| Hong Kong's patriotism test. Covid is surging in U.S. cities. Alibaba's online shopping binge. China may require all Hong Kong lawmakers to be "patriots" as soon as Wednesday, local media reported, a move to curb debate in a democratic institution that has endured more than two decades after the former British colony's return. China's top legislative body is considering a measure behind closed doors in Beijing this week that would allow Hong Kong's government to eject lawmakers deemed insufficiently patriotic, local media including HK01 and the Sing Tao Daily reported this week. The proposal has alarmed the 20 opposition lawmakers on the city's 70-seat Legislative Council, with the bloc threatening on Monday to resign if any of their own are disqualified. Asian stocks looked to steady Wednesday. Earlier, their U.S. peers retreated amid a selloff in technology shares and a worsening in coronavirus cases in many parts of the world. Futures pointed higher in Japan and Australia, and were little changed in Hong Kong. The S&P 500 pulled back from a two-month high and the Nasdaq 100 closed almost 2% lower. Amazon.com sank as the online-retail giant faced an antitrust complaint from the European Union, while American depositary receipts of Alibaba Group tumbled after China increased scrutiny of internet behemoths. Elsewhere, Treasury yields continued to rise toward the closely-watched 1% level. Oil rose to its highest in more than two months. Starting in late August, Covid-19 was essentially a rural problem. Now, after months of relative respite, it's back in America's cities, where dense populations spread the virus at alarming speeds. U.S. metropolitan areas are averaging a record 27.8 daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 people, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Although rural areas are still worse on a per-capita basis, it's clear that cities have been swept up in the pandemic again. The surge has expanded from highly rural states in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain West to areas with bigger populations and more urban living. That has meant rising cases in and around Denver, Detroit and Chicago. President-elect Joe Biden said Donald Trump's refusal to accept the result of the election was an "embarrassment" that will stain his White House legacy. Biden, in his first news conference as president-elect, said he was moving forward regardless of Republican legal challenges and Trump's refusal to allow his administration to cooperate in the smooth transition of power. "I just think it's an embarrassment, quite frankly," Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. "How can I say this tactfully? I think it will not help the president's legacy." Biden said he is not receiving the full intelligence briefing normally afforded to presidents-elect. The Trump administration has refused to give Biden's transition team access to the secure facilities required for such a briefing. Alibaba Group kicked off the world's biggest shopping binge on Wednesday, an annual frenzy of consumption for hundreds of millions of people that this year will also serve as the best barometer so far of China's post-pandemic recovery. Sales were off to a brisk start at the opening of a 24-hour sale. The company, one of the world's biggest online commerce sites, said sales totaled 372.3 billion yuan ($56.3 billion) after just the first 30 minutes on Nov. 11, including revenue from an additional shopping window earlier this month. Singles' Day debuted in 2009. What We've Been ReadingThis is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours: And finally, here's what Tracy's interested in todayAnd now to Bihar, one of India's poorest regions, and where Narendra Modi is facing his first state vote since the onset of the pandemic. Exit polls had predicted a loss for a coalition that includes Modi's BJP party to the opposition group led by Tejashwi Yadav. But fast forward to today and, as of pixel time, Modi appears to have a narrow lead (at a minimum, he's doing much better than initially expected). It's another apparent failure of exit polls just a week after they failed to accurately gauge the depth of support for Donald Trump. It suggests again that that whatever's gone wrong in polling is a global phenomenon rather than a U.S.-centric one.  Of course, the dust has yet to settle on both the Bihar election and Biden's presidential win and so the final analysis of polling errors has yet to come. But the implications for global markets seem relatively clear: If you can't trust statistical measures of public opinion, then markets are going to end up pricing a lot more volatility around important (and binary) events like elections. JPMorgan's Josh Younger put it well last week, even before the official result of the presidential election was announced. "When all is said and done, it may turn out that, as was the case in 2016, these [U.S. polling] errors were not terribly out of line with expectations — a one-sigma event," he said. "Perhaps the most important lesson the market is likely to take away from the 2020 Presidential Election is much greater skepticism that public opinion can be precisely measured using polling." You can follow Tracy Alloway on Twitter at @tracyalloway. | 
Post a Comment