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Growth in activity in China’s service sector slowed in January, a private gauge showed on Sunday, contrasting with official data that pointed to a faster expansion in the sector. The Caixin China services purchasing managers’ index slipped to 53.6 in January from 53.9 in December, Caixin Media Co. and research firm Markit said. A reading above 50 indicates an expansion in activity from the previous month while a level below that points to a contraction. “Demand for services remained solid as the increase in new business accelerated marginally,” Zhengsheng Zhong, ...

The U.S.-China trade talks this week had a “good vibe” with much work remaining, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said as China followed through on a pledge to increase soybean purchases with orders of at least 1 million tonnes. But U.S. President Donald Trump’s optimism about prospects for a deal was tempered by China trade watchers, who questioned how much real progress was made on core U.S. demands for structural policy changes in China. Trump said on Thursday he would meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, perhaps twice, in ...

China’s authorities have given international investors an early Spring Festival gift: ready access to almost all areas of the country’s capital markets. Proposed changes announced late Thursday as part of a slew of new regulations include letting offshore funds trade more types of futures and options. Just days before the biggest holiday in the Chinese calendar, regulators also had something for domestic investors, including scrapping an automatic margin call threshold, allowing more types of collateral for certain loans and lowering capital requirements for riskier assets. The measures targeting overseas firms ...

The rapid deterioration in China’s economic data could spur the central bank to cut its benchmark interest rate as soon as Feb. 1, according to Barclays Plc economists. “Existing measures are not sufficient to lower the financing costs of the real economy, in a down-cycle with rising credit risk and falling producer-price inflation,” the analysts led by Jian Chang wrote in a note. “Hence, lowering the risk-free rate is unavoidable, in our view,” she wrote. It’s a notable call: Chang was the only economist in Bloomberg surveys to correctly predict ...

January was a month of bad economic news when there was any news at all (i.e. when data wasn’t delayed because of the government shutdown) — until Wednesday. Then we found out from payroll processor ADP that private employers added 213,000 jobs this month. Hours later, the Federal Reserve, spooked enough by the tumult over the shutdown and the manifest nuttiness emanating from the White House and the shutdown, said it was out of the business of raising interest rates for a while. And stocks zoomed, with the Dow Jones ...

Warnings, advisories and piracy incidents in the Indian Ocean Area by the UKMTO in the past week.

The future outlook of the product tanker market will be determined by the upcoming 2020 sulphur cap, as per the IMO guidelines. In a recent report, shipbroker Banchero Costa said that “the product tanker sector recorded a terrible 2017 and also most of 2018 maintained the same trend, except for newbuilding and secondhand prices that turned around. The persistence of a low market was mostly caused by the large numbers of new vessels still delivered in 2017, around 138 units, that worsened a market that already was oversupplied. However, the ...

As the BDI falls to its lowest levels in almost two years, is this merely a seasonal lull or is this the sign of things to come for 2019 in the dry bulk markets? Whilst this time of year is traditionally slow for dry bulk markets as the far east prepares for Chinese New Year, in the short term the sentiment has been further amplified by news of the tragic dam break at Vale’s Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine in south eastern Brazil which has sparked concerns that this ...

Scrubbers are a recognised solution to dealing with air pollution under MARPOL Annex VI but recent local bans on washwater discharges from open loop systems have increased a widespread misconception that there are no safeguards against their environmental impact. The recent bans and negative sentiment expressed in the press has created uncertainty about the viability of this particular solution to reducing sulphur emissions from ships at a time when the market is already under a lot of stress about how to cope with the 0.50% sulphur limit taking effect at ...

Kamsarmax and Supramax vessels, the dry bulk freight market’s two prominent carriers of raw commodities, have seen rates plummet sharply on the back of a turbulent start to the year. The freight rates to move dry materials such as coal, grains and limestone on these vessels fell steeply in January with the time charter equivalent, or TCE, rates, assessed by S&P Global Platts, averaging only slightly higher than levels last seen in June 2017. The TCE rate for a Kamsarmax vessel, opening for a new employment in south China, to ...

Dozens of ships carrying coal and iron ore to China are stuck outside ports waiting to unload, according to shipping data, with traders saying harbour authorities are taking longer than usual to clear the imports with customs officials. Refinitiv data showed on Friday that more than 300 dry-bulk freighters in total are currently sitting idle, waiting to deliver into China. While dry-bulk ships carry many different commodities, most affected were those carrying coal and iron ore from Australia, according to the data and two bulk traders. While some congestion is ...

US light sweet crudes such as WTI Midland and Bakken have been offered into Asia at lower premiums in recent months amid a drop in freight rates from the US Gulf Coast to the Far East, sources in Asia said. Taiwan’s CPC was heard to have bought 4 million barrels of WTI Midland crude from an unknown seller for March Loading. The cargo was priced around a $2.25/b premium to Dated Brent on a CIF Taiwan basis. CPC seems to enter the US Gulf Coast market when prices are ideal. ...

For a second straight week there was an overall continuous demand throughout the segments, with a healthy amount of fixtures being

Germany’s NordLB will be bailed out by public-sector savings banks and the state of Lower Saxony at a cost of as much as 3.7 billion euros ($4.2 billion), thwarting a bid by Cerberus Capital Management and Centerbridge Partners for a stake in the struggling lender. The restructuring package, which Lower Saxony Premier Stephan Weil called “the best of all possible options,” involves as much as 1.2 billion euros from the savings banks group and up to 1.5 billion euros in capital from Lower Saxony. An additional contribution from the state ...

As Chinese New Year fast approaches, we expected a wave of cargoes, but surprisingly this failed to materialise. Both AG and WARF are holding