10 things you need to know in markets August 10

The trade war
continues.
Reuters/Kim Kyung
Hoon

Good morning! Here’s what you need to know in markets on Friday.

1.
Asian stock markets fell on Friday amid heightened global trade
tensions, while currency markets were whipsawed by a searing sell
off in Russia’s rouble and as economic worries sent the Turkish
lira tumbling. Washington said it would impose fresh
sanctions because it had determined that Moscow had used a nerve
agent against a former Russian agent and his daughter in Britain,
which the Kremlin denies.

2. The
pound’s extended slump continued on Friday as it fell to a fresh
low against the dollar. Sterling is down 0.27%
against the dollar to $1.2792 at 7.30 a.m. BST (2.30 a.m. ET),
marking a fresh 11-month low.

3.
Russia would consider it an economic war if the United States
imposed a ban on banks or a particular currency, Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday, the TASS state news agency
said. “I would not like to comment on talks about
future sanctions, but I can say one thing: If some ban on banks’
operations or on the use of one or another currency follows, it
would be possible to clearly call it a declaration of economic
war,” Medvedev said.

4.
Investors are pulling billions of dollars out of
Europe. Investors have pulled $35 billion from
European equities this year and $51 billion from European funds,
according to Barclays data.

5.
Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm is settling an antitrust case brought
against it by Taiwan regulators by paying T$2.73 billion ($89
million), the island’s Fair Trade Commission said on
Friday. The commission said Qualcomm also agreed to
bargain in good faith with other chip and phone makers in
patent-licensing deals.

6.
A divided federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the US
Environmental Protection Agency to ban a widely-used pesticide
that critics say can harm children and farmers. The
2-1 decision by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle
overturned former EPA commissioner Scott Pruitt’s March 2017
denial of a petition by environmental groups to ban the use of
chlorpyrifos on food crops such as fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

7. Blockchain company Soluna plans to build a 900-megawatt
wind farm to power a computing center in Dakhla in the
Morocco-administered Western Sahara, its chief executive John
Belizaire said in an interview.Work on the
initial off-grid phase will start in 2019 and complete a year
later, with the possibility of connecting the site to the
national grid, Belizaire told Reuters.

8.
Ryanair is bracing for its biggest-ever one-day strike on Friday
with pilots based in five European countries set to walk out,
forcing the cancellation of about one in six of its daily flights
at the height of the holiday season. Ryanair, which
averted widespread strikes before Christmas by agreeing to
recognize unions for the first time in its 30-year history, has
been unable to quell rising protests since over slow progress in
negotiating collective labor agreements.

9.
Mercedes-Benz sports utility vehicles built in Tuscaloosa,
Alabama, are being checked for potential problems by Shanghai
customs authorities, Daimler confirmed on Thursday.
Mercedes-Benz GLE and GLS models, built in the United States
between May 4 and June 12, 2018, have a brake issue which poses a
“safety risk,” according to a Chinese customs document
circulating on Chinese social media.

10.
Dropbox reported its second-ever earnings as a public company on
Thursday. The company beat Wall Street’s
expectations on revenue and earnings per share but the stock slid
on news of Chief Operating Officer Dennis Woodside’s impending
departure.