Surge in gold export makes up for overall slump in demand for gems and jewellery
EconSep 05. 2020Sumed Prasongpongchai, deputy director of the Gem and Jewellery Institute of Thailand (Public Organisation)
By The Nation
Thai export of gems and jewellery in the first seven months of this year rose 33.73 per cent compared to last year, bouyed by the demand for gold, Sumed Prasongpongchai, deputy director of the Gem and Jewellery Institute of Thailand (Public Organisation), said.
The export accounted for US$12.069 billion, or 9.06 per cent, of the country’s total exports.
However, excluding gold, the export of gems and jewellery during the period dropped 41.87 per cent to $2.576 billion.
Gold export in the period skyrocketed 106.72 per cent to $9.492 billion, accounting for 78.65 per cent of the total gems and jewellery exports. During the period the global demand for gold surged, as people rushed to seek the safe-haven asset during the economic crisis.
Export of silver and gold ornaments dropped 8.29 per cent and 45.18 per cent, respectively.
He added that worries of a second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak and the strengthening baht remain risk factors for gems and jewellery exports.
CP Foods opts for renewable energy to meet its emissions target
Sep 04. 2020
By THE NATIONChareon Pokphand Foods (CP Foods) is introducing renewable energy in its manufacturing facilities with the aim of achieving the target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 25 per cent in the next five years.
Wuthichai Sithipreedanant, senior vice president for corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, said CP Foods was applying the “circular economy” concept to minimise its negative impacts on the environment, society and economy, and maximising its positive impacts.
For instance, all waste meat will be developed into a new product, water used in shrimp farms will be recycled to ensure zero discharge into natural water resources, while renewable energy will be used to cut down on the use of electricity and petrol.
CP Foods also aims to become a coal-free operation by 2022.
Wuthichai said that with renewable energy and a balance with nature, CP Foods can realise its dream of becoming the “kitchen of the world”.
CP Group’s chairman urges private sector to help revive economy through sustainable means
Sep 03. 2020
By THE NATION
Suphachai Chearavanont, president of Global Compact Network Thailand and CEO of Charoen Pokphand Group, told the recent “GCNT Forum 2020: Thailand Business Leadership for SDGs” that the world is facing several crises at present, including Covid-19, income disparity, human rights, environmental and economic issues.
However, he said, collaborations between Thailand and the other 60 GCNT members will help realise Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as member companies in each country work alongside their governments, civil society organisations and the private sector.
By linking up the world’s largest sustainability network, first-hand experience and knowledge can be shared, especially in relation to responsible and sustainable operation of the private sector’s supply chain.
Suphachai said once the Covid-19 crisis is over, the private sector will play a key role in mitigating the impact of the pandemic on people’s lives and the nation’s economy.
Cooperation will be necessary to develop sustainability and improve the livelihoods of millions of people.
At this time, new graduates are finding it difficult to secure jobs. Hence, the private sector needs to participate in reviving the economy in the fallout of Covid-19 by continuing to invest and expand their businesses with a view to creating new jobs.
Suphachai added that the approach toward creating awareness among the next generation of sustainability leaders should be via action-based learning. As part of the Leadership for Sustainable Education Development (Connext Ed) learning model, 100 schools are teaching students economic discipline; creating social understanding; and understanding the environment, public health, how to plant trees and reduce toxic pollution in water systems.
Lessons on analysing problems and offering solutions will help create a next generation of responsible and sustainable adults.
The price of gold dropped by Bt100 per baht weight in morning trade on Saturday (September 5), the Gold Traders Association reported.
As of 9.32am, the buying price of a gold bar was Bt28,600 per baht weight and selling price Bt28,700, while gold ornaments were priced at Bt28,091.42 and Bt29,200, respectively.
At close on Friday (September 4), the buying price of a gold bar was Bt28,700 per baht weight and selling price Bt28,800 while gold ornaments were priced at Bt28,182.44 and Bt29,300, respectively.
The Comex (Commodity Exchange) gold price to be delivered in December dropped by US$3.5, or 0.18 per cent, closing at $1,934.3 (Bt60,736.36) per ounce on Friday. The price dropped by 2.1 per cent this week.
Gold closed in negative territory due to mass sell-offs of the precious metal after the US showed strong nonfarm payrolls.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Claire Ballentine, Vildana Hajric · BUSINESS
U.S. stocks bounced back from a sharp sell-off but still closed at a two-week low as megacap tech shares sold off.
Losses for Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc. pushed the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 down more than 5% at one point, though it pared those declines to just over 1% as the day wore on and investors spotted bargains. Gains in financial shares limited losses in the S&P 500 Index, which ended the week down 2.3% at the lowest level since Aug. 21.
Treasury yields jumped while the dollar slipped. Oil fell below $40 a barrel to reach the lowest since late June.
The worst of Friday’s stock sell-off appeared to stem from concern that the recent run-up in tech shares wasn’t tied to broad investor sentiment, but instead was driven by outsize options trades from one firm. The Financial Times reported that SoftBank bought billions of dollars in tech derivatives before the rout that began Thursday.
Traders are seeking to find an appropriate valuation for tech stocks and gauge the health of the U.S. economy as the coronavirus pandemic rages on after having killed more than 180,000 Americans. While the industry is generating blockbuster profits during the stay-at-home lockdowns, there’s also evidence that highflying names have become overheated.
“It’s those crowded names that were over-owned that are being sold again,” said Dan Russo, chief market strategist at Chaikin Analytics. “It’s the lofty valuations, the stocks just were stretched.”
Elsewhere, emerging-market stocks fell for a third day. European shares slumped. Asian shares dropped, with Australia’s benchmark recording the biggest decline since May.
Here are the latest market moves:
Stocks
– The S&P 500 Index fell 0.8% at 4 p.m. EDT.
– The Nasdaq 100 Index fell 1.3%.
– The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 1.1%.
– The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped 1.2%.
Currencies
– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.1%.
– The euro was little changed at $1.1847.
– The Japanese yen was little changed at 106.21 per dollar.
Bonds
– The yield on 10-year Treasurys increased eight basis points to 0.71%.
– Germany’s 10-year yield rose two basis points to -0.48%.
– Britain’s 10-year yield climbed three basis points to 0.26%.
Commodities
– West Texas Intermediate crude fell 4.5% to $39.51 a barrel.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Joanna Ossinger · BUSINESS
The technology sell-off was speculative excess coming off a hot market, rather than the beginning of a broader pullback.
That’s the consensus view of investors and strategists after Thursday’s 5.2% plunge in the Nasdaq 100 Index, the worst since March.
With the pandemic continuing to rage and a vaccine likely months away, bulls say there are plenty of good reasons why technology shares can be supported at current levels, despite lofty valuations.
“Yes, today was a bad day. Ripe for profit-taking, but even with the 3% to 5% drop markets are still at impressive levels,” said Larry Peruzzi, director of international trading at Mischler Financial. The monthly jobs report — a key data point amid Covid times — comes out Friday morning U.S. time and that “could restart the rally” if it’s much better than expected, he said.
Volumes and engagement might be lower ahead of the Labor Day holiday in the U.S., which will keep markets closed on Monday, he noted.
“Many market narratives have focused on the low put/call ratios on some key big-cap tech and tech index levels as a sign of complacency,” said Michael Purves, CEO of Tallbacken Capital Advisors LLC. “But while these put-call ratios reflect a bullish frenzy, Apple and Tesla being key examples, they don’t necessarily have to portend some enormous market vulnerability.”
“Under-protected trending assets can have widespread implications that can bleed over into all assets — the financial crisis of 2008 being an extreme example of this condition,” he said. “But the data suggests that put buying has been robust, just not as robust as the call buying has been.”
Stifel Nicolaus & Co.’s head of institutional equity strategy, Barry Bannister, offers a case for further gains in valuations — though he warned the path is fraught.
“The current market level is pivotal: the cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings multiple of the S&P 500 is knocking at the doorstep of the same point at which CAPE broke out in the last two years of the most powerful bull markets of the past century, the late 1920s and late 1990s,” he said.
“If CAPE does break out, the building (and inevitable bursting) of a bubble could make the market a ‘greater fool game’ challenge in the near-term and a modest return vehicle longer term,” he added. “The mega-bull case: Combinations of equity risk premium and 10-year TIPS produce much higher S&P 500 fair values.”
“When it comes to the tech sector and the other online giants that have gained so much in the last few months, there could be profit taking as we head toward the U.S. presidential election in November,” said JPMorgan Asset Management strategist Kerry Craig. “Negative headlines on potential regulatory and tax changes are likely to add to investor unease in a market with elevated valuations.
“However, this is unlikely to be a repeat of the tech wreck of the late 1990s, given how much the market and sector have changed,” he added.
“While tech sector valuations are elevated, we are also mindful of the earnings and revenue potential in the coming years from areas like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, as well as how many of these companies will benefit from the shifts in corporate attitudes toward physical workplaces,” he said.
Still, other strategists pointed to areas that continued to concern them.
“If more positive announcements regarding a viable and effective vaccine are forthcoming, as expected, selling in technology could continue as funds raised will be allocated across the sectors most closely associated with the other side of the pandemic,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial Inc.
Rising volatility and correlation could trip markets, according to Olivier D’Assier, head of applied research for Asia-Pacific at Qontigo GmbH.
“There is a lot of short-term liquidity in the market now because of all the quantitative easing programs, but this liquidity has a low risk tolerance,” he said. “If volatility rises and correlation takes away their ability to construct a well-diversified portfolio, they will pull it out of equities and back into liquid, safe, Treasury bonds.”
“Our view is that this sell-off centered on tech stocks has mostly to do with buying fatigue setting in, and that it represents a spontaneous adjustment in response to how the market’s giddiness caused a heavy concentration of buying to be directed at certain popular stocks,” wrote Masanari Takada, cross-asset strategist at Nomura Holdings Inc. in a note.
“It may be that a bullish narrative built around what the post-pandemic world might look like is distorting not only stock prices, but also the earnings forecasts that supposedly justify those stock prices.”
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Reade Pickert · BUSINESS The U.S. labor-market rebound extended for a fourth month in August, offering hope that the economy can continue to recover despite a persistent pandemic and Washington’s standoff over further government aid to jobless Americans and small businesses.
Non-farm payrolls increased by 1.37 million, including the hiring of 238,000 temporary Census workers, according to a Labor Department report Friday. The unemployment rate fell by more than expected, by almost 2 percentage points, to 8.4%.
Yields on 10-year Treasurys rose after the report, while U.S. stock futures reversed losses and the dollar fluctuated.
The median estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 1.35 million gain in non-farm payrolls and an unemployment rate of 9.8%.
The data signal progress in the labor market is continuing though at a more moderate pace since the initial bounceback in hiring, with payrolls remaining about 11.5 million below the pre-pandemic level. The pace of further gains likely hinges on whether America improves control of coronavirus infections, as well as an end to the stalemate in Congress over another stimulus package.
The payroll figures showed broad-based gains across industries. Retail added about 249,000 jobs, more than in the prior month, while professional business services increased by 197,000 and transportation and warehousing was up about 78,000.
But the gains in leisure and hospitality businesses, such as restaurants, that had driven prior months cooled significantly in August with a rise of 174,000, compared with 621,000 in July.
The much better-than-expected improvement in the jobless rate spanned demographic groups, though White and Hispanic Americans saw larger declines in the rate compared with Asian and Black Americans.
The gender gap also narrowed. Among adult women, the unemployment rate fell 2.1 percentage points to 8.4%, compared with a 1.4-point drop among men, to 8%.
By The Washington Post · Eli Rosenberg · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS WASHINGTON – The U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs in August, sending the unemployment rate below 10% for the first time since the pandemic began, a glimmer of good news as the pandemic continues its march across the country.
The unemployment rate fell to 8.4%.
Analysts had expected job gains of around that amount, as the economy has shown signs of rebounding from the economic carnage left by closures aimed to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
The report is likely to influence the political debate about whether to reauthorize more aid for businesses and the unemployed, when Congress returns from its recess this month. It could also play a central role in the presidential race.
Economists say that they are still concerned about the job market’s long term prospects because of the expiration if some of the aid programs passed by Congress in the Spring.
The Export-Import Bank of Thailand (Exim Thailand) has launched a business rehabilitation scheme for specific clients, by using its “support-relax-extend-sustain” approach.
Exim Thailand president Pisit Serewiwattana said that the persistence of Covid-19 across the world had hindered economic activities in almost all sectors. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have predicted global GDP contraction of 4.9 per cent and 5.2 per cent in 2020 respectively, the highest contraction in more than 90 years.
Such drastic global economic contraction has dampened Thai export, particularly that of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which are normally vulnerable to surrounding uncertainties and crises, as reflected in SMEs’ export value shrinkage of 17.9 per cent in the first six months of 2020, which was higher than a 7.1 per cent shrinkage in total Thai export value in the same period of the previous year.
Exim Thailand therefore has launched “Post-Covid-19 Business Rehabilitation for Entrepreneurs Scheme” to assist, support and take care of four groups of clients based on their requirements. They are:
▪︎Entrepreneurs with growth prospects:
Exim Thailand will “support” them to ensure their liquidity adequacy and consistent loan repayment capability.
▪︎Entrepreneurs with decline in revenues but continuity in business operation:
Exim Thailand will “relax” loan conditions to enable them to fully settle debts or request new credit facilities.
▪︎Entrepreneurs requiring extension of loan repayment period:
Exim Thailand will “extend” loan repayment period or partially restructure principal and interest payment for them pending their post-crisis recovery.
▪︎Entrepreneurs with shortage of liquidity for business operation:
Exim Thailand will “sustain” their businesses by way of debt restructuring for them, which will help slow down non-performing loan.
Exim Thailand’s clients may apply for extension of loan repayment period, change in loan conditions to suit their business operation, and additional credit lines from August 3 until December 31, 2021.
He added that Exim Thailand had kept itself abreast with the Covid-19 situation and itself found that over 20 per cent of its clients earlier granted suspension of principal and interest payment for up to six months since February 2020 have yet to be able to make instalment payment of principal and interest. They would like the bank to relax loan conditions and extend the loan repayment period.
Some of them can further operate their businesses but additional capital is needed, while others still lack liquidity for their continued operation. Exim Thailand said it was ready to fulfil their liquidity requirement and carry out debt restructuring for them as required.
Investors have been advised to keep an eye on the domestic political situation, additional economic stimulus measures, Covid-19 situation and tensions between US and China as it could affect the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index next week.
The SET Index on Thursday (September 3) closed at 1,311.95, down 0.86 per cent from the previous week, while total transactions stood at Bt49.165 billion, down 8.59 per cent from the previous week.
Meanwhile, the Market for Alternative Investment (mai) closed at 312.95, up 0.70 per cent from the previous week.
An analyst at Kasikorn Securities said the index fell at the start of the week due to foreign investors’ mass sell-offs in stocks, especially of banks and energy groups, after the MSCI cut investments in Thai shares from August 31 and uncertainty followed domestic political unrest.
“The index then rebounded in the middle of this week from economic stimulus measures, especially measures to stimulate spending before falling later in the week due to mass sell-offs to reduce risks before a long holiday, while investors were closely following the situation between US and China, as well as the political situation in Thailand,” the analyst said.
Next week, the analyst said he expects the index’s support line to be between 1,285 and 1,300 and the resistance line between 1,325 and 1,335.
“We recommend following the domestic political situation, additional economic stimulus measures, Covid-19 situation and tensions between US and China,” he said.
“Internationally, we advise following US consumer and producer price indices in August, the European Central Bank’s meeting, Japan and Europe’s second-quarter gross domestic product and China’s economic data in August.”
Sumed Prasongpongchai, deputy director of the Gem and Jewellery Institute of Thailand (Public Organisation) 
