Good morning! Here's what you need to know in markets on Monday.
1. Chinese stocks are trading sharply higher on Monday, adding to mammoth gains achieved on Friday that were fueled by a wave of supportive measures rolled out by Chinese policymakers. After jumping 2.76% on Friday, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has risen by a further 4.17%, putting the index on track to record its largest two-day percentage gain since early August 2015.
2. Foreigners sold a net 4.01 billion riyals ($1.07 billion) in Saudi stocks in the week ending October 18, exchange data showed on Sunday — one of the biggest selloffs since the market opened to direct foreign buying in mid-2015. The selloff came during a week when investors were rattled by Saudi Arabia's deteriorating relations with foreign governments following the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
3. Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia admitted that Khashoggi died inside their consulate. The Saudi foreign minister denied Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had prior knowledge, but many are skeptical of the Kingdom's account.
4. Turkey vowed to expose the "naked truth" about the events surrounding Jamal Khashoggi's death. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also cast doubt onto Saudi Arabia's narrative on the incident.
5. US National Security Adviser John Bolton is in Moscow for high-tension talks over plans to withdraw from a nuclear weapons treaty. President Donald Trump said Russia violated terms of the treaty, though Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations.
6. Trump has no intention of de-escalating trade tensions with China, according to Axios, with the president believing instead that more time is required to make "Chinese leaders to feel more pain from his tariffs." According to Axios, one source told them that Trump "wants them to suffer more" from tariffs.
7. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin dismissed concerns that China's weakest economic growth since the global financial crisis could spill into other emerging markets and destabilize U.S. financial markets. "I am not concerned about that destabilizing our markets," Mnuchin said in an interview with Reuters in Jerusalem at the start of a Middle East visit.
8. BlackRock is betting on the explosive growth of exchange-traded funds, an asset class that has already propelled the firm to become the world's largest asset manager. The ETF market, which includes $4.7 trillion worldwide in assets, could jump to $12 trillion in the next five years, CEO Larry Fink said on the firm's earnings call last week.
9. Goldman Sachs has named veteran banker Todd Leland as its investment banking head for Asia Pacific excluding Japan, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. The move adds to leadership changes at the bank with CEO David Solomon taking over this month. Leland, an American who joined Goldman in 1992, will replace Andrea Vella and Kate Richdale who were appointed co-heads of the unit in 2015.
10. The outlook for global growth in 2019 has dimmed for the first time, according to Reuters polls of economists who said the U.S.-China trade war and tightening financial conditions would trigger the next downturn. At the start of 2018, optimism about a robust global economic outlook was almost unanimous among respondents. But Reuters polls of more than 500 economists taken this month showed a downgrade to the outlook for 18 of 44 economies polled.
