Iranians take part in a funeral procession for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Aug. 1. Iran and Hamas blame Israel for his assassination
Quant funds that chase the hottest trades on Wall Street are getting thrashed as
momentum bets backfire all at once. Going into July, trend followers were
positioned for the year's big trades to keep gathering steam: They were plowing
into stocks, betting against developed-nation government bonds and counting on
the yen to keep weakening. Then each of those markets moved sharply in the wrong
direction, hitting them with deep losses.
US 30-year mortgage rates plunged last week by the most in two years, sparking a surge in refinancing applications. The contract rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage declined to 6.55% in the week ended Aug. 2. The rate on a five-year adjustable mortgage plummeted to 5.91%, the lowest this year. The drop "should set the stage for a modest recovery in transactions the rest of the year," Thomas Ryan, North America economist at Capital Economics, said in a note. "This marks a turning point for the housing market, which has been frozen for a while now."
Reducing America's footprint in the Middle East to focus on China has been one of President Joe Biden's top geopolitical priorities. But extricating itself from the region has proven much harder than he might have thought, Minxin Pei writes in Bloomberg Opinion. With a major regional war potentially on the horizon, a deeper although indirect cause of the recent downward spiral in the Middle East is the global contagion of the US-China rivalry.
Iranians take part in a funeral procession for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Aug. 1. Iran and Hamas blame Israel for his assassination. Photographer: AFP
China's export growth unexpectedly slowed in July, signaling a cooling of the global demand that's been helping prop up the nation's otherwise wavering economy. This is especially bad news for Beijing, seeing as domestic consumers have been tightening their purse strings. Meanwhile, imports expanded 7.2%, narrowing a trade surplus to $84.65 billion from the previous month.
While the US struggles to turn around its nuclear power industry, China is catching up. And there's no great industrial secret to what the Asian giant is doing. It's largely a matter of vast scale, state support and relatively simple, replicable construction. It's a success that could also be transferred abroad, because the appetite for nuclear power is growing thanks to energy security and climate imperatives. Along with Russia and South Korea, China is one of only a small handful of nations supplying the technology as US and French stalwarts are weakened, raising both diplomatic and, in some quarters, safety concerns. Beijing hasn't reported a major disaster, but accidents in other sectors and a culture of secrecy have rattled skeptics.
The US Hispanic population grew by 3.2 million from the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic to the middle of last year, making up 91% of the country's overall gain. An uptick in immigration alongside shifts in both births and deaths from April 2020 to July 2023 has contributed to a "diversity explosion," according to William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Overall, the US population increased by 3.4 million over the period. At the same time, the White population declined by 2.1 million, and the shrinking group of White youth drove a 1.6 million drop in the number of Americans under the age of 18.
US 30-year mortgage rates plunged last week by the most in two years, sparking a surge in refinancing applications. The contract rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage declined to 6.55% in the week ended Aug. 2. The rate on a five-year adjustable mortgage plummeted to 5.91%, the lowest this year. The drop "should set the stage for a modest recovery in transactions the rest of the year," Thomas Ryan, North America economist at Capital Economics, said in a note. "This marks a turning point for the housing market, which has been frozen for a while now."
Reducing America's footprint in the Middle East to focus on China has been one of President Joe Biden's top geopolitical priorities. But extricating itself from the region has proven much harder than he might have thought, Minxin Pei writes in Bloomberg Opinion. With a major regional war potentially on the horizon, a deeper although indirect cause of the recent downward spiral in the Middle East is the global contagion of the US-China rivalry.
Iranians take part in a funeral procession for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Aug. 1. Iran and Hamas blame Israel for his assassination. Photographer: AFP
China's export growth unexpectedly slowed in July, signaling a cooling of the global demand that's been helping prop up the nation's otherwise wavering economy. This is especially bad news for Beijing, seeing as domestic consumers have been tightening their purse strings. Meanwhile, imports expanded 7.2%, narrowing a trade surplus to $84.65 billion from the previous month.
While the US struggles to turn around its nuclear power industry, China is catching up. And there's no great industrial secret to what the Asian giant is doing. It's largely a matter of vast scale, state support and relatively simple, replicable construction. It's a success that could also be transferred abroad, because the appetite for nuclear power is growing thanks to energy security and climate imperatives. Along with Russia and South Korea, China is one of only a small handful of nations supplying the technology as US and French stalwarts are weakened, raising both diplomatic and, in some quarters, safety concerns. Beijing hasn't reported a major disaster, but accidents in other sectors and a culture of secrecy have rattled skeptics.
The US Hispanic population grew by 3.2 million from the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic to the middle of last year, making up 91% of the country's overall gain. An uptick in immigration alongside shifts in both births and deaths from April 2020 to July 2023 has contributed to a "diversity explosion," according to William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Overall, the US population increased by 3.4 million over the period. At the same time, the White population declined by 2.1 million, and the shrinking group of White youth drove a 1.6 million drop in the number of Americans under the age of 18.
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