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Hong Kong stocks rose to a 2010 high on October 6 as investors poured money into local assets on expectations of another round of asset purchases by the US Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy weakened the dollar.

Mainland banking shares, which have a large weighting on the benchmark index, joined the rally after sharply underforming throughout the year.

The Hang Seng Index was up 1.08 percent at 22,884.65 at the midday trading break, moving further into technically overbought territory according to its relative strength index, currently at 78 and well above the threshold 70 level.

With several large cap constituents on the Hang Seng Index already up as much as 20 percent over the past month, investors shifted focus to laggards such as banks.

“Mainland banking shares were hit earlier this year by a weak market coupled with the risk that China would tighten policy by curbing lending or raising capital requirements,” said Mark To, head of research at Wing Fung Financial in Hong Kong. “But with market sentiment improving, investors are chasing laggards and retail as well as institutional investors will likely look to build positions in banks, which are trading at fairly attractive valuations.”

China Construction Bank Corp (CCB), up 2.5 percent, had the biggest positive impact on the main index. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) rose 1.9 percent.

ICBC shares have fallen 8.5 percent this year compared with a 4.6 percent gain for the Hang Seng Index.

Mainland banks are trading at discounts to their long-term valuations based on their forward twelve-month price-to-book as well as price-to-earnings multiples.

ICBC trades at a 20 percent discount to its ten-year median price-to-book ratio of 2.4. CCB trades at a 17 percent discount.

Property developer Hang Lung Properties Ltd rose 4.9 percent and was the top gainer on the benchmark index. Hang Lung had largely missed the September rally in local property plays, partly due to its exposure to the mainland market.

Hang Lung is up 10.6 percent since the end of August compared with an about 20 percent advance for rivals Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd and Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd.

Bucking the trend, footwear retailer Belle International Holdings Ltd fell 4.4 percent as investors continued to pocket gains after a rally to a life high on Monday.

Turnover on the Hong Kong stock exchange was about HK$62bn in the morning session, more than the 200 full-day moving average, according to traders at Standard Chartered, helped partly by share placements from China Everbright Ltd and Zhongsheng Group Holdings Ltd.

A sustained recovery in trading activity after the summer lull has lifted Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd to the highest level since May 2008 and up nearly 30 percent in the past month. HKEx was up 1.9 percent.

The Bank of Japan has pledged to pump more funds into the struggling economy and keep interest rates at virtually zero, surprising markets and stealing a march on the Federal Reserve in providing a fresh dose of economic stimulus.

For months, the central bank had eschewed government calls for more decisive action, such as buying more government bonds, focusing instead on a limited funding scheme.

But in the face of growing evidence that the yen’s strength was hurting the economy, the Bank of Japan cut its overnight rate target to a range between zero and 0.1 percent from 0.1 percent and pledged to buy 5 trillion yen ($60bn) worth of assets.

It also said it would keep its benchmark rate effectively at zero until price stability is in sight. Core consumer prices have been falling from a year earlier since early 2009.

The purchases would roughly match the size of extra stimulus being considered by Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s cabinet.

The assets, ranging from government bonds and short-term government securities to commercial paper and corporate bonds, would come under a temporary scheme that would also cover 30 trillion yen of such assets as collateral under an existing loan programme.

“The BOJ is bringing its monetary policy closer to quantitative easing, allowing market rates to hover near zero and pledging to keep a near-zero interest rate policy in the longer term until prices stabilise,” said Naomi Hasegawa, senior fixed-income strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

BOJ policymakers have signalled in past weeks that they were considering a further easing of policy after Tokyo’s intervention in the currency market in mid-September to check the yen’s strength offered only temporary relief.

Most market players, however, had expected the central bank to opt for a relatively minor adjustment of its 30 trillion yen loan scheme that supplies banks with funds at its 0.1 percent rate.

“These steps are more aggressive than markets had expected. The BOJ’s decision is a surprise and will have an impact on currencies due to the message it delivers.”

Central banks under pressure
The surprise move weakened the yen against the dollar, pushed up Japanese government bond futures and helped stock prices turn positive.

The decision to cut interest rates was made by a unanimous vote, but board member Miyako Suda opposed the inclusion of government bonds among the types of assets the BOJ could buy using its pool of funds.

The BOJ is not the only central bank under pressure to do more to support an economy that is showing signs of faltering.

Financial markets expect the Fed to embark upon another round of asset buying to bolster a sluggish recovery as early as its November meeting. There are also calls within the Bank of England for further easing, although the bank has kept markets guessing on whether it will indeed do so.

In Japan, slowing export growth, a surprise fall in factory output and companies’ worries that the strong yen may hurt the outlook have heightened the case for the central bank to ease policy.

The BOJ had already been edging nearer to quantitative easing by allowing the yen pumped into markets through currency intervention to remain in the financial system, instead of draining it.

General Motors Co posted an annual sales gain of 10.5 percent in September amid evidence that the U.S. auto market remained stuck in a slow-moving recovery at the start of the fourth quarter.

GM was the first of the major U.S. automakers to report sales for the month.

Analysts and industry executives expect auto sales near 11.5 million vehicles on an annualized basis in September, almost flat from August after adjusting for the typical early fall slowdown.

GM said it expected industry-wide sales had fallen to a range of about 970,000 to 980,000 vehicles in September compared with sales of over 997,000 in August.

“Consumers are sending a very clear message that they will be cautious with their spending,” GM sales chief Don Johnson told reporters and analysts.

Despite the still-slack demand for new cars that analysts link to consumer concerns about weak housing and new hiring, GM said there were positive developments in its September sales.

The sales results were one of the last snapshots in demand that investors will see for the top US automaker before an initial public offering expected in November.

Johnson and other GM executives said the automaker was heading into the fourth quarter with a much higher share of new models than it had held a year earlier, reducing the pressure for incentives.

GM spent about $3,300 in incentives per vehicle on average to close sales in September. That represented a discount of about 10.7 percent of the average cost – in line with the industry’s average.

Johnson said GM would remain disciplined in pricing and avoid the temptation to rely on more aggressive discounts to drive sales volumes.

“It’s the economic recovery that has to drive our sales,” he said. “Is it slower than everyone would like? Potentially,” Johnson said.

GM was restructured in a bankruptcy funded by the Obama administration and the government is counting on an IPO to reduce its nearly 61 percent stake in the automaker.

For September, GM posted a year-on-year sales gain of 22 percent in the four brands that it opted to keep while in bankruptcy: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac.

Retail sales accounted for about 75 percent of GM’s sales, with the remainder to fleet operators led by car rental agencies. It has also gained retail share every month this year, executives said.

Industry-wide sales for September face an unusually easy comparison to 2009 when the auto sales rate was an anemic 9.2 million vehicles.

That exceptionally weak sales rate represented what analysts called a “hangover” from the expiration of the US government’s popular cash-for-clunkers sales incentives a month earlier.

For that reason, many analysts will look at the comparison between September and August sales rates for a better sense of the trend.

Iraq has signed multi-billion deals with oil firms to boost output capacity to 12 million barrels a day in seven years.

This could give Iraq the money to rebuild after decades of war, sanctions and economic degradation, opening opportunities to the banking sector in financing projects. Today, Iraqi banks are hardly lending to private companies due to limited capital.

“The banks so far have not been able to lend in any structured manner,” Eric le Blan, chief operating officer of boutique investment firm MerchantBridge, told reporters.

MerchantBridge owns a majority stake in an Iraqi lender, Mansour Bank, which plans to raise its capital to $150m.

Le Blan said that to meet the new regulatory requirements and an increased demand in lending by the private sector banks needed to raise at least $10bn over the next three years.

Lack of experience
New rules by the central bank force Iraqi banks to raise their capital to at least 250 billion Iraqi dinars ($214m) by 2013, according to a memo seen by reporters.

Capital could come from regional banks, in particular from Lebanon, as well as from some international banks, said le Blan.

He said risks to foreign investors included Iraq’s lack of experience with banking failures. The higher capital requirements were expected to force Iraqi banks to consolidate.

“You are going to see a few leading banks surviving and the rest falling apart very quickly,” said le Blan.

“The central bank is still in training mode.”

Iraq is in a political impasse after general elections in March produced no outright winner and as yet no new government, a vacuum that observers say slows down government spending and the development of the country’s state institutions.

The Nikkei average clawed up 0.7 percent on Wednesday on window-dressing before the end of Japan’s financial first half, but it pared earlier gains as the yen’s strength revived and resistance held strong.

An additional boost came from a poor December outlook in the Bank of Japan’s “tankan” survey of business sentiment, which some market players said could increase expectations the central bank will discuss easing monetary policy further at a meeting next week.

“The ‘tankan’ was as expected, showing improvement in the short term and a gloomy outlook going forward. That only increased expectations for further easing by the Bank of Japan,” said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co.

“But more gains in the market were limited because the yen persistently remained on the strong side.”

This week also marks the end of the April-September first half in Japan, and some analysts said window-dressing, or buying by fund managers of some of the quarter’s better performers to improve their books, likely provided help.

Some analysts also cited buying of Japanese stocks by a US pension fund.

Still, market players said the longer-term outlook for the benchmark was poor, given the dollar’s persistent weakness, and resistance around 9,660 – the upper level of the Nikkei’s Ichimoku cloud on daily charts – would hold.

“Of course we have to see what happens when the BOJ meets next week, and over the next few weeks there’s likely to be some support along the way from intervention,” said Hideyuki Ishiguro, a strategist at Okasan Securities.

“But the effectiveness of intervention is likely to wear off the more it’s done, and the BOJ may not have so many options in terms of policy left. So the Nikkei could test the downside later this year.”

The benchmark Nikkei ended up 63.62 points at 9,559.38, while the broader Topix gained 0.5 percent to 846.97.

The Nikkei has gained about eight percent this month, its best monthly performance since March, helped by short-covering in exporter shares after intervention by Japanese authorities to weaken the yen two weeks ago.

But for the July-September quarter, the benchmark’s rise is only about two percent, lagging other major stock markets. The MSCI index of Asia Pacific stocks outside Japan has gained about 17 percent during the same period.

The dollar fell as far as 83.62 yen on electronic trading platform EBS, its lowest since Japanese authorities intervened to weaken the yen on September 15.

The Federal Reserve is likely preparing a fresh round of quantitative easing steps to be announced at the end of its November 2-3 meeting, a report by influential hedge fund adviser Medley Global Advisors said on Tuesday, a market source told reporters.

These expectations grew in the wake of figures showing a decline in US consumer confidence to the lowest level since February, pushing the dollar below 84 yen.

The Nikkei’s worst performer on Wednesday was Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which tumbled 7.8 percent to 2,105 yen after media reported that Asia’s largest utility was planning a share issue worth several billion dollars to fund investments.

Impact of yen strength
Japanese manufacturers’ confidence improved for a sixth straight quarter, the BOJ’s tankan survey showed, but they turned negative on the outlook in a sign of the stronger yen’s threat to a fragile economic recovery.

Market players noted that big manufacturers surveyed in the tankan expect the dollar to average 89.66 yen in the financial year to next March, weaker than the forecast of 90.18 yen in the June survey but still sharply higher than the current level.

“Of course the currency rate, along with the generally sluggish global economy, raises quite a risk for half-year corporate earnings, which will start coming out next month,” said Hideyuki Ishiguro, a strategist at Okasan Securities.

“Should these be poor, the Nikkei might break below 9,000 sometime in November.”

Exporters rose, with Canon Inc rising 1.7 percent to 3,945 yen and Sony Corp up two percent at 2,645 yen.

Elpida Memory Inc surged 8.1 percent to 985 yen after the company said it would start mass production of advance DRAM chips in December, putting it ahead of bigger rival Samsung Electronics in technology.

Nintendo Co turned negative and fell 3.7 percent to 23,010 yen after the game maker said its launch of a 3D-capable version of its DS handheld game console would be in February in Japan and March in the US, missing the crucial holiday season.

Trade was moderate with some 1.75 billion shares changing hands on the Tokyo exchange’s first section. Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones by about five to one.

The Lloyd’s of London insurance market revealed that record claims from disasters including the Chilean earthquake and US oil spill halved its profits, and said it saw no respite from a steady decline in prices.

Lloyd’s, which traces its origins back 322 years to a London coffee house where wealthy merchants insured ships, has posted a pretax profit of £628m ($994m) for the first half of 2010, down from $1.32bn a year earlier.

Lloyd’s, a cluster of competing insurance syndicates which specialise in covering large-scale risks, said it had to absorb more claims in the first half than in any other six-month period.

The market was also hit by a 15 percent drop in investment returns as it switched to safe low-yielding assets in the face of volatile financial markets.

Property and casualty insurers worldwide have reported bumper claims in the first half of the year, with reinsurer Munich Re estimating total insured losses over the period at $70bn, exceeding the total for all of 2009.

Insurers have had to pick up the bill for heavy storms in Europe and Australia as well as the Chilean earthquake and Gulf of Mexico oil spill, while some Lloyd’s insurers have been hit by a sharp rise in UK motor insurance claims.

The industry is also struggling with falling prices amid intense competition between insurers holding abundant supplies of capital after a relatively low volume of claims in 2009.

Lloyd’s finance director Luke Savage said prices looked set to keep falling, and most of the syndicates operating in the market would probably respond by writing less business next year.

“At the moment there is nothing that would lead us to believe that (prices) are going to improve generally. In an environment of slowly declining rates, people are going to be slowly reining in the amount of premium they write,” he told reporters.

Lloyd’s, which competes with Munich Re and Swiss Re as well as Bermuda-based insurers and reinsurers, is considering opening an office in Russia, adding to its existing overseas bases in China, Singapore, Japan and Brazil, Savage added.

Analysts say the most likely catalyst for an upturn in prices would be a US hurricane causing $30-$50bn in insured losses. The US hurricane season, which ends in November, has so far caused only moderate damage.

Listed insurers operating in the Lloyd’s maket including Amlin, Catlin, Hiscox and Lancashire have also reported lower interim profits on the back of higher claims.

Lloyd’s had a combined ratio – a key measure of profitability which expresses costs and claims as a percentage of premium income – of 98.7 percent in the first half of 2010, compared with 91.6 percent a year earlier.

A reading below the 100 percent breakeven point denotes an underwriting profit.

European workers have put aside $2.5trn less than they need to fund their retirement, condemning many to a penurious old age unless they start saving more, British insurer Aviva said.

The shortfall is equivalent to one-fifth of the EU’s annual economic output and reflects savings habits that have failed to keep pace with lengthening lifespans, according to a study published by Aviva.

Britain’s pensions gap of 26 percent of GDP, is the EU’s biggest, followed by Germany and Spain, whose deficits are equivalent to 24 percent and 18 percent of GDP respectively, the study shows.

Aviva said that without increased saving, European workers will be forced to pay for their old age by selling their homes, putting off retirement, or “accepting a significantly reduced standard of living”.

The insurer urged EU governments to help plug the deficit by adopting national pensions saving targets, warning consumers not to rely solely on state pensions, and boosting confidence in pensions products by creating a Europe-wide quality standard.

Aviva’s estimate of the EU pensions gap, which it claims is the first attempt to gauge the region’s retirement funding shortfall, is based on a calculation of the savings that would be required for those currently in employment to retire on 70 percent of their final salary.

The European Commission has said it intends to use a its plan to reform financial markets to rein in speculation on commodities markets, notably by reinforcing controls and extend the market abuse legislation.

The European Commissioner in charge of financial reform services Michel Barnier made the announcement in the opening speech of a conference on the revision of the Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) in Brussels, along with his colleague, EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos.

“The revision of MiFID is one of the key elements of an ambition reform of the raw materials markets,” the EU’s financial markets chief said, stressing that commodities markets regulation was a high on his agenda.

“We are ready to go further. This is a key issue. We will not hesitate to consider further measures,” Barnier, a former French farm minister, also said.

European commodity markets are under pressure to tighten regulation as the US pushes forward with plans to tame speculative activity, which was blamed by some for boosting food and energy prices to record highs in 2008.

The EU’s executive had unveiled a blueprint on Wednesday to curb or ban short-selling and tighten controls on derivatives in one of its most ambitious financial reforms since the economic crisis unfolded, but it was unclear how the EU intended to tackle the issue of volatile commodities markets.

European wheat futures gained more than 60 percent in the five weeks to August 5 on record volumes as drought-hit Russia, the world’s former third-largest grain exporter, banned its exports and other major producers, including Ukraine, also suffered from drought.

Position limits
At the conference Dacian Ciolos, said he wanted the EU executive’s plan to specifically include the issue of position limits on futures markets.

“We need to go further, especially today on the issue of position limits to counter excessive movements,” he said.

“The role of futures market is not to feed speculation and some actors’ profits. The role of futures markets is to offer tools to anticipate, manage volatility and contribute to the matching of supply and demand,” he said.

Barnier said the MiFID review would create the opportunity to strengthen the transparency, give a better framework for organised markets and increase controls on the activity of the various players in these markets, the speech said.

But the Commission also intends to review the market abuse directive and extend its field of action to strengthen how raw materials markets are controlled and supervised.

Finally, Barnier said the Commission wants the new European authority for securities markets to play an important role in how these markets operate, notably by ensuring that common rules for their functioning are established and that there is a coordinated and homogenous supervision of these rules in Europe.

His comments come after France sent detailed proposals to the Commission on August 31 calling for common action to regulate volatile commodities markets before it is due to head the Group of 20 economic powers.

In an interview with reporters on September 10, France’s Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire said speculators may have inflated EU wheat futures prices by as much as a third, as he touted the benefits of position limits as a possible part of the country’s push to toughen commodity market regulation.

Ciolos agreed fundamental parameters such as lower supplies from Ukraine and Russia could not explain recent wheat price movements alone.

“I’m not here to put finance on trial. But finance must serve the real economy,” he said.

Iran’s central bank has agreed to open won accounts at two South Korean state-owned banks to avert disruption in bilateral trade despite international sanctions, Seoul’s finance ministry has announced.

The Iranian central bank plans to open the accounts with the Industrial Bank of Korea and Woori Bank by the end of this month so that exporters and importers from both countries can settle their transactions in won, it said in a statement.

Trade with Iran accounts for less than 1.5 percent of South Korea’s trade but Iran is an important supplier of crude oil to South Korea, which imports all of its crude needs.

The two countries have settled trade deals in major currencies such as the dollar but international sanctions imposed on Iran over suspected nuclear weapons development have threatened to disrupt commercial links.

South Korea, a close ally of the US, joined the wave of international sanctions on Iran early this month by blacklisting the Seoul branch of Iran’s Bank Mellat and 101 other companies.

Potash Corp is trying to stitch together a consortium led by China to back a management buyout to trump BHP Billiton’s $38.6bn hostile offer, according to the Globe and Mail.

Potash Corp has said ever since BHP launched its bid nearly a month ago that it was working to find a white knight, and worries in China about BHP getting control over the market for a key crop nutrient have spawned talk that China would try to block BHP.

Citing unnamed sources, Canada’s Globe and Mail reported on its website the bid being considered would include a big element of capital from a Chinese resource company or investment fund, with smaller contributions from international sovereign wealth funds and possibly Canadian players such as pension funds.

It also said rival potash producer Mosaic Co could be part of the consortium.

“It is a viable option,” the newspaper quoted a source close to Potash Corp saying.

The source added that it was tough to put together a structure for the consortium and that other options were still possible.

“It is still a big cheque to write … and it is a challenge to manage multiple parties,” the source was quoted saying.

A Potash Corp spokesman in Melbourne declined to comment on the report.

Sinochem Corp, parent of China’s largest fertiliser distributor, Sinofert Holdings, has expressed concern over BHP’s bid for Potash Corp.

Unlikely consortium
Analyst Tom Gidley-Kitchin at Charles Stanley in London said such a consortium would be unwieldy since China as the world’s top potash consumer would want to keep a lid on potash prices while other investors would have the opposite motive.

“Everyone else who might come into a consortium like that if they weren’t Chinese would be certainly interested in maximising returns and doing everything that BHP would be doing,” he said.

“I do think that local regulators (in Canada) would certainly be asking themselves why the Chinese were getting involved here. China would be taking quite a risk in getting involved in something like this is there was a significant possibility that regulators would stop it.”

The deadline for BHP’s offer is October 19, but it needs clearance from regulators before going ahead.

The Globe and Mail report came a day after a respected Chinese business magazine Caijin quoted an official at Sinochem saying that a bid for Potash Corp would not be a good deal for the firm but it may consider other assets of the world’s biggest fertiliser maker.

The magazine has since deleted any comments from the Sinochem official from the report on its web site.

A German central bank board member who caused outrage with remarks about Muslim immigrants and Jews has resigned after coming under pressure from political leaders including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The Bundesbank said Thilo Sarrazin, 65, who accused Turks and Arabs of exploiting the welfare state, refusing to integrate and lowering the average intelligence, would leave his post at the end of the month.

“Dr Sarrazin has asked the president to relieve him of his duties,” the bank said in a brief statement and Sarrazin himself confirmed he had stepped down during a book reading in Potsdam near Berlin.

He had already been relieved of some of his central bank responsibilities over remarks he made last year about immigrants but the strict independence of the central bank made it difficult to have him removed.

However, after he published stronger comments in his new book “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (“Germany does away with itself”) and remarks in the run-up to its publication, Merkel and President Christian Wulff gave strong hints he should step down.

Sarrazin argues in the book that Muslims undermine German society and threaten to change its character and culture with their higher birth rate. He angered many by saying “all Jews share a particular gene”.

The central bank board voted unanimously for his removal, which required the approval of the head of state.

“I found it too risky in the current atmosphere … to stand up to the entire political and media establishment. That would be presumptuous and would not have worked,” Sarrazin said at the book reading after news of his resignation.

“So, a strategic retreat and now (I will) work on the topics that are important to me,” Sarrazin added.

He had previously vowed to fight attempts to remove him, raising the prospect of a bruising court case that would have raised questions over whether Merkel, her ministers and Wulff had acted correctly.

Merkel, senior ministers and the main political parties criticised Sarrazin, who belongs to the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and is a former finance chief of the city of Berlin.

The SPD has launched proceedings to expel him, although a recent opinion poll showed this would be unpopular with the public and SPD voters, who believed the party should devote its attentions to more important matters.

“I want no selection by genetics … as a Social Democrat,” SPD party leader Sigmar Gabriel told a TV show after the resignation, adding that Sarrazin had “crossed a line and people in the party are saying it’s not okay with us”.

A legal battle to remove him from the central bank or from the party could risk making him a hero figure and embroil the government in a dispute at a time of falling poll ratings.

Sarrazin has become an embarrassment for Bundesbank President Axel Weber, who several German leaders hope will succeed Jean-Claude Trichet as president of the European Central Bank next year when the Frenchman’s contract runs out.

The US trade deficit narrowed more than expected in July, as imports retreated and exports shot to their highest since August 2008, according to a government report that could lift hopes for third-quarter economic growth.

The monthly trade deficit shrank 14 percent to $42.8bn, which was smaller than the mid-point forecast of $47.3bn from economists surveyed before the Commerce Department report.

Exports rose to 1.8 percent to $153.3bn, led by strong overseas demand for US civilian aircraft, machinery, computers and other capital goods.

Imports fell 2.1 percent to $196.1bn, after a three percent rise in June that had caught many analysts by surprise and lowered estimates of second-quarter US growth. The drop in July was the largest since February 2009.

The dollar regained some ground against the Japanese yen after the favourable data on the US trade balance and a separate report showing fewer claims for jobless benefits.

Stock futures continued to gain after the reports.

Despite the improvement in the monthly trade gap, the cumulative deficit for the first seven months of 2010 rose to $288.83bn from $203.96bn in the same period in 2009.

In the second quarter of this year, a sharp widening in the trade gap sliced nearly 3.4 percent points off of US economic growth.

July imports from both China and Germany – two countries with persistent trade surpluses – were the highest since October 2008.

The closely watched trade deficit with China fell almost one percent in July, but for the first seven months of the year it was nearly 18 percent higher, at $145.4bn, compared to the same period in 2009.

With congressional elections looming in November and US unemployment a high 9.6 percent, US lawmakers are expected to turn their attention to China’s exchange rate practices when they return next week from their summer recess.

Many accuse Beijing of deliberately undervaluing its currency by as much as 40 percent to give Chinese exporters an unfair trade advantage.

However, the July increase in US  exports, including to China, is good news for President Obama’s administration, which has hoped healthy foreign demand will help put the US economy back on a strong footing. Obama has set a goal of doubling exports in five years.

Prices for imported oil fell slightly in July to an average of $72.09 per barrel, the second consecutive monthly decline.