Thanks for joining me. Asian markets slumped overnight after Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election in November and endorsed Kamala Harris in the race for the White House.
Stock markets in Japan, South Korea and Australia all fell, while the pound strengthened against the dollar.
5 things to start your day
1) New Boeing jet chief admits turnaround may take years | Stephanie Pope vows to deliver ‘transformational’ change at crisis-hit airline
2) Roger Bootle: Fixing Britain’s archaic planning system will be Labour’s biggest challenge | Starmer faces a nation of homeowners with an inherent bias against development
3) Households braced for £190 jump in energy bills | Ukraine’s drawn out fight against Russia risks pushing up gas prices
4) Tempest fighter jet’s new design unveiled amid doubts over project | New concept revealed as Labour spending plans cause concern over programme’s future
5) How a single daily pill could soon be the future of losing weight | Fear of jabs has companies scrambling to be the first to launch a mass-market obesity pill
What happened overnight
The Hang Seng in Hong Kong added 0.8pc to 17,548.33 and the Shanghai Composite index dropped 0.7pc to 2,961.41 after China’s central bank unexpectedly lowered its one-year benchmark loan prime rate, or LPR, which is the standard reference for most business loans, to 3.35pc from 3.45pc.
The People’s Bank of China cut the five-year loan prime rate, a benchmark for mortgages, to 3.85pc from 3.95pc, aiming to boost slowing growth and break out of a prolonged property slump.
This came after the government recently reported the economy expanded at a slower-than-forecast 4.7pc annual pace in the second quarter.
Lynn Song of ING Economics said: “Chinese commercial banks’ net interest margins are already at a record lows and non-performing loans have been growing rapidly; rate cuts will likely add to the pressure on Chinese banks.”
On Friday, the S&P 500 fell 0.7pc and ended at 5,505.00, closing its first losing week in the last three and its worst since April. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.9pc to 40,287.53, while the Nasdaq Composite sank 0.8pc to 17,726.94.
Friday’s moves came as a major outage disrupted flights, banks and even doctors’ appointments around the world.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack and that it had deployed a fix. The company said the problem lay in a faulty update sent to computers running Microsoft Windows.
CrowdStrike’s stock dropped 11.1pc, while Microsoft’s lost 0.8pc.
