Commodities Still Face Iron Laws of Supply and Demand

Investors should watch miners’ 2016 results carefully to see whether firms take the bait of higher prices and let capex drift up again.

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The Market Loves Donald Trump, Will Consumers?

Wednesday’s consumer-sentiment report will be the first since the presidential election.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Diet Plan Gets Early Results

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is thinner and more attractive, but that is reflected in its valuation.

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Lilly Alzheimer's Drug Can Save Dismal Year for Pharma

Upcoming Alzheimer’s disease results from Eli Lilly will have major impact on biotech and pharma stocks.

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At a mosque in Trump country

FRIDAY sermons have been a weekly mainstay of your correspondent’s life since boyhood. But none have ever felt as worthwhile as this one, delivered to the assembled congregants, some 80 Muslims who had gathered in this college town in the middle of Trump country on November 18th. Even the little ones, who usually harangue one another and jostle and fidget throughout the whole service, sit somberly.

The bespectacled imam, a mild-mannered family friend, speaks with uncharacteristic steel. He’s a man more given to scholarship than sanctimony, a doctor who has memorised the entire Koran and quotes the poetry of Muhammad Iqbal at great length. But today, his words are hard and unflinching. “Hate has now gone mainstream,” he proclaims, unexpectedly political. He notes that Michael Flynn, the man Donald Trump has chosen to be his national security adviser just that day, has publicly called Islam “a cancer”. He warns of troubled times ahead.

Since Mr Trump’s surprising election victory two weeks ago, the apprehension among America’s Muslims, who number some 3.3m, has never been higher. And not without reason. Kris Kobach, a member of Mr Trump’s transition...Continue reading

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How California offers glimmers of hope for Democrats

IN AN election that left Republicans in charge of the presidency, Congress, and many state governments, California shines like a ray of hope for Democrats. On the morning of November 9th, the state was even bluer than it was the day before. With 70% of the vote counted, Hillary Clinton was leading president-elect Donald Trump by 61.5% to 33%; in 2012, Barack Obama had 60% against Mitt Romney’s 37%. Long-time Republican strongholds, like mostly exurban Orange Country, voted for Mrs Clinton. Several districts are yet to be counted, but Democrats in the state assembly were on the verge of a two-thirds supermajority. Some inland and rural counties voted Republican, but California's ample population of coastal liberals and its many Hispanics—the state's largest single ethnic bloc—were firmly against Mr Trump. The heads of the two state legislatures put out a statement vowing to “lead the resistance to any effort that would shred our social fabric or our constitution.” They had woken up, the statement said, feeling like “strangers in a foreign land.”

Mrs Clinton's victory in the popular vote suggests that California may be a better distillation of America than the...Continue reading

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To silence dissidents, Gulf states are revoking their citizenship

SINCE the small Gulf states became independent from Britain in the latter half of the 20th century, their ruling families have sought fresh methods for keeping their subjects in check. They might close a newspaper, confiscate passports, or lock up the most troublesome. Now, increasingly, they are stripping dissidents—and their families—of citizenship, leaving many of them stateless.

Bahrain is an energetic stripper. Its Sunni royals have dangled the threat of statelessness over its Shia majority to suppress an uprising launched in 2011, during the Arab spring. In 2014 it stripped 21 people of their nationality. A year later the number was up tenfold. “Gulf rulers have turned people from citizens into subservient subjects,” says Abdulhadi Khalaf, a former Bahraini parliamentarian whose citizenship was revoked in 2012 and now lives safely in Sweden. “Our passports are not a birthright. They are part of the ruler’s prerogative.”

Neighbouring states are following suit. Kuwait’s ruling Al-Sabah family have deprived 120 of their people of their nationality in the past two years, says Nawaf al-Hendal, who runs Kuwait Watch, a local...Continue reading

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The hole at the heart of economics

AMERICA has a debt ceiling. It's a statutory limit on how much debt the federal government can issue. For most of its existence (the ceiling will turn 100 next year) Congress has simply voted to raise the limit when borrowing threatens to hit it. In 2011 and 2013, however, Republicans in Congress chose a different approach. They threatened not to vote to raise the ceiling unless various budget demands were met. It was a dangerous course of action; had the ceiling not been raised the government would have found itself forced to choose between default—potentially triggering a massive financial crisis—or large, sudden cuts to spending of all sorts, triggering a deep recession.

In both 2011 and 2013 the brinksmanship concluded with a deal. Before those deals were cut, as the moment of doom loomed, some economics writers argued that the Treasury should make use of an obscure loophole in a law designed to allow the government to create platinum commemorative coins to issue a $1tn coin, which could then be used to fund government operations without violating the debt ceiling. The measure seemed legal but sounded completely barmy. At one point...Continue reading

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Trump's Art of the Deal With China

Investors will want to know what President-elect Trump sees as a winning negotiating strategy with China.

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AIA Missed Trump Rally, but Is Ready to Roll

Unlike nearly all its global peers, Asian insurance giant AIA Group has taken a share-price hit since the Trumpflation trade. That should change.

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Urban Outfitters Rally Has Gone Too Far

As one of the S&P 500’s top performers this year, Urban Outfitters has gotten ahead of itself.

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Symantec Unlocks Its Line of Credit

Cybersecurity player Symantec earned raves with its Blue Coat deal and now looks to fix consumer side.

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A Global Call on U.S. Bank Risks Could Sour Debate

Systemic riskiness of U.S. banks increases in the view of the global standard setter, the Financial Stability Board.

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The Darker Side of the Dollar's Rise

Expectations of better growth after Donald Trump’s election victory are also tightening financial conditions.

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Mild Fall May Hoodwink Gas Traders

A mild start to the heating season has left natural-gas traders unconcerned about how supplies will fare this winter, but there is precedent for a large draw on storage.

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After Years of Turmoil, Republican Tax Overhaul Picks Up Speed

Republicans’ race to rewrite the U.S. tax code on the heels of this month’s election relies on years of work that is suddenly—and quite unexpectedly—poised to pay off.

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Trump's New Golf Club Doesn't Fix Honma's Swing

Japan’s gift of a Honma luxury golf club to President-elect Trump probably isn’t enough to undo the company’s inauspicious IPO tee shot.

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Trump Trade Turns Safer Bets Sour

The worst-hit emerging markets aren’t the weakest ones, but some of the more resilient.

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Angela Merkel will run for a fourth term as chancellor of Germany

“I TAKE a long time, and my decisions come late,” Angela Merkel said on November 20th, as she explained why she was only now confirming what most Germans had long assumed: that she would run for a fourth term as German chancellor in next autumn’s election for the Bundestag. Considered a shoo-in until the summer of 2015, she lost the support of many conservatives last autumn when she opened Germany’s borders to the refugees then streaming into Europe. Crucially, she also fell out with an important domestic ally, Horst Seehofer, the premier of Bavaria, who demands a fixed upper limit to asylum-seekers. But with the refugee crisis waning and her popularity rising again, Mrs Merkel in the end decided that she had no choice but to run again. She lacks an obvious successor in her conservative bloc, and she may be the only one able to protect her 11-year legacy of centrist politics during a time of populist insurgencies.

The election this month of Donald Trump as America’s next president may have tipped the balance in her decision. Suddenly, America’s future role as leader of the liberal post-war order is in doubt. Other Western powers are...Continue reading

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A Republican primary upset knocks Nicolas Sarkozy out of France’s presidential race

AFTER an astonishing last-minute surge, François Fillon (pictured), a former prime minister, took a crushing lead in the primary for the French centre-right Republican party on November 20th. With a huge turnout of some 4m voters, he secured roughly 44% of the vote. That was fully 16 points ahead of the other qualifier, Alain Juppé, another former prime minister, who took 28%. The big upset of the night was the elimination of Nicolas Sarkozy, who had served as boss to both of them when he was president of France in 2007-12. 

Mr Sarkozy conceded defeat graciously in a televised address, saying that he harboured “no bitterness, no sadness”, and would back Mr Fillon in the run-off vote on November 27th. It was a massive blow to the former president: he had already promised once to retire from public life, after he lost his bid for re-election against François Hollande, only to come back and try again....Continue reading

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The Treasury Market Comes to Terms With Trump

Even if President-elect Donald Trump’s policies don’t bring about the higher growth and inflation environment investors expect, Treasurys will struggle to regain the ground they lost.

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More Boom, Less Bust for Applied Materials

The semiconductor-manufacturing-gear business gets less cyclical—and more diversified.

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Now or Never: Time for Stock Pickers to Shine

Shares of asset managers have outperformed in the postelection rally, but will it last?

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How to Fight Amazon.com, Best Buy Style

Best Buy’s turnaround strategy should be a model for other retailers scrambling to compete with Amazon.com.

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The role of technology in the presidential election

EARLY in America’s presidential campaign, pundits compared the contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to a fight between a large tanker and Somali pirates. This turned out to be particularly true of the digital campaigns: a massive data battleship lost to a chaotic flotilla of social-media speedboats. The big question now is what this means for future elections, both in America and abroad.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign was arguably the most data-driven in American history. Her organisation employed dozens of data scientists who designed statistical models that determined, for instance, which Democrat-leaning voters should get a knock on the door from a friendly volunteer to remind them to do their civic duty. The campaign’s master programme ran six times as many simulations a day as the one that helped Barack Obama get re-elected in 2012.

That may have bred complacency. Her campaign may have had “too much faith in what the data told them,” says Daniel Kreiss, a campaign and data expert at the University of North Carolina. In Michigan, which had voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1992, Mrs Clinton was...Continue reading

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A Western-backed deal to salvage Libya is falling apart

WHEN Fayez al-Serraj returned to Libya in March the situation looked unusually hopeful. For two years, rival governments in the east and west of the country had fought over a disputed election. But in December representatives from both sides of the country (but not their leaders) agreed to a UN-backed peace proposal. Powerful players in the war withheld their support, but they could be brought in later, said advocates. The deal, known as the Skhirat agreement after the Moroccan town in which it was signed, empowered Mr Serraj, then a relatively unknown politician, to form a government of national accord (GNA). His smooth arrival in Tripoli, the capital, in March seemed to herald a brighter future.

It has not turned out that way. The new government, though ostensibly backed by some powerful militias, has failed to gain broad support. The eastern parliament, called the House of Representatives (HOR), has refused to approve the body, as required under the Skhirat agreement. Remnants of the old government and legislature in the west, known as the general national council (GNC), unsuccessfully attempted a coup in Tripoli last month.

Far from...Continue reading

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Trump chooses Jeff Sessions for attorney-general

DONALD TRUMP'S nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama as attorney-general—making the hardest of nativist hardliners the country’s top law officer and head of the Department of Justice—is a timely reminder that words spoken on the campaign trail have meaning, that politics is not show business, and that America’s government takes decisions that make or break lives, shape economies and set norms across the globe. In the immediate aftermath of Mr Trump’s election, some boosters suggested that the president-elect is not really an ideologue, might bring moderates into his administration and is perhaps barely interested in the business of governing at all—for all the world as if P.T. Barnum were headed for the White House. The nomination of Mr Sessions suggests that is wishful thinking.

The 69-year-old senator from Alabama, one of Mr Trump’s earliest supporters and his closest adviser from the world of professional politics, will have sweeping powers over immigration enforcement. If confirmed by the Senate, he will immediately hold in his hands the fate of such groups as the 728,000 migrants granted the right to stay and work in America by Barack Obama under the...Continue reading

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Volkswagen's New Margin Target Underwhelms

A long-awaited “pact for the future” with unions leaves the embattled German auto maker stuck in a low gear.

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Trump has offered Michael Flynn the national security adviser job

REPORTS that Donald Trump has offered the post of national security adviser to Michael Flynn, a retired military intelligence three-star general, will do nothing to dispel the fears of the Republican foreign-policy establishment. General Flynn, tipped earlier this year as a potential running mate to Mr Trump, is a controversial and divisive figure whose career seemed to be over when he was removed from his post as director of the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency in 2014.

Since then, he has become known for guiding Mr Trump’s views on national security during the campaign and expressing strident views on the threat posed by what he calls “radical Islam” that at times verge on Islamophobia. General Flynn fervently believes that jihadism is as an existential challenge to America’s way of life and that defeating it should be an overwhelming national priority, far exceeding concerns about a rising China or a resurgent, nuclear sabre-rattling Russia.

In a book published earlier this year, General Flynn writes: “We’re in a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people, most of them inspired by totalitarian ideology: Radical Islam. But we...Continue reading

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Trump Trade Does Little For Italian Banks' Big Problems

Political risk and capital raising mean a crucial two weeks for Italy.

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Strong Dollar Means Weak Chinese Airlines

The Trump trade of strong dollar and higher bond yields should bring immediate pain to Chinese airlines. Yet share prices aren’t showing it.

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Commodities Bulls Should Beware China-Property Head Fake

Chinese property is losing its fizz again—and commodities bulls should be on guard.

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J.P. Morgan Settlement Shows Western Banks' Fading China Dreams

J.P. Morgan Chase has put a probe into its hiring practices behind it, but its settlement raises questions about how the bank and its U.S. peers can move forward in China.

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After Rough Patch,Gilead Shouldn't Succumb to Deal Pressure

The struggling biotech giant shouldn’t abandon its strategy in the face of bad news

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Why think-tanks are concerned about a Trump administration

ALL across the triangle from Dupont Circle to the White House and Capitol Hill, Washington, DC think-tank staff arrived at work on November 9th with bloodshot eyes. The news of a Russian-based internet attack on some of their colleagues in the Brookings Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations was some small consolation that they remained important and relevant to the Cosy Bear hacker group, at least. But the evidence closer to home was less reassuring. There are 397 think-tanks in the city, each incubating ideas for new policies and frequently incubating the policymakers themselves during periods out of power. In the run-up to a vote, they usually provide the fodder for candidate proposals as well as material to condemn ideas from the other side. But in this election, the system stuttered badly, and it has the wonks worried.

The election result was a shock for think-tank fellows because most are left-leaning. For all many think-tanks are meant to be non-partisan to preserve their tax status, their staff live in a liberal town and their fellows usually have post graduate degrees, which means they are part of a group that identifies Democratic 57% to 35%....Continue reading

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If at first you don’t succeed...

WHEN on October 2nd a narrow majority of Colombian voters rejected a peace agreement under which the FARC guerrillas were to disarm, it was not just a pollster-confounding shock. It was also a rebuke to the government of Juan Manuel Santos, to negotiators who spent four tough years working on the accord and to the international establishment, which had praised the accord. Thus stung, Mr Santos’s people and the FARC’s leaders went back to the table. On November 12th they came up with a revised agreement. Will it command wider public support?

According to Mr Santos, the result is a “renovated, adjusted, more precise and clarified” accord that takes account of many of the objections of the critics, led by Álvaro Uribe, his predecessor and now his chief foe. It is even longer—310 pages instead of 297—but its essence remains the same. The FARC will disarm and become a civilian political party. FARC leaders found guilty of war crimes will not be sent to jail; instead, they will face alternative penalties involving “effective restrictions of liberty”, provided they confess their deeds before a special tribunal.

The new agreement...Continue reading

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Weaker than the storm

They’d rather eat than vote

ON A cloud-dampened morning in Jérémie, the capital of the department of Grand’Anse in south-west Haiti, André Tham walks along a muddy road with a loudhailer, urging passers-by to get vaccinations against cholera. Farther on, a colleague empties a small vial into the mouth of a motorcyclist.

More than 3,700 people are thought to have contracted the waterborne disease since Hurricane Matthew washed over Haiti on October 4th, felling trees, destroying houses, schools and clinics, and polluting sources of clean water. More than 1,000 people died and 1.4m still need immediate assistance. Farms and fisheries, the main source of livelihood, were ruined. Some families remain in their derelict homes, trying to keep out the rain as best they can; about 140,000 are living in government-run shelters. Mr Tham and his wife, who has suffered a broken leg, are among them. “I lost everything,” he says.

Recovery is slow. Aid agencies say it is difficult to deliver food to many of the hurricane’s victims, in part because roads remain impassable. Rebuilding has barely begun. Jobless refugees...Continue reading

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A golden opportunity

GEOPOLITICS waits for no man, not even the United States’ president-elect. Little more than a week after Donald Trump’s victory, Xi Jinping, president of the world’s second-largest economy, set off for Latin America—his third trip there since 2013—clutching a sheaf of trade deals. They were proposed long before the change of government in Washington. But at a time when the image of the big, bad yanqui seems to be making a comeback, Mr Xi may find himself with an opportunity to boost Chinese influence in the American backyard.

China’s aims in the region are expansive. In 2015 it signed a slew of agreements with Latin American countries promising to double bilateral trade to $500bn within ten years and to increase the total stock of investment between them from $85bn-100bn to $250bn. China also wants good relations in order to diversify its sources of energy, to find new markets for its infrastructure companies and to project power, both soft and military, in the western hemisphere.

But Mr Xi, whose itinerary takes him to Ecuador, Peru and Chile, will have to work hard for these gains. After a long period of...Continue reading

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What Could Go Wrong With the Trump Trade

Investors are showing a remarkable amount of certainty in what President-elect Trump will mean for the market. But it wouldn’t take much for them to be wrong.

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Dow 20000? He Called It in 2012

The sharp rally following last week’s election has the Dow just 6% away from one forecaster’s vaunted long-term target, years ahead of schedule.

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Restaurant Investors May Want to Skip Dessert

Some casual eatery stocks have seen double-digit gains since Donald Trump’s unexpected victory. But restaurant investors’ eyes may be bigger than their stomachs.

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Techs Won't Short Circuit Under Trump

Uncertainty abounds, but the postelection selloff sets up an opportunity in tech stocks.

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Swiss Insurer Pledges Cash You Can Count On

Zurich Insurance Group promises no dividend cuts during complicated tuneup to simplify operations and cut costs.

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On borrowed time

BARACK OBAMA is trying to console himself with the possibility that Donald Trump may not after all lay waste to every aspect of his legacy. Perhaps the president-elect’s suggestion that he might preserve some features of his predecessor’s health-care legislation offers a sliver of hope that what Mr Obama regards as his greatest foreign-policy achievement will not necessarily be thrown into the dustbin after January 20th. In reality, the likelihood that the deal with Iran to roll back and constrain its nuclear programme survives the first year of Mr Trump’s presidency now seems extremely small. But if Mr Trump does decide to abrogate it, or sabotage it in some other way, the diplomatic and strategic consequences will be dire.

Guessing what Mr Trump will do is fraught with difficulty because his statements have been so inconsistent. Unlike some of his rivals for the Republican nomination, he did not (quite) promise to tear up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the nuclear deal is formally known, on the first day of his presidency. But he has variously described it as “the worst deal ever negotiated” that he would regard as his...Continue reading

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Nkrumah’s heirs

More passion please

FLAGS coloured with the red, black and green of Ghana’s ruling party flutter feebly in the still, hot air that barely stirs above Independence Avenue as it bends down towards the sea. There it ends abruptly before the sweeping curves of grey Italian marble meant to resemble, depending on whom one asks, the stump of a tree or the buried hilt of a sword. Beneath it lies the body of Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first president and, for many millions of people, a man synonymous with Africa’s liberation from colonialism. Ghana, in 1957, was the first African country to win its independence.

Yet here, at the birthplace of democracy in Africa, are portents of its fragility. On what was once the whites-only polo ground where Nkrumah declared the new state, his headless statue stands as a reminder of how a once-promising flame guttered. After declaring a one-party state and mismanaging the economy, Nkrumah was overthrown in a violent coup in 1966. It took more than a quarter of a century before the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1992 ushered in the start of what many now call Africa’s second...Continue reading

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The next push

FOR weeks, the Syrian regime has been sending text messages warning residents of the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo that they face “annihilation” unless they leave the city. Sceptical, with ample reason, of the regime’s promise of safe passage, few have done so. Instead, they have been bracing themselves for the next wave of bombing.

Their wait came to an end on November 15th as Syrian warplanes, attack helicopters and heavy artillery pounded neighbourhoods in the east of the city for the first time in weeks. The renewed onslaught on Aleppo came the day after a telephone conversation between Donald Trump, America’s president-elect, and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced the start of an operation to “deliver massive strikes” against terrorist targets in the provinces of Homs and Idlib. Activists in the city say that Russian warplanes are also now back in action over Aleppo, although the Russian government denies this. It is possible that the renewed assault on Aleppo is being conducted only by the Syrian regime’s planes.

The resumption of bombing comes a week after...Continue reading

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Call it in

AT A busy intersection in downtown Freetown, motorbike-taxi drivers wait for customers. They pass the time telling tales of petty corruption. “Yesterday I was chased by two policemen,” says a young man, slouched forward on his bike seat. “They told me I was violating a law when I wasn’t, and confiscated my motorbike. I had to pay 100,000 leones ($18) to get it back.” Two other drivers butt in, eager to trump his story with their own.

It is not hard to find a Sierra Leonean who has experienced corruption. A survey carried out in 2013 by Transparency International, an advocacy group, shows the country to have the highest rates of bribery in the world. Some 84% of respondents admitted to having paid a bribe. Corruption runs so deep that it is hard to eliminate.

But at least some are trying. In September the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) launched a scheme, in partnership with Britain’s overseas aid ministry, called “Pay No Bribe”. The project provides a hotline, a phone app and a web portal for citizens anonymously to report everyday corruption. The toll-free number goes through to a call centre staffed by two softly...Continue reading

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Theocratic troubles

FOR years, the victims say, he touched boys memorising holy texts at the Supreme Koran Council in Tehran. On trips abroad, the Koranic reciter would allegedly lure Islam’s equivalent of choirboys, some as young as 12, to his hotel room. But Saeed Tousi had a mellifluous voice. Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, called him a “model to be followed”. His clerics knew of the complaints, but let him chant on. He continued to sing for the Supreme Leader, won a prize and opened a session of parliament.

Convinced the clerics would never punish a favourite for a crime that in Iran carries a death sentence, last month his accusers spoke out on Voice of America. But the judiciary ruled out a public trial—except for those who dared speak to the Voice of the Great Satan. The chief justice, Sadegh Larijani, warned that anyone talking to a foreign news outlet “in opposition to the values of the Islamic Republic” could face charges for “abetting a crime”. Mr Tousi remains at liberty.

Iran is a schizophrenic country. It has a rambunctious parliament and an elected president, but above that an unaccountable theocracy,...Continue reading

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The veterans

WEDGED up against the capital’s ring road, the concert hall was packed, even on a weekday evening. As supporters waved French tricolore flags, a thumping bass beat accompanied their champion onto the stage. But the crowd was warm, rather than electrified. At the souvenir stands, there were few takers for the posters of the 71-year-old candidate. Alain Juppé, the front-runner in the centre-right Republican party’s presidential primary, is not a politician to set pulses racing. As France prepares for its toughest election in over a decade, voters crave something different—but wonder if he is it.

“I’m here out of curiosity,” says Camille, an 18-year-old law student who will vote next spring for the first time. Mr Juppé seems “calm and reassuring”, she reflects, but she has not yet decided whether she will turn out to vote at the primary, held in two rounds on November 20th and 27th. Jean-Marie Campana, a retired civil servant, prefers Mr Juppé’s unifying message to the “excesses” of Nicolas Sarkozy, a former president and rival candidate. But he says he will probably vote for François Fillon, an ex-prime...Continue reading

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Clinton-lands

PRISTINA, the capital of Kosovo, is one of very few places that can boast a statue of Bill Clinton. The gold-painted monument depicts the former American president raising his arm in a gesture meant to evoke leadership, but which more closely resembles hailing a taxi. Ethnic-Albanian Kosovars venerate Mr Clinton for his role in the war that freed their country from Serbian rule and established a UN-administered protectorate in 1999, and led to independence in 2008. But the statue’s gleam has faded and its veneer is beginning to chip—much like the legacy of the Clinton era in the Balkans.

Just as Mr Clinton shaped the western Balkans during the wars of the 1990s, those wars shaped his foreign-policy views—and those of his wife. The liberal interventionism espoused by Hillary Clinton was forged in the American efforts to bring peace to Bosnia and Kosovo. When backing military action in Libya in 2011, Mrs Clinton invoked the memory of the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Balkan countries expected Mrs Clinton to continue her muscular efforts to build an international liberal order if she were elected president.

Mrs Clinton’s defeat and the...Continue reading

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