A November like no other

For markets bolstered by dovish central banks, expanding economies and receding inflation, the news as November begins is how vulnerable they’ve become. Long-standing pillars of strength are showing cracks. Tech earnings—a key catalyst for upside this year—have turned spotty, erasing a month’s worth of gains and sending the Nasdaq 100 to its first weekly loss in two months. A historic stretch of lockstep gains in equities and bonds just skidded to a halt, perhaps pausing before the resolution of a deadlocked presidential election or to consider renewed uncertainty about what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates. “We have taken advantage of the rise in equity prices over the last several weeks to derisk portfolios,” said Jim Caron, chief investment officer of the portfolio solutions group at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. “We believe there will be volatility around the elections and prefer to wait for the noise to die down and allow for the signal to reemerge.” Here’s your markets wrap. —David E. Rovella

China is taking further steps to attract foreign money just days before US elections that have raised concerns about the impact any victory by Donald Trump, who launched a trade war against China, could have on the world’s second-biggest economy. Foreign individuals are now allowed to provide capital for publicly traded firms as strategic investors, Beijing regulators said Friday. Previously, an overseas foreign investor aiming to take a non-controlling stake in an enterprise had to have at least $500 million. That’s now cut to $300 million.

Shore Capital Partners, the private equity firm led by Justin Ishbia, is said to be in talks with Silver Lake Management to partner to combine two veterinary groups through an $8.6 billion deal. Chicago-based Shore is working to merge portfolio companies Southern Veterinary Partners and Mission Veterinary Partners and recapitalize the combined entity with an investment from Menlo Park, California-based Silver Lake. Any combination of Southern Veterinary Partners and Mission Veterinary Partners would create one of the largest operators of animal hospitals in the US just as Americans spend increasing amounts of money on keeping their pets healthy—a trend that has been drawing more private equity investors to the sector.

A snapshot of recent data shows the winner of the US presidential election on Nov. 5 will inherit an economy that’s humming, powered by American consumers who continue to spend despite years of high prices and interest rates. The economy expanded at a robust pace in the third quarter, continuing several years of solid growth, and the unemployment rate has remained low. Here’s how it looks.

A murdered priest, a beheaded mayor, car bombs and an all-out cartel war have stained Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s first month in office. The killings have had a higher shock value reminiscent of the late 2000s, when Felipe Calderon’s administration launched a war against drug cartels. Back then, decapitations and hangings were common items in Mexican newspapers. Sheinbaum inherited the security crisis from her predecessor and mentor, former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. But recent violent crimes have put pressure on the new leader to deliver results on the security front—and fast.

Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney responded to a comment from Donald Trump in which he suggested she should be placed in front of a firing squad. “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death,” said Cheney, an ally of Vice President Kamala Harris. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.” In the final days of the presidential campaign, the 78-year-old Trump and his adjutants have insulted women and ethnic groups while promising a series of unconstitutional measures. Harris on Friday was in Wisconsin courting blue-collar workers in the swing state, vowing to bring manufacturing and high-paying jobs and lower the high costs buffeting households.

Turkey is set to introduce a new law it says targets foreign influence, and that’s raising concern among civil society and media groups that it’s actual purpose is to crush dissent. The legislation seeks to curb those working against what the government says is “the state’s security or its domestic or external political interests” under the influence or orders of a foreign country or organization. The punishment could be as many as seven years in prison, according to a draft bill seen by Bloomberg. Turkey, a NATO member whose leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has obstructed expansion of the alliance and is friendly with Vladimir Putin, has become an increasingly authoritarian state in recent years, curtailing freedoms while prosecuting and jailing thousands for insulting the president. The proposed law resembles the foreign-agent law passed recently in Georgia, which drew condemnation from Western states and sparked mass protests. Inan Akgun Alp, a lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, said the bill will prepare ground for a “much more repressive environment.”

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