In the pandemic year 2020, shoppers around the world spent $900 billion more online than in the previous two years, Mastercard analysts said. Shoppers around the world spent $900 billion more on online purchases during the pandemic than the average of the previous two years. That's according to a Mastercard Economics Institute study based on a comparison of the number of online sales made in 2020...

The net inflow of foreign investments in portfolios of stocks and bonds of developing countries in March amounted to $10.1bn. This figure was the lowest since April 2020, reports Reuters, citing data from the Institute of International Finance (IIF). In February 2021, investment inflows reached $23.4 billion. According to the IIF, almost 90% of the investment inflow came from China: $3.8 billion...

The S&P 500 index, which tracks stocks of the biggest US companies by capitalisation, surpassed 4,000 points for the first time in history. Exchanges reacted positively to Biden's sweeping new plan to revamp the US economy by $2.25 trillion. The S&P 500 stock index surpassed 4,000 points for the first time in history, New York Stock Exchange reported. The S&P 500 consists of the...

The forecast for global oil demand growth in 2021 has been lowered from 5.9 million bpd to 5.6 million bpd, OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said at a meeting of the OPEC+ ministerial monitoring committee. "The forecast for global oil demand in 2021 is slightly revised upwards to 5.6 million bpd, and we must not forget that demand has declined strongly in 2020 by 9.6 million bpd," Mr...

Credit Suisse Group and Nomura Holdings said they could suffer significant financial losses because of problems with one of their US clients. None of the financial companies would specify the name of the client, but The Wall Street Journal linked the companies' problems to Bill Hwang's family fund, Archegos Capital Management. It was previously reported that he was behind a massive sell-off of...

The jam in the Suez Canal will cost the global economy $6-10 billion a week, experts at insurance company Euler Hermes have estimated. The daily round-trip traffic through the canal is estimated at more than $9 billion, so stopping ships could reduce global trade growth this year by 0.3 percentage points for every week of Suez "downtime".  Last week, container operator Evergreen's large...

Family investment office Archegos Capital Management, founded by former Tiger Management analyst Bill Hwang, is responsible for a major stock sell-off on 26 March, Bloomberg and the Financial Times reported, citing sources. Bloomberg specifies that Goldman Sachs allowed Bill Hwang to become a key financier, even though he pleaded guilty to fraud in 2012. Bill Hwang was the manager of the Tiger...

China's CSI 300 stock index has lost 15% since mid-February after central banks around the world began gradually cutting support to financial markets by raising benchmark interest rates. "The Chinese stock market could become an example of the consequences of stimulus cuts - given that during the pandemic, the Chinese market was already the earliest indicator of what was happening," Bloomberg...

Americans for Tax Fairness organisation and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released a report which says that over the past 12 months, i.e. from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, American billionaires in the USA have increased their wealth by a total of $1.3 trillion, or 44.6% compared to the pre-pandemic level. Meanwhile, the report notes that 29 million Americans contracted the...