What It Takes for a Bear Market to Turn Around

As markets react to interest-rate hikes and the threat of a recession, stocks are dropping closer to bear-market territory. WSJ’s Gunjan Banerji explains what it takes to push stocks back into a bull market and why it’s hard to predict when they’ll turn around.

 

Returning to Kyiv: The Challenges Ukrainians Face Going Back Home

Despite fuel shortages, damaged roads and the risk of Russian attacks, many displaced Ukrainians are driving back home after fleeing at the start of Russia’s invasion. Here’s what one journey to Kyiv looks like.

China in Africa: should the West be worried?

In the past 20 years, China has built ever closer bonds with African nations. It has spent billions transforming infrastructure across the continent, and extending its influence into politics and society. It even placed its only overseas military base there. How worried should the West be?

HSBC's Stuart Kirk tells FT investors need not worry about climate risk

HSBC's now suspended Asset Management's head of responsible investment Stuart Kirk speaking at the FT Live Moral Money Summit Europe conference, accuses central bankers and policymakers of overstating the financial risks of climate change.

Just consider three comments made during his presentation:

“Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages, and that’s a really nice place.” Stuart Kirk Head of Responsible Investments

“The average loan length in a big bank like ours, HSBC, is six years. What happens to the planet in year seven is irrelevant.” Stuart Kirk Head of Responsible Investments

“There’s always some nut job telling me about the end of the world.” Stuart Kirk Head of Responsible Investments

The great un-SPAC-ing

More than 800 SPACs raised capital between May 2020 and December 2021. Underwriting fees were collected; questionable incentives and complexity remained.

SPACs used to be a curious capital-markets sideshow: complex, obscure, hardly novel. A conventional initial public offering underwritten by investment banks was the marker of corporate maturity; merging with a pile of cash and entering the stockmarket by the backdoor was not. This changed when stockmarkets rallied from their covid-induced lows.

Find out more from The Economist HERE.

Crypto's crash - why it matters

It has been a vicious year for financial markets, and more punishing still for crypto assets. The market capitalization of crypto has slumped to just $1.3trn, from nearly $3trn in November 2021. 

On May 18 bitcoin traded at around $29,000, a mere 40% of its all-time high in November; the price of ether, another cryptocurrency, has collapsed just as spectacularly. 

Six months ago Coinbase, an exchange and the leading crypto-industry stock, was worth $79bn. Now it is valued at just $14bn, and the firm is “reassessing its headcount needs”.

So, what the has gone wrong? Read the full story from The Economist HERE.

Check out the latest “Citadel Advantage News Digest - Issue #111” - 19 May

Read the latest “Citadel Advantage News Digest - Issue #111” - 19 May 2020 edition

#Cryptocrash grabs the attention of Treasury, other regulators" plus NEWS about Money, Payments, Business, Banking, Fintech and more

Read it HERE.