10 things you need to know in markets, October 25

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

J.
Scott Applewhite/AP

1. Asian stocks
have entered a bear market. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index
has fallen about 20% from the year-to-date high set on January
29. The intra-day losses have been larger in key
Asian markets, with South Korea’s KOSPI index down by around
2.1%. Japan’s TOPIX has
been hardest hit, down by around 3.7% with
falls on the export-heavy index exacerbated by strength in the
yen, as capital flowed into haven assets. Australia’s ASX 200
Index is down more than 10% from its 2018
highs, entering
a correction.

2. Two
more suspicious packages, similar to those intercepted before
reaching US President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, were found addressed to California Congresswoman
Maxine Waters, the FBI said on Wednesday.
CNN evacuated its New York bureau when another explosive
was found in their building’s mail room. The two
parcels intended for Waters take to eight the total number of
suspected package bombs under investigation.

3. Frustrated current and former US officials warned that
President
Donald Trump’s personal Apple iPhones is being monitored by
Chinese spies, according to
a New
York Times report published
Wednesday. Trump reportedly has two iPhones that were
programmed by the National Security Agency for official use, but
he keeps a third, personal phone that remains unaltered — much
like the normal iPhones on the consumer market, according to the
officials.

4. Activist investor William Ackman’s
Pershing Square Capital Management has acquired a 3.7 percent
stake in hotel operator Hilton Worldwide Holdings,
the hedge fund said on Thursday. The fund said the 10.9
million Hilton shares represented about 13.9 percent of the net
asset value of Pershing Square Holdings.

5. Broadcom
is facing antitrust scrutiny from the European Union over the
possible use of its market dominance to pressure customers to buy
its semiconductors, Bloomberg reported on
Wednesday. The preliminary inquiry by the EU focuses on
Broadcom’s sales of chips in set-top box hardware used by the
cable and satellite industry.

6. Telecom network equipment maker
Nokia on Thursday announced a new cost-cutting program after
reporting quarterly profits down 27% from a year
ago. The Finnish company said it was targeting
annual cost savings of 700 million euros by the end of 2020.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s
LG Electronics said third-quarter operating profit jumped 45%
to 749 billion won.

7. Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche on Thursday said

customer demand remains strong even as a regulatory crackdown on
diesel cars and a 13 percent sales slowdown for Mercedes-Benz
cars in Germany weighed on third-quarter
earnings.

8. BT Group named
Philip Jansen as CEO on Thursday to replace Gavin
Patterson after its chairman said in June a new
leader was needed to restructure Britain’s biggest broadband and
mobile provider.

9. China’s
Wingtech Technology, the world’s largest smartphone contract
manufacturer, plans to acquire control of Dutch semiconductor
firm Nexperia Holding for 25.2 billion yuan ($3.63
billion), it said late on Wednesday.

10. And markets
are holding their breath for Jeff Bezos’ Amazon to post its
third-quarter results on Thursday. While
rosy-eyed analysts are watching the digital giant’s advertising
and cloud businesses, a surprise pearl may well be hidden among
the e-commerce sales numbers thanks to its successful Alibaba
rip-off, Prime Day.