoC will apply measures it took on Ant to other entities in the payment services market, Fan said Thursday in response to a separate question, speaking generally of efforts to counter monopolistic practices.The speed of development in payment systems is “very alarming” and the central bank is working against monopolies and “disorderly expansion of capital,” Fan said.Read more about China from CNBC ProHedge fund manager Dan Niles says he’s given up on Chinese stocks for now due to crackdownCramer questions why anyone would buy a Chinese IPO ever again after Didi debacleJPMorgan picks its favorite Chinese stocks on everything from hydrogen to EV batteries More