Share markets in Asia have suffered their biggest selloff for more than a year as fears of rising inflation battered the bond market, toppled Wall Street from record highs and sparked speculation that central banks could raise interest rates.
Most major bourses across the Asia Pacific region fell in Monday trading as investors took fright at jobs figures from the US last week which showed wages growing at their fastest pace since 2009 and fuelling expectations that inflation was making a comeback after years of price stagnation.
Japan’s Nikkei sank 2.55% in its biggest fall since the day of Donald Trump’s election win, while Hong Kong was down more than 1%. In Australia the ASX200 index closed down 1.6%, or 95 points to 6,026, wiping a total of $33bn from the value of the market.
Futures trading indicated that the FTSE100 index would fall more ethan 1% at the open on Monday, or around 78 points. The markets also reacted by pricing in the risk of three, or even more, interest rate rises from the US Federal Reserve this year.
“It’s going to be a nervous start to the week for traders across all markets as they wonder if last week’s reversal in US stocks and the ugly close Friday … is likely the start of something bigger,” said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at AxiTrader in Australia.
Australia’s Reserve Bank board meets on Tuesday to deliberate on interest rate policy. It is expected to keep borrowing costs on hold at 1.5% but the rise in bond yields increases the chances of the next move being upwards.
Yields on 10-year US treasury paper were up at a four-year peak of 2.86%, having jumped almost 7 basis points on Friday. Rising bond yields are an indicator that markets expect the cost of borrowing to rise.
Shares on Wall Street were already seen as expensive by many historical measures and sold off in reaction.
“It has to be remembered that US shares were priced for perfection at around 19 times earnings,” said Craig James, chief economist at Australian fund manager CommSec, noting the historic average is around 15 times.
“Still, US companies have produced stellar earnings over the reporting period. So it is understandable that some ’irrational exuberance’ would emerge.”
With half of the S&P 500 companies having reported, 78% have beaten expectations against an average 64%.
The lift in US yields provided some initial support to the dollar after a rocky start to the year, though it was starting to lose out again in Asian trade. Against a basket of currencies, the dollar was down a fraction at 89.154 having climbed 0.6% on Friday for its biggest single day gain in three months.
The dollar backed off to 109.95 yen from an early 110.29, while the euro was barely changed at $1.2457. The pound was up slightly at $1.412.
Any rally in the US dollar is considered a negative for commodities priced in the currency. Gold was off a touch at $1,330.47 an ounce after losing 1% on Friday. In oil markets, U.S. crude fell 66 cents to $64.79 a barrel, while Brent lost 71 cents to $67.87.
The ban extends to other household names in the banking giant’s credit card family including Bank of Scotland, Halifax and MBNA.Wallet holders would have been hoping for a better start to the week but news of another mainstream finance firm being spooked by price volatility and regulatory threats means that other credit cards retailers around the world will be studying the fallout from Lloyds’ ban.The Lloyds group has over eight million credit card customers and the ban stems from the fear that customers began buying cryptocurrencies to make a quick profit in the run-up to Christmas.
However, with the price now significantly below the mark many UK buyers paid for their cryptocurrencies, Lloyds’ customers are now servicing a debt much higher than the worth of of the digital tokens in their wallets.
Lloyds is concerned about its exposure to crypto-risk as it could end up footing the bill for unpaid debts should the price continue to fall.
A Lloyds spokeswoman told the BBC: “We continually review our products and procedures and this is part of that.”
A number of US credit card firms have also banned crypto purchases on credit cards.
Bank of America began blocking cryptocurrency purchases on Friday while JPMorgan did the same on Saturday.
Citigroup will soon stop cryptocurrency purchases on credit, following on from Capital One and Discover.
All of the top five credit card issuers in the US have now announced or implemented bans, according to Fortune.
Every operating system includes features that some people don’t like or need. It’s even more of a problem with Google Android, which I use, so I understand the annoyance. However, on a Surface Pro 4, removing the Microsoft apps is not going to save a significant amount of space, nor is it going to make the slightest difference to performance.
The time and effort you spend removing these programs will have no practical benefits, and Microsoft may well reinstall them with every operating system upgrade, which is twice a year, if not before. (Windows 10 runs an SIHClient – for Server-Initiated Healing – every day to repair any damage to the operating system.) You will therefore be committed to wasting even more time for the foreseeable future.
Nonetheless, you can hide or remove many programs, including very old ones such as Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer 11. You can certainly remove the trial copy of Microsoft Office, which may have been pre-installed on your PC. At least that saves some space. So does removing the free games. However, you should not uninstall the Windows Store app or the Edge browser.
Apps and placeholders
Some Microsoft programs have tiles or appear on the Start menu. You can make them go away by right-clicking them and selecting “Uninstall” or at the very least “Unpin from Start” from the drop-down menu.
If not, run the Settings app and click “Apps & features”. This lists your apps and programs and tells you how much space each is taking up. Click on a program you don’t want and you may be offered the option to uninstall it.
Otherwise, Piriform’s CCleaner Free provides a simple way to remove most of the bundled apps. Run CCleaner Free and click Tools (the spanner icon) to get a list of programs. Click on Publisher to sort that column so that all the Microsoft apps are together.
The Edge browser is part of Windows 10, and its components can be used by other software to display HTML files. The EdgeHTML rendering engine is also available to third-party programs, which saves everyone from shipping their own rendering engine with every application. It should therefore save space in the long run. Removing it may well break functionality.
Edge is a good browser, and worth keeping if only as a backup. It has an Adobe Flash Player and a PDF reader built in, and it’s excellent for viewing online videos. It doesn’t have as many features as its rivals, or as many extensions, but it is improving steadily. It also follows web standards. What it doesn’t do is support websites written for Internet Explorer, which is why IE11 is still included in Windows 10.
Edge also forms part of Microsoft’s “intelligent assistant” system, which includes Cortana, Edge and the Bing search engine. Both Google and Apple use the same sort of architecture with their own assistants, browsers and back-ends.
Cortana
Cortana does two things in Windows 10. First, it runs the local search system. Second, Cortana is a cloud-based digital assistant, like the similarly cloud-based Amazon Alexa. There’s no point in removing the former, and most of the latter isn’t on your PC. What you can do is stop Cortana from gathering information about you.
Run the Settings app, click the Cortana icon, and work through all the options. The section called Permissions & History includes “Change what Cortana knows about me in the cloud”. Clicking this will produce a pop-up headed “Personal Information”. Scroll to the bottom and click the button marked Clear to delete it all. Alternatively, you can go online to see and delete all the information Microsoft holds in the cloud, including Cortana.
Microsoft’s help page, Cortana and privacy, provides a good guide to turning off Cortana’s information sources, if they have been turned on.
Cortana can be annoying when she loads Edge to search the web, but you can avoid this. When you click in the search box, pick either Apps or Documents and avoid Web. If you go to the top and click the down-arrow next to Filters, you can restrict searches even further by selecting Emails, Music, People, Photos, Videos etc from the list.
However, you can easily turn Cortana off by signing out, which is how Cortana works on Android and Apple iOS as well. Click on Cortana’s Notebook, select About Me, click on your email address and then click “Sign out”.
If none of this is enough, you can disable Cortana by editing the registry in Windows 10 Home, at your own risk. See How-To Geek for details. In the Pro and Enterprise versions of Windows 10, you can enable or disable Cortana by checking the “Allow Cortana” entry in the group policy editor, which does the same thing.
Programs and features
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As mentioned, the Settings app uninstalls programs, but it hasn’t completely replaced the old Control Panel. To run this, type “co” in the search box and run the program when it appears.
The Control Panel only lists programs that run in the traditional Windows subsystem, known as Win32. It does not list new-style apps that run in the cross-platform Windows Runtime subsystem, WinRT, but check the list anyway, to see if there is anything you want to remove.
After that, go to the lefthand menu and click “Turn Windows features on or off”. This pops up a box where you can add features that you might want – an FTP Server, a Telnet client, the Linux subsystem – and remove ones you don’t. Windows Media Player and IE11 appear here, though I recommend keeping both.
However, if SMB 1.0 is enabled, untick it to remove it. It’s insecure and you don’t need it.
Note that neither Notepad nor WordPad is mentioned in any of these lists, nor do they appear on the Start menu. Both are included in Windows 10 so that you can read documents and log files without having to download another application, and you can run them from the search box.
Stop hating apps!
Many users seem to dislike modern (WinRT) apps, but that doesn’t make sense. Modern apps are safer to run and easier to install and uninstall, because they don’t use the registry. They are remotely maintained without running an updater in the background, and work well with touch. Many run equally well on Intel and ARM processors. What’s not to like?
If you change your mind, you can re-install Windows 10 apps from the Windows Store. You can also add apps from Microsoft and other suppliers. Potentially useful free apps include OneDrive and Dropbox Mobile, Facebook and Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Unigram (a Telegram client), Todoist, Adobe Photoshop Express, Xodo PDF Reader & Editor, Netflix, TuneIn Radio, Deezer Music, SoundByte (for SoundCloud etc), Grover Pro (for podcasts), Tubecast for YouTube, Audiobooks from Audible, Plex and Microsoft Remote Desktop. Paid-for apps include Nebo, for making handwritten notes on your Surface Pro 4, and Staffpad for writing music.
Once you’ve used a few good apps, you might even get to like them …
In the last few years the surgery of visual defects (myopia, astigmatism, hypermetropia and presbyopia) has recorded extraordinary progress in terms of precision, and above all of safety. The most modern methods are now more and more adapted to the needs of the individual patient, his age and the conditions to be treated. The TOPLASER method is born to be the maximum of the personalization of this surgery. To illustrate the advantages of this path is its creator, dr. Marco Di Chiaro, known Oculist Surgeon, who receives in Perugia, Rome, Milan, Pisa and Verona.
Dr. Di Chiaro, laser technology has existed for at least 20 years, but today?
Even in this medical branch the natural technological evolution has allowed us to have an incredible development. We can get unimaginable results until some time ago. To date, the standard is to operate a patient at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and see him come back the next morning to the inspection visit with more than 10/10 of sight, and glasses forgotten in the drawer. All in absolute tranquility. The Toplaser method, which I conceived and filed as a trademark at the Ministry of Economic Development, aims to totally increase the safety and the results of this surgery, exploiting the characteristics and the correct use of all the most modern lasers currently on the market. It is the concept of maximum personalization: we use the most suitable instrument and software for every single patient, who will therefore have the certainty of being operated in the safest way for him. A real tailored suit instead of a warehouse dress.
Year 2017. From Italy abroad …
Exactly. The results we obtain with these protocols push us beyond Italian borders. The next objective will be to export the method and brand abroad, in clinics and medical centers in England, Spain and France. All this, always thinking about patient safety, first of all.
Professionalism, experience and international market knowledge are the distinctive features of the company
Strategically located in a strategic point for the development of the Mediterranean area, in the industrial area of Morcone (BN), a point of connection between the Tyrrhenian and the Adriatic side of the Italian peninsula, SGM Energy Srl has affirmed its leadership in commercialization wholesale of lubricants for industry, automotive and agriculture, also acting as brokers between European companies and operators in the sector of the national territory. Founded in June 2011, over the years, however, this young and dynamic reality has changed its core business: from 2014 it began, in fact, to offer logistics and deposit services to other industry players and aimed at creating a new supply chain. commercial consisting of direct sales points and franchises. To illustrate in detail the corporate mission, is the dott. Vincenzo Mignano, founder of the Group.
Dr. Mignano, the company you direct which services offers to customers?
SGM Energy Srl is at the service of companies operating in the lubricants sector, which do not have an authorized structure, which for convenience prefer to use a “turnkey” outsourcing service and which seek to make use of the precious collaboration of a serious partner and reliable; a partner that has consolidated its position in the reference market with a strong know-how and a long experience in a highly exclusive sector. Being, in fact, regulated by a very strict legislation, to date only a few operators are able to obtain the licenses and authorizations necessary to operate in full compliance with the legislation in force. In light of this, SGM Energy Srl is a service provider, offering companies that require a complete service regarding logistics, storage and regulatory requirements and acting as a guarantor in international relations with its partners.
What is the corporate mission?
With the aim of expanding its horizons, aiming at an internationalization of the corporate vision, in the short term the company has the following strategic objectives:
• create and patent software that manages to unify the management of business processes, in the specific sector, in full compliance with the dictates of Legislative Decree 504/95 (T.U. Accise);
• transferring its know-how to other companies in the sector;
• shorten the commercial chain by making competitive partners and affiliates.
What are the company’s strengths compared to the competition?
The consolidated experience in the sector, a high regulatory know-how (Legislative Decree 504/95 TU Accise), international market knowledge, industrial and managerial assets, the continuous R & D activities implemented by the company to find new outlets and new squares with relative transfer of skills and knowledge, the audacity and perseverance of a Group that knew and wanted to innovate, considering the change the main key to success, are the reasons that allowed SGM Energy Srl to retain its customers, among which stand out multinationals of the oil, energy, automotive and transport sectors. In addition to maximizing customer care, the company aims to establish long-lasting business relationships with new partners, both nationally and internationally, thanks to its “distruptive” vision of the European borders.
In conclusion, how do you see the entrepreneurial future of our country?
A society in existential lethargy, a country no longer able to plan the future, unable to develop an entrepreneurial reserve that represents its backbone and therefore remains a prisoner of the great economic, political and social subjects that have led the country in past years . To stop Italy’s decline, we need a season of radical reforms in the economic, social and institutional fields. Rediscovering the path of growth and widespread prosperity is only possible if entrepreneurs are truly free to work, invest and innovate, if the country returns attractive for the talents and capitals of the world, and if the policy will bring down the too many corporate privileges that guarantee the positions of income of the few to the disadvantage of the many, stifling the energies and humiliating the legitimate expectations of the younger generation. Exactly what I do not want for my children.
For more info (amministrazione@sgmoil.com) (www.sgmoil.com)
by Roberta Imbimbo
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