Tag: may 19 2020

World Economic Outlook Worsens Warns IMF. The world’s economic outlook has darkened since mid-April, the International Monetary Fund says. A month ago, the IMF forecast a global economic contraction of 3 percent this year, with developed countries’ GDPs shrinking 6.1 percent and those in emerging nations 1 percent. The forecast also said that emerging nations...

Japan’s Economy in Recession. Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest, has seen two consecutive quarters of contraction and is now in its first recession since 2015. The economy shrank by 7.3 percent in 2019’s final quarter and again by 3.4 percent in the first three months of this year, with exports down 6 percent. The...

Mixed Start Recovery. China’s industrial output grew 3.9 percent in April, compared to a year earlier, reversing March’s 1.1-percent decline and zooming past the 1-percent gain analysts had expected. At the same time, urban unemployment kept rising, with the official count reaching 6 percent last month, nearing February’s record rate of 6.2 percent. Retail sales...

U.K. Recession Will Be “Worst in 300 Years.” The U.K. is entering a recession that will contract its GDP by as much as 30 percent for the first half of this year, the Bank of England has forecast, marking this as the worst recession since the “Great Frost” in 1709. The economy shrank by 3...

Beginning this month, companies that sell products to consumers are shifting ad dollars away from television and to the Internet, including Facebook, Google, and streaming services, where more people are spending more time during the lockdown. “We’ve seen some great returns with Facebook and Instagram,” said Chris Brandt, chief marketing officer for the Chipotle Mexican...

Caesars Entertainment Corp. saw revenues drop 14 percent in this year’s first quarter to $1.83 billion; Eldorado Resorts’ take was $473.1 million, down 26 percent for the period. Caesars reported an operating loss of $66 million while Eldorado’s net loss was $175.6 million. Caesars logged its best-ever performance during January and February, said CEO Tony...

As part of New York’s economic lockdown, major businesses in Manhattan dispatched hordes of employees to work from home. Now those businesses are discovering that many of those workers need not come back downtown to do their jobs. Executives at Barclay’s, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley have said it is highly unlikely that all of...

Hershey, Nestlé, and Procter & Gamble all reported gaining market share during the first quarter of this year. Hershey gained 3 points against its competitors during April. New food items and brands, particularly health- and energy-oriented foods, have been gobbling market share from majors for years. In January and February this year, so-called insurgent brands...

As we have continually reported in the Trends Journal, politicians and their bureaucratic flunkies are making up reopening business rules. On Sunday, one of them, Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio, said, “This is a virus we’re still learning a lot about. We don’t know a great deal about it.” Yes, they don’t know, and never...

On 23 March, right at the point when U.S. equity markets tanked in bear market territory and were heading lower, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced it would buy corporate bonds, first through exchange-traded bond funds and then individually. The Fed’s assurance that they would shore up the bond market set off a rally in which...