Markets Are Mixed | ||
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European stocks are climbing a little early Monday, as the week gets underway.. Here's the scorecard: France's CAC 40 is up 0.12% Germany's DAX is down 0.14% The UK's FTSE 100 is up 0.16% Italy's FTSE MIB is down 0.55% Spain's IBEX is down 0.10% Asian markets closed mixed: Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 0.83% from Friday's close but Japan's Nikkei ended 0.59% lower. US stock futures are basically flat: the S&P 500 is down 1.4 points, and the Dow is unchanged. It's a light day for data, so for Europe the major release is the Sentix investor confidence index at 9.30 a.m. GMT. Economists are expecting a bit of an improvement, but given the significant fall in confidence over recent months, it's still likely to be pretty bad. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Eurozone Investor Confidence Beats Expectations | ||
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European investors reported a minor confidence boost in November, beating expectations. The Sentix investor confidence index rose to -11.9. Any negative figure suggests that investors are pessimistic on net, while I positive figure would show bullishness. Though the figure is still pretty bad, analysts were expecting an increase, up to -13.5. It's the third month in negative territory for the index. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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CHARTS: How Capitalism Has Transformed Eastern Europe Since The Fall Of The Berlin Wall | ||
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Sunday was the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the most symbolic event marking the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the quarter of a century since the wall was knocked down, the political and economic systems in eastern Europe have been turned on their heads: Gone are the communist institutions, replaced with governments that are even more capitalistic than those on the western side of the Iron Curtain. Researchers at Capital Economics have published a fantastic series of charts on the transformation of post-Soviet eastern Europe. We've republished a selection of graphs from the report, which takes a look at 11 countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. There's a huge variation in how countries have grown. Poland's economy has more than doubled in size, while Ukraine's is actually smaller. The first decade after the fall of the wall saw extended recessions for eastern European economies, but many saw rapid growth in the early 21st century. "There has been a vast divergence in performance among countries. Poland stands head and shoulders above the rest of the region in terms of economic performance," Neil Shearing and William Jackson of Capital Economics noted. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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This E-Cigarette Ad, Once Banned For Being 'Overly Sexual,' Will Be Shown On TV For The First Time Tonight | ||
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The ad, for e-cig brand VIP, depicts a glamorous woman inhaling and exhaling e-cigarette vapor. It will air after the 9 p.m. UK TV "watershed," the hour at which TV authorities believe children are in bed so adult topics can be broadcast. The choice of ad is an interesting one. The creative has already been banned twice by the UK advertising regulator The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA.) Complaints against the “overly sexual” ad were first upheld in February and the ad was banned from being broadcast before 11pm, Marketing Week reported. The ad was toned down, but the edited version was still deemed “too sexual” by the ASA and it was banned again in September following a second investigation, with the company told the company should not air the ad again before 9pm. The new re-worked VIP ad follows a rule change last month from the Committee of Advertising Practice, which writes the UK advertising codes. The ad code has been loosened to allow commercials to show the battery-powered nicotine devices in use — the first time advertisers have allowed to show people appearing to be smoking since 1965. However, e-cig ads are still subject to strict product-specific rules, including scheduling restrictions to reduce the chance of children being tempted into vaping. The advertising of e-cigs in the UK has exploded in recent months, with brands such as Vapestick, BLU, SKYCIG and VIP launching marketing campaigns costing as much as $32 million. E-cig brands are making big bets on advertising now as earlier this year the European Union passed new rules that mean from 2016 e-cigs will be classed as “tobacco-related products." That means they will be subject to the same advertising restrictions as cigarettes and will have to carry health warnings (although it is currently unclear exactly how — or if — e-cigs are damaging to health.) In the US, attorneys from 29 states sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration in August calling for tighter rules around advertising e-cigs and to regulate the products in the same light as tobacco. E-cig brands have been advertising on TV in the US since 2012. The global e-cig industry is estimated to be worth $2.9 billion.
SEE ALSO: The UK Has Just Unleashed a Free-For-All On E-Cigarette Advertising Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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A person will be showing using an e-cigarette — also known as “vaping” — for the first time in a TV ad in the UK this evening, Italian Industry Is Getting Smashed | ||
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Output dropped 0.9% from August to September, and is down 2.9% on 12 months ago. That's firm recession territory. Economists were expecting a 0.2% drop from August and a 0.7% drop from September last year. Italy is the eurozone's third biggest economy, and that's a brutal figure for what was meant to be a year of recovery for the struggling currency union. Data on Wednesday will give us a look at the eurozone's industrial production production as a whole for September, but there's no doubt that Italy will now be a major drag on that figure. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Italian industrial output for September is just in, and it's ugly. 10 Things You Need To Know In Markets This Morning | ||
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Chinese Inflation Is At A 5-Year Low. China's annual consumer inflation remained at a near 5-year low in October at 1.6%. South Korea And China May Have A Trade Deal. South Korea said it has "effectively" reached a free trade agreement with China that will remove or sharply reduce barriers to trade and investment between the two global trade giants. An Overwhelming Number Of Catalans Voted For Independence. Nearly 81% of 2.25 million Catalans who participated in a simulated referendum Sunday said they wanted autonomy from Spain, according to preliminary results. Russia Signed Another Big Gas Deal With China. The Russian and Chinese governments have signed another significant gas deal, after an earlier agreement this year, according to the Financial Times. Heavy Shelling Picked Up Again In East Ukraine. Shelling around the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk increased strains on a two-month-old ceasefire between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists on Sunday. Samsung Is About To Invest $3 Billion (£1.89 Billion) In Vietnam. A subsidiary of South Korea's Samsung will be awarded a license to invest $3 billion in a mobile phone plant in northern Vietnam, the second such facility in the country, a state-run newspaper said on Monday. American Airlines Staff Rejected A Contract. American Airlines flight attendants narrowly rejected a joint labour contract on Sunday, in a defeat following the merger of American and the former US Airways last year. Panasonic Is Considering Expansion In Europe. Japanese electronics conglomerate Panasonic Corp is considering M&A deals as a way to bolster its position in the European white goods market, its chief executive said on Monday. European Investor Confidence Figures Are Coming. Sentix investor confidence figures are out at 9.30 a.m. GMT, with analysts expecting a modest improvement in November's headline figures. Hong Kong And Shanghai's Stock Exchanges Are About To Get A link. A delayed trading link between Hong Kong and Shanghai's stock exchanges will start on Nov. 17, the Hong Kong exchange announced Monday. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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