World

Indonesia's stocks are among the top picks of JPMorgan Asset Management and Goldman Sachs for 2022. Dimas Ardian | Bloomberg via Getty Images Geopolitical tensions around the world have been on the rise, but Southeast Asia's markets may offer relative safety to investors, according to top investment banks. As we enter the next quarter of 2022, CNBC asked analysts from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Asset Management which Southeast Asian markets were their top picks. Southeast Asian stocks have underperformed and been "largely ignored by global investors for a decade," said Timothy Moe, Goldman's chief Asia Pacific equity strategist. Indonesia is a top Southeast Asian pick for both Wall Street banks. Indonesia: Banking and commodity plays "In Indonesia, we are structurally positive on the ba...

JAKARTA: Indonesia's biggest tech firm GoTo Group is testing investors' appetite with a public offering that is set to raise up to 17.992 trillion rupiah (US$1.3 billion) this month, marking the second-biggest domestic offering in the booming sector. Goto was formed last year through the merger of ride-hailing-to-payments firm Gojek and e-commerce leader Tokopedia in Southeast Asia's largest economy, just as regional rival Grab Holdings expanded furiously in Indonesia. The widely-expected IPO comes after Goto, which counts Alibaba Group, SoftBank Group Corp and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC among its many backers, secured over US$1.3 billion in a pre-IPO funding exercise in late 2021. "GoTo is still in early adoption, with market penetration rates relatively lower than developing ...

Global bond markets have suffered unprecedented losses since peaking last year, as central banks including the Federal Reserve look to tighten policy to combat surging inflation. The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index, a benchmark for government and corporate debt total returns, has fallen 11% from a high in January 2021. That’s the biggest decline from a peak in data stretching back to 1990, surpassing a 10.8% drawdown during the financial crisis in 2008. It equates to a drop in the index market value of about $2.6 trillion, worse than about $2 trillion in 2008. That’s a blow to money managers accustomed to years of consistent gains, backstopped by loose monetary policy. The slump also poses a particular threat to the expanding elderly population in many major economies, given retirees ar...

SINGAPORE: Bookings for flights out of Singapore, as well as overseas accommodation, more than doubled as of Friday (Mar 25), just a day after the country announced that it would reopen its borders to all fully vaccinated travellers. Among the slew of border measures announced - which take effect from 11.59pm on Mar 31 - all fully vaccinated travellers, as well as children aged 12 and below, will be able to enter Singapore with just a pre-departure COVID-19 test. In addition, fully vaccinated travellers from Malaysia entering Singapore via private vehicles through the land borders are not required to do pre-departure or on-arrival tests. The new simplified framework will replace the existing vaccinated travel lanes (VTLs) and unilateral opening arrangements and instead, classify countri...

Sky-high fertilizer prices have farmers worldwide scaling back its use and reducing the amount of land they’re planting, in fallout from the Ukraine-Russia conflict that has some agricultural industry veterans warning of food shortages. Western sanctions on Russia, a major exporter of potash, ammonia, urea and other soil nutrients, have disrupted shipments of those key inputs around the globe. Fertilizer is key to keeping corn, soy, rice and wheat yields high. Growers are scrambling to adjust. The pivot can be seen in agricultural powerhouse Brazil, where some farmers are applying less fertilizer to their corn, and some federal legislators are pushing to open protected indigenous lands for the mining of potash. In Zimbabwe and Kenya, small farmers are reverting to using manure to nourish...

BEIJING :Activity in Chinese manufacturing and services simultaneously contracted in March for the first time since the height of the country's COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, adding to the urgency for more policy intervention to stabilise the economy. The official manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to 49.5 from 50.2 in February, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday, while the non-manufacturing PMI eased to 48.4 from 51.6 in February. The last time both PMI indexes simultaneously were below the 50-point mark that separates contraction from growth was in February 2020, when authorities were racing to arrest the spread of the coronavirus, first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. The world's second-largest economy revved up in January-February, w...

SINGAPORE :Myanmar's junta has given the final approval for the sale of Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor's operations in the country to a local company and a Lebanese investment firm, the firm said on Friday. Telenor Chief Executive Sigve Brekke said in a statement the firm had to leave the country to "adhere to our own values on human rights and responsible business, and because local laws in Myanmar conflict with European laws". "The security situation is extreme and deteriorating, and we must ensure that our exit does not increase the safety risk for employees," he said. Reuters reported the approval earlier on Friday, citing three sources with knowledge of the deal. According to a letter of approval sent on March 15, seen by two of the people, the transfer of Telenor's ...

In this article DVN Permian Basin rigs in 2020, when U.S. crude oil production dropped by 3 million a day as Wall Street pressure forced cuts. Paul Ratje | Afp | Getty Images When Devon Energy announced fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 15, the world looked like its newly comfortable, fiscally conservative oyster. After losing nearly 90% of its value from 2014 through October 2020, the Oklahoma City-based oil and gas producer was the top-performing 2021 stock in the Standard & Poor's 500, thanks to a concerted strategy of throttling back on exploration, squeezing costs and taking less risk. It turned a 2020 loss of $2.5 billion into a $2.8 billion profit for 2021, raising its dividend 45% and plowing nearly $600 million into stock buybacks after spending just $38 million the year before, w...

The main--dare I say, the only--weapon in the macro bears' arsenal right now is the flattening yield curve. When the Fed hiked rates yesterday, the five-year Treasury yield rose to a higher level than the 10-year, so that portion of the curve inverted. The spread between two-year and 10-year yields also flattened, to as low as 0.19 points this morning, down from 0.85 points at the start of the year. Cue panic that the Fed is making a historic mistake by tightening policy--not just with yesterday's hike, but in their projections showing they expect to tighten six more times this year, once per meeting. The two-year/ten-year yield spread in particular has been a favorite leading indicator of recessions. It has pretty much always inverted before downturns, and rarely inverted otherwise (char...

Companies across the globe have been fleeing Russia as the country faces increasing sanctions due to its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, raising concerns over the ramifications the crisis may have on the global economy. Major Japanese manufacturers have added their names to the ever growing list of businesses halting operations in Russia, but economists note that the direct negative impact on Japanese firms is likely to be limited even though resource supply chain woes could cause long-lasting headaches. “The ratio of business that Japanese firms do in Russia (to their whole overseas operations) remains quite small,” said Manabu Shimoyashiro, senior director of the Overseas Research Department in the Japan External Trade Organization. Since Russia is “not a major market” for them, the firms...