Tokyo slips, Binance bleeds, and Britain braces for dearer money

Asia opens on the back foot

Tokyo opened the week lower. The Nikkei fell 0.9% on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal, dragged down by bank and technology stocks.

Across the region, currencies were mixed. The Journal put this down to waiting. Investors were holding back ahead of fresh American economic data, and Asian currencies moved in no single direction while they did so. The report was filed in the early hours of Monday, London time.

Seoul had a different kind of news. South Korea has drawn up a record new budget, CNBC reported, and part of the money is aimed at building a sovereign artificial intelligence model. The stated ambition is not modest. In the words of CNBC's headline, the target is the 'world's highest performance' model.

Hong Kong supplied two questions. The South China Morning Post asked whether the city's IPO boom has hit a wall, or whether a year-end rush of listings is still to come. It left both possibilities open in its headline. The same paper described a summit in the city as a test of Wall Street sentiment, held against a backdrop of geopolitical strains and volatility in technology shares. Swire Properties offered something closer to a plan. Its chief executive told the Post that the company is weighing C-Reits as it seeks new ways to unlock capital. Those comments were published on Monday morning.

Insuring the bet, and a hole at Binance

Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal ran two pieces on the same theme. One described investors racing to get insurance on what it called the biggest market bet in history: artificial intelligence. The other reported that investors are hedging against the risks of the AI boom. Neither headline says the enthusiasm has gone. Both describe holders who want some protection underneath their positions. Insurance and hedging are what people buy when they intend to stay in a trade but wish to limit the damage if it turns against them.

The weekend's sharpest loss came in crypto. The Guardian reported a record $6.3bn hack at Binance, and investors have since pulled billions in funds from the exchange.

The scale is the story. A theft of $6.3bn is, on the Guardian's account, the largest of its kind on record. The withdrawals that followed were counted in billions rather than millions, which puts the outflow in the same order of magnitude as the theft itself. The Guardian's report appeared on Sunday evening, shortly before seven o'clock UK time.

Elsewhere in the Journal came a sceptical note on American healthcare. Some investors, the paper reported, are betting that a blue wave of Democratic gains will help hospitals. The paper's own headline was blunt on the point: don't count on it.

Britain counts the cost

At home, the weekend's commentary was gloomy. Writing in This is Money on Sunday morning, Hamish McRae argued that taxes and interest rates must go up, and that there have to be deep cuts in public spending as well. That is three levers pulled in the same direction at once.

Households are already looking at one of them. The Guardian reported on Monday that millions in the UK are bracing to remortgage on worse deals as a rate rise looms. For those borrowers the direction of travel in monthly payments is not in question. The paper's piece was published at six o'clock on Monday morning, framed around mortgage payments rising into 2027.

Politics added a sharper edge. City A.M. carried a remark from a Treasury minister as its headline on Sunday: 'I don't think employers are working people.' It is a short sentence. The paper let the quote stand as its title, and it is likely to be read closely by business owners weighing up who will carry the burden McRae describes.

The season brought its own pressures. Charities told the BBC that demand for Christmas donation gifts is up, and a Christmas shoebox appeal to help children launched on Monday morning.

Not every headline was about scarcity. City A.M. also reported the debut in New York of the Porsche Mission S, a mid-engined supercar.