The following are some of the news items mentioned in the last few days:

  • US officials presented Kyiv last week with a plan to channel up to 500B USD in proceeds from resource extraction into a fund that would be 100 percent owned by the US
  • Friedrich Merz’s party has won the German election and is poised to be the next German Chancellor
  • Crypto groups are now back to funding sports franchises in the hope of appealing to retail traders and retail investors.
  • US has suspended funds to USAID thus resulting in a massive shock to all the countries such as Kenya that heavily depend on the US infusion of money to USAID programs
  • US metal importers are racing to build up stockpiles of aluminium ahead of the planned imposition of tariffs by Trump next month
    • Aluminium futures rose to 2700 USD because of all the tariff related news coming from the WhiteHouse
  • Europe is an early winner in 2025. The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index has risen nearly 9 percent this year compared with less than 4 percent gain for the S&P and 1 percent gain for China’s CSI 300
    • HongKong’s HangSeng Index is the best performing stock market in the world for this year so far with a return of 17 percent
    • HangSeng Tech index has jumped 31 percent this year
  • UK graduate students finding it difficult to get jobs. In 2023-24, the average UK employer received 140 applications per graduate vacancy - a 59 percent increase over the previous year
  • Billionaire Elon Musk issued an ultimatum to federal employees Saturday, saying in a post on his social media platform X that employees must respond to an email justifying the work they completed this week or resign.Federal employees have already begun receiving an email asking to summarize their work, sources familiar with the matter told NBC News, though unlike Musk’s post, it does not explicitly threaten a forced resignation.
  • China has more than 250 companies with a marketcap of over 1B USD. US has 150.