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Banking rout.

Stocks in Asia are poised to follow the sharpest decline in US equities in two weeks after a rout in bank shares picked up steam on concerns trouble in the sector could portend broader dangers. Treasuries rallied. Equity futures for Australia, Japan and Hong Kong all pointed to drops of more than 1%. The S&P 500 on Thursday fell to the lowest since Jan. 19, with financial companies in the index plunging. Banks came under fire after the collapse of crypto-friendly Silvergate Capital, amid growing scrutiny in Washington. That accelerated a selloff in Bitcoin, which fell for a fourth straight day to around $20,000.

Photo: Eugene Hoshiko | Associated Press

International stocks lure investors seeking bargains

US stock indexes are mostly higher to start 2023, but investors are increasingly looking for bargains overseas. They have added a net $14.4 billion to US mutual and exchange-traded funds that buy international stocks this year, while pulling $34.1 billion from domestic stock funds, according to data from Refinitiv Lipper through March 1. The rush into international stocks has helped propel a rally in shares of overseas companies. (The Wall Street Journal | Mar 8)

Fed's Powell: No call made yet on size of March rate rise

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that officials have not yet made a call on the size of the rate increase they are almost certain to deliver at their upcoming policy meeting. "We have not made any decision about the March meeting, we are not going to do that until we see the additional data" that will come between now and the March 21-22 Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Powell told a House panel as part of testimony on the economy and monetary policy. (Reuters | Mar 8)

Deepest bond yield inversion since Volcker suggests hard landing

The bond market is doubling down on the prospect of a US recession after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned of a return to bigger interest-rate hikes to cool inflation and the economy. As swaps traders priced in around a full percentage point of Fed hikes over the next four meetings, the yield on two-year Treasury notes touched 5.08% on Wednesday, its highest level since 2007. Critically, longer-dated yields remained in check, with the 10-year rate under 4% and the yield on 30-year bonds lower. (Bloomberg Markets | Mar 8)

The debt ceiling is the risk Wall Street doesn't want to ponder

Conventional wisdom says the US will avoid a devastating federal payments default later this year. But conventional wisdom has proved spectacularly wrong months ahead of shocks that upended the world in recent years: the failure of Lehman Brothers, the 2016 US election, the global spread of Covid-19. The source of this potential shock is a procedural quirk of the US government that’s intersected with soaring partisan hostility. (Bloomberg Businessweek | Mar 7)

Wall Street concedes there is finally an alternative to stocks

For years after the 2008 financial crisis, investors held on to the belief that “there is no alternative” to stocks. Bond yields had hit rock bottom — they were even in negative territory in Japan and much of Europe. The stock market, especially in the US, seemed to be the best place to seek robust returns. Then came last year’s market selloff. Stocks slumped and bond yields soared to levels not seen in more than a decade. (The Wall Street Journal | Mar 5)

Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev | Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Cyberattacks are just one part of hybrid warfare

Hybrid warfare is a term for the mixing of conventional and unconventional tactics — violent and nonviolent, virtual and real-world, overt and covert — that countries can deploy against each other. They include state-on-state cyberattacks — cyberwarfare — as well as disinformation, economic pressure, propaganda, sabotage and the use of irregular forces, such as uniformed soldiers without identifying insignia.

— Bloomberg Technology

US government to explore cyber insurance backstop

Catastrophic hacks that overwhelm insurers may require the government to step in, the White House said, pledging to assess how it might construct a backstop under the administration's National Cybersecurity Strategy. Supporters of a federal insurance response say such a program, funded by taxpayers, could give a degree of comfort to insurers and enable them to take on more risk by relaxing exclusions.

— The Wall Street Journal

From relentless adversaries to resilient businesses

Attacks exploiting cloud systems nearly doubled in 2022, and the number of hacking groups that can target the cloud tripled last year, according to a CrowdStrike report released last week. The latest edition of the CrowdStrike Global Threat Report comes at a critical time for organizations around the world. Adversaries have become more sophisticated, relentless and destructive in their attacks, as evidenced by the emergence of several trends in 2022 that threaten enterprise productivity and global stability.

— Crowdstrike

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Photo: Nicoleta Ionescu | Shutterstock

Rust-Out: The harder-to-recognize version of workplace burnout

Most of us are no strangers to burnout, but a rust-out is much more difficult to recognize. With a rust-out, you won't feel sharp pangs of physical fatigue or deprivation of mental breaks as a result of accumulated stress. It's more like a subtle but persistent feeling of emotional weariness and loss of interest that eats you up from the inside in bites so small and soft that you hardly notice you're being stressed. 

— Glam

Your face is your ticket: A creepy convenience

Your visage might already be an entry ticket to a venue, writes the WSJ’s Nicole Nguyen. Delta, United and JetBlue have ticketless face-scanning boarding systems at several airports, and Mets fans can use facial-recognition express lanes this season. Companies using the software tout speed, convenience, security and contactless benefits for customers. Meanwhile, lawmakers in several states are looking to tighten tech regulations, citing privacy concerns and allegations of bias. 

— The Wall Street Journal

Boston Dynamics robot dogs star in Paris fashion show

Coperni, a Paris-based fashion house, has partnered with the Boston robotics company to present its Fall-Winter '23 collection, inspired by Jean de la Fontaine's The Wolf and the Lamb fable. The collection reinterprets the 17th-century original that questions the balance of power between different social groups by emphasizing a "symbiotic relationship" humans and machines could have instead.

— CyberNews