March 2026
The European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) governing council left interest rates unchanged even as brokerages warn clients that rate hikes are likely, perhaps as soon as next month.
The rate remains at 2 percent, where it has been since last June.
U.S. Regulators cut Back Banks’ Cash Reserve.
Requirement. A proposal by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s bank regulators would reduce by 4.8% the amount of cash the largest American banks must keep in reserve as a cushion against loans that go bad.
The change would apply to banks with more than $700 billion in assets, which include Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.
JPMorgan Chase, has written down the value of several loans in private lenders’ portfolios, people familiar told the FT.
The value of those loans has served as collateral the lenders have used to borrow from the bank. Lenders can still borrow but less against their portfolios.
Tokenized Stock Trading: The Basics.
A tokenized stock is equivalent to a stock traded on an exchange. The difference is that tokens are traded on blockchains, which are digital ledgers that automatically record transactions.
Conventional exchanges are open for trades only fixed hours five days a week. In contrast, tokenized stocks can be traded on blockchains any time, day or night, 365 days a year.
U.S. trade deficit narrowed in January as gold exports surged.
U.S. exports grew by 5.5% in January while imports rose by just 0.7%, resulting in a monthly trade deficit of $54.5 billion, 25% less than in December, the U.S. commerce department reported.
The Iran war has halted most flights out of Dubai, a hub for the global distribution of gold & silver 20% of the world’s gold bullion.
Bullion mined & refined in Africa & Mideast is transferred through Dubai to the West & metals sent into Asia from Europe also use Dubai as a hub.
Individual investors in private credit funds are fleeing in droves as the industry confronts fears about its long-term outlook.
Blackstone’s Private Credit Fund (BPCF), its prime vehicle in the sector, has been hit with requests to withdraw 7.9 percent of its assets, the company said. Blackstone pledged to fulfill all such requests, even though they exceed the 5-percent quarterly limit specified by the fund.
Investors remaining in the U.S. stock market despite the ongoing software selloff & impending AI stock crash are resorting to complex hedging strategies to protect their holdings.
A Substack post in which AI kills jobs & slashes consumption sparked a selloff in software stocks.
A growing number of stock market players are expecting that time has come for AI stocks, Some traders are shorting Oracle.
One hedge fund boss is waiting for Nvidia’s sales to slump. Another has a private wager against OpenAI, which is not yet a public company, The WSJ reported.
UBS DOWNGRADES THE U.S. STOCK MARKET UBS
The Swiss investment bank and financial services firm, has moderated its outlook for U.S. stocks, saying that the factors that powered the multi-year bull market are running out of energy.
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S&P 500 stock index will launch trading in “perpetual futures,” which trade constantly seven days a week on the Hyperliquid crypto exchange’s blockchain.
The move is part of Wall Street’s scramble to open various exchanges to round-the-clock action using blockchain technology.
As energy prices soar, enthusiasm for private credit has crashed, the U.S. stock market looks like its losing steam, & the American economy is at a crawl.
As investors wait out the storm of bad news, they are turning their assets into cash at the fastest rate since COVID.
In March, China’s parliament passed plan to bet the country’s next 5 years on achieving global dominance in technologies including AI & robotics, both of which are expected to erase millions of jobs.
At the same time, delegates were wrestling with a rising unemployment rate - FT.
NASDAQ, Kraken to launch tokenized trading next year.
NASDAQ, crypto trading platform Kraken, and interested publicly traded companies are preparing a plan to begin trading stocks as digitized tokens on a blockchain.
South Korea’s flagship KOSPI stock index dove 20% on 6 March on fears that the Iran war will slash the country’s oil imports.
South Korea is the world’s eighth largest importer of oil & related products. Samsung & SK Hynix, the country’s two AI chip giants, have lost about 20%.
Revolut, a British digital bank with $75b in assets, applied to the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency & the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for a license to operate in the U.S.
Revolut, serves 70m customers in 40 markets & is the largest financial technology company in Europe.
Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar’s energy minister, said in an interview last week that the expanding war in Iran could easily bring oil prices to $150 a barrel, & noted that there is a risk of Gulf countries ending energy exports.
The minister made the comments in an interview with the FT.
Big tech may be hiding billions in possible AI losses, Moody’s says.
A gap in U.S. accounting standards could give giant tech firms the ability to hide tens of billions of dollars’ worth of financial risk, analysts at Moody’s pointed out in a new report.
Bank & asset management stocks took a beating recently after investors panicked over threats that AI will usurp financial advisory services.
Now their market values are sliding again after Market Financial Solutions (MFS), a U.K. lender, has collapsed amid allegations of fraud.