Asian shares stuck in holiday lull, bitcoin powers higher

Mainland Chinese stocks were up by the early morning. The Shanghai Composite was up by 1.43% to 3,655.09. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was up about 0.45% to 30,173.57.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei average Nikkei 225 is trading down 0.14 per cent at 29,520.50 on Friday, while the broader TOPIX 100 rose 0.28 per cent to 1,257.85. South Korea’s Kospi was up by 0.52% to 3100.58.

TECHNICAL INDICATORS

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1.#Volkswagen - Volkswagen said bad planning on the part of its suppliers has compounded a computer chip shortage blighting the global auto industry, claiming it gave ample notice that the coronavirus' hit to car production would be limited.
VW was in December the first carmaker to warn of a chip supply crunch that has hit global automakers, forcing them to cut or halt production as the semiconductor industry struggles to keep up with a recovery in the car sector.
The German company told its suppliers in April last year - when much of global car production was idled due to the coronavirus pandemic - that it expected a strong recovery in the second half of 2020, a VW executive, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
Volkswagen, the world's second-largest carmaker, says it was made aware of the chip shortage by one of its suppliers at the end of November, but that that warning came too late.
"We have communicated our demand early on. We have passed on our forecasts which have confirmed that demand," said the executive.
"If suppliers do not trust our numbers and consult their own forecasts, we should have been informed straight away. This has not happened."
As well as identifying potential weaknesses in the automotive supply chain, the question over who is responsible for the shortages could play a decisive role in any legal disputes down the line.
The current shortages are seen as stemming from a combination of factors, as auto manufacturers compete against the sprawling consumer electronics industry for chip supplies.
The executive said differing demand forecasts could explain the current problem, which has led VW to warn that chip supply will remain strained during the first half of 2021.
"This has caused a lot of trouble. If the supplier didn't have a chip problem in its own supply chain, we would get our control units," the executive said.

2. #TWITTER :The Bank of Italy said on Monday a set of experimental indicators it created from the content of millions of tweets accurately tracked consumer mood on price, offering scope for a powerful new monetary policy tool.
The effort comes as economists and policy-makers around the world increasingly turn to social media and other unconventional sources to measure consumer behaviour and as inflation continues to defy targets set by many leading central banks.
Researchers found their indicators, based on millions of tweets, not only tallied with final inflation read-outs and existing measures of price expectations by Italy's national statistics office, financial markets and other forecasters but were also in real-time and provided more granular detail.
"The results suggest that Twitter can be a new timely source for devising a method to elicit beliefs," the authors of the 107-page study said, adding they believed the Italy-focused research could be replicated elsewhere.
Twitter has roughly 200 million monthly active users worldwide and had around 10 million active users in Italy in 2019, the authors said.
The analysis started by collecting 11.1 million tweets posted in Italian between June 2013 and December 2019 containing at least one of a set of previously selected words related to inflation, prices and price dynamics.
"The rationale for focusing on pure raw tweets count is the intuitive notion that the more people talk about something, the larger is the probability it reflects their opinion and that their view can influence other people's expectations," it said.
Then the dataset was "cleaned" to remove advertisements or tweets that use the word inflation in an unrelated context.


3. #GOOGLE :- Google Ireland and Google France have agreed to pay a 1.1 million euros ($1.34 million) fine after a probe found that Google's hotel rankings could be misleading for consumers, France's finance ministry and fraud watchdog said on Monday.
The ministry and watchdog also said in a statement that Google has amended its hotel rankings practices since September 2019.

4.#SOFT BANK:- SoftBank Group Corp shares closed at a record high on Tuesday, surpassing a peak reached at the height of the dot-com bubble, as online backers celebrated the recovery in the value of the firm's tech portfolio.
Shares in SoftBank, a heavily weighted component of the Nikkei 225 Index which is trading at 30-year highs, closed up 4% at 10,420 yen, above the record 10,111 yen reached in February 2000.
Underpinned by buybacks and with retail investors buying its shares and baseball-themed junk bonds, SoftBank's shares have been supported by a growing number of portfolio companies listing in ebullient markets.
The Japanese conglomerate's comeback, during which its shares have climbed almost 300% from lows hit last March as the COVID-19 pandemic roiled its portfolio, have led to celebration among its online backers.
"Roses are red, violets are blue, SoftBank haters, don't know what to do," wrote one prominent supporter on Twitter recently posting under the name "Masa Capital".
"SoftBank will reach 11,000 yen by April," wrote another on Tuesday. The group's shares hit an intraday high of 11,000 yen in February 2000 before crashing.
Chief Executive Masayoshi Son's own social media posts are centred on aphorisms, favouring quarterly presentations over Twitter to transmit his message, in contrast to the memes that have made Tesla CEO Elon Musk a retail investor favourite.
5.#Hyundai:-An electric bus manufactured by Hyundai Motor Co caught fire on Monday while in use in South Korea, a fire official said on Tuesday, months after similar fires in electric cars led to a recall to inspect batteries.
No one was injured in the incident, which occurred as the empty bus was returning to the garage after an inspection, an official at the Fire Service Headquarters in the southeastern city of Changwon said.
The maker of the batteries in the bus has not been identified, the fire official said, but local media reports said the Elec City bus was powered by LG Chem's wholly owned battery division LG Energy Solutions batteries.
"Officials from Hyundai Motor, the transport ministry, Korea Automobile Testing & Research Institute, National Fire Research Institute and Changwon Fire Service Headquarters are expected to have a meeting on Tuesday to discuss inspection," the fire official told Reuters.
Neither Hyundai Motor nor LG Energy Solution had an immediate comment.
In October, Hyundai recalled 25,564 Kona electric vehicles (EV) in South Korea over the risk of a short circuit possibly caused by faulty manufacturing of its high-voltage battery cells.
After a fire in a Kona EV that had been recalled and received a software update, South Korean authorities have launched a probe into the adequacy of the voluntary recall, under which only some vehicles get batteries replaced.

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1.#BYTE DANCE - ByteDance is not in preliminary discussions about listing video app TikTok on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a person familiar with the matter said, following a Chinese media report that talks were underway.
The Global Times, published by China's ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper, said earlier on its Twitter account that ByteDance was in preliminary talks about a NYSE listing. Shortly after, it tweeted that ByteDance had denied the report.
No such talks were being held, said the source, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak publicly on the matter.
ByteDance, which owns the video app, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the matter.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalize a deal to shift TikTok's American assets into a new entity to address U.S. security concerns. Those talks have continued since Biden took office in January, sources have said.
The White House has said it has an ongoing review of potential risks posed by TikTok on U.S. data. The U.S. Justice Department asked two federal appeals courts earlier this month to put on hold government appeals on lower courts' rulings blocking restrictions the Trump administration sought against the app.



2. #TWITTER :Japan's recently appointed vaccine tsar, Taro Kono, is having a breakout moment.
Twitter-savvy and educated at Georgetown University in Washington, Kono has seen his popularity surge even as the government of his boss, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, has been battered by criticism over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two recent opinion polls have favoured Kono, who is also the minister for administrative reform, to be the next prime minister. As Japan launches its much awaited COVID-19 vaccination campaign, his role as the logistics head of the programme has thrust him even more firmly into the spotlight.
Part of Kono's attraction, in a nation known for wooden, script-following leaders, is his ability to engage directly with voters through social media, a sharp contrast to Suga, who has been criticised for seeming stiff and aloof from voters.
In recent weeks, Kono, 58, has used Twitter to publish videos on vaccine safety, repost memes and address media reports. He frequently responds directly to followers - 2.2 million on his Japanese account and 50,000 for his English one.
Last week he posted about conferences with governors over the coronavirus, and a black mask embroidered with a dinosaur skull he had worn the previous day.
But for all his appeal to voters and a resume that includes foreign and defence minister, some in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which he would lead as premier, are wary.
Given the LDP's majority in parliament, its leader is virtually guaranteed the premiership. Only two LDP presidents have failed to be premier during brief spells when the party was out of power - including Kono's father, Yohei.
Some say his father's being denied the top job may have helped feed the son's ambition for the post.

3. #GOOGLE :- Australia on Wednesday said promised laws forcing tech giants to pay media outlets for content had already succeeded after reports that publisher and broadcaster Nine Entertainment Co Holdings Ltd agreed on a licensing deal with Google.
The Alphabet Inc owned company agreed to pay Nine more than A$30 million ($23.25 million) a year for its content, two of Nine's newspapers reported, citing unidentified industry sources. The deal would be formally signed in the next two weeks, the newspapers said.
A Nine spokeswoman declined to comment to Reuters. A Google spokesman also declined to comment.
Nine would be the second major Australian media company to reach an agreement with Google just as the country's parliament prepares to pass laws giving the government power to set Google's content fees.
On Monday, Nine rival Seven West Media Ltd said it had reached a deal that local media reported would also involve the U.S. company paying it A$30 million a year.
"None of these deals would be happening if we didn't have the legislation before the Parliament," Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg told reporters.
"This legislation, this world-leading mandatory code, is bringing the parties to the table. We have held the line and held it strongly."
4.#FACEBOOK:- The Australian federal government has said it still plans to put the laws - which effectively force Google and social media giant Facebook Inc to strike deals with media companies or have fees set for them - to a vote in the coming weeks.
Last year, seven smaller media companies, specialist websites and a regional newspaper, signed deals to have their content appear on Google's News Showcase platform, but the country's main metro outlets failed to reach agreements.
Several large domestic media players, including the local arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp - which owns two-thirds of Australian newspapers - have yet to announce Google deals. A News Corp spokesman was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.
Media outlets around the world are trying to find a way to compensate for a slump in advertising revenue, traditionally their main source of income, which has resulted in widespread closures.

5.#AMAZON:-Amazon.com Inc will start making its TV streaming device in India this year via a unit of Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn, the U.S. online retail giant said on Tuesday.
The Fire TV Stick will be made by Foxconn subsidiary Cloud Network Technology in the southern city of Chennai, marking the first time one of Amazon's devices will be manufactured in India.
Amazon said hundreds of thousands of Fire TV Sticks would be produced annually, helping it to meet demand from Indian customers.
"Amazon will continuously evaluate scaling capacity to additional marketplaces/cities depending on the domestic demand," the company said in a blog post.
The launch of conglomerate Reliance's telecoms venture Jio in 2016 began an era of cheap data tariffs in India, aiding the growth of video and audio streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon's Prime Video.
That in turn created a market for streaming devices such as the Fire stick.