Category: Trucking News

With discounts galore and Taylor Swift, Alibaba eyes another record Singles' Day

Alibaba Group will kick off its annual 24-hour shopping extravaganza on Monday with deals and deep discounts galore, and a performance by American popstar Taylor Swift to top it all, as it pushes to rake in another record Singles' Day sales. This year's Nov. 11 bash comes as the $486 billion Chinese retail juggernaut navigates through a major turning point, the resignation in September of its flamboyant co-founder Jack Ma as chairman, and looks to raise up to $15 billion via a share sale in Hong Kong as early as this month. Akin to Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, Singles' Day, a shopping fest originally promoted by Alibaba Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang in 2009, has since grown rapidly to become the world's biggest online sales event....

Real Yield Lures Emerging-Market Investors to Egypt, Turkey

(Bloomberg) -- As the yield advantage of emerging-market bonds over their developed counterparts widens, Egypt and Turkey stand out as winning bets, offering the highest inflation-adjusted returns.With many of the developed world’s bond yields deep into negative territory, investors are looking past country-specific risk factors, such as anti-government protests in Egypt and discord between Turkey and the U.S. An added bonus is that slowing inflation in emerging markets has boosted their real yields.“Buoyant real yields help make a stronger case for emerging-market bonds,” said Takeshi Yokouchi, a Tokyo-based senior fund manager at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Co., which oversees the equivalent of $160 billion. “It’s a good time to start buying them as inflation in many of the economies has slowed and more rate cuts are expected for some of them.”Key InsightsThe extra real yields that emerging markets offer over developed nations held at 302 basis points in October, increasing...