Despite U.S. President Donald Trump launching a high-stakes trade war against Beijing last year, China on Monday announced that its 2018 trade surplus with Washington was its largest in more than a decade. China's surplus with the U.S. grew 17 percent from a year ago to hit $323.32 billion in 2018, according to government data. It was the highest on record dating back to 2006, according to Reu... read more

WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficit continued to rise in the first quarter of fiscal 2019 and is on pace to top $1 trillion for the year, as President Trump’s signature tax cuts continue to reduce corporate tax revenue, data released Tuesday shows. The monthly numbers from the Congressional Budget Office also show an increase in spending on federal debt as rising interest rates drive u... read more

In early December, I’d discussed bullish signs for gold as we prepared to enter the new year. At the time, the spot price of gold had just reached $1,250 per ounce. As of this writing, gold has climbed to nearly $1,300 per ounce. There is good reason to believe that the yellow metal can carry this momentum throughout 2019. The bout of stock market volatility has spilled over into 2019. It sh... read more

Submitted by Lindsay Politi of One River Asset Management Ghosts of Investments Future "I think of the markets like an ecosystem," the fund manager told me. "The environment causes some strategies to flourish and multiply, while others die off. The abnormally long, QE-fueled bull market killed off anything that wasn't, at its core, a short volatility strategy. Now, whether it's risky cred... read more

Tons of illicit gold was shipped out of South Africa at the height of state capture. According to a report by the Sunday Times, a modern-day gold rush believed to be driven by organised crime syndicates saw the sale of 34 tons of gold to Dubai between 2011 and 2016. However, this gold is not reflected in South Africa’s trading accounts, with research suggesting that illegal gold mining... read more

While flying last week to a conference in Reykjavík, it dawned on me that I knew almost nothing about Iceland. What little understanding I had was based on Michael Lewis’s epic tale of the nation’s financial collapse in Vanity Fair magazine entitled “Wall Street on the Tundra.” His 10,000-word missive is a Norse saga of its own. 1 Other Icelandic literature included entries in Ca... read more

I have not been a fan of the policies of the US Federal Reserve for many years. Despite great personal fondness for my first employer, and appreciation of all that working there gave me in terms of professional training and intellectual stimulation, the Fed had lost its way. From bubble to bubble, from crisis to crisis, there were increasingly compelling reasons to question the Fed’s stewar... read more

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors fled U.S.-based stock funds in the latest week, setting those investments up for their biggest month of withdrawals on record, Lipper data showed on Thursday. More than $80.7 billion poured out of U.S.-based stock funds during the 14 days through Dec. 19, representing about 1 percent of the total assets in such funds, according to the research service. The sel... read more

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin quietly signed an arcane bill that will alter the appearance of many of the country’s streets and erase one of the few remaining symbols of the economic freedom the country discovered when the Soviet Union fell apart. The new law prohibits currency-exchange offices from displaying rates to passersby. That may not sound important, unless you kn... read more

(Bloomberg) -- China’s cleanup of its shadow-banking system is fueling a record number of liquidations in its $1.9 trillion mutual fund market. More than 600 funds have been closed this year, surpassing all liquidations in the previous 12 years combined, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It’s also more than triple the total last year, representing a sharp rise in closures for a mutual fund... read more