Making money: what the experts think

● Chinese moon runes

Although likened by some detractors to “edible hockey pucks”, Moon cakes are an essential feature of China’s Mid-autumn festival, which fell this week, says The Economist. Traditionally given to employees and exchanged by business contacts, they’re also a useful economic barometer. “So it is heartening to know that, amid rising trade tensions with America, the Chinese bakery association has forecast that sales of moon cakes will rise by a solid 5-10% this year.” Equally reassuringly, consumers are still plumping for “more expensive varieties”.

● Enter a bear…

Actually, when you take the temperature in China, the message is “both reassuring and concerning at the same time”, said Jeremy Warner in The Sunday Telegraph. “Little noticed in the West”, the country has entered a bear market. Stocks are down by more than a fifth so far this year, “languishing amid a sea of worries about Fed tightening, trade wars, a slowing economy and a growing debt mountain”. Is this a sign that the Chinese development story is finally beginning to stumble? Certainly, Trump’s trade war “threatens to

● Oil direction

seriously upset Chinese plans to internationalise its financial markets”. Stock markets are beginning to recognise the risk of “a serious stand-off between an emerging East and a defensive West”. China’s bear market may be “just the canary in the coal mine”. The oil price has been “steadily climbing”, with the price of Brent crude now at a four-year high, “solidly above $80 a barrel”, says John Stepek on Moneyweek. com. Prices are up by about 40% on last year “and we’re starting to hear murmurings about the return of $100 a barrel” – an unthinkable prospect for many only a few years back. Lots of factors are driving the price up, including reduced supply from Iran and Venezuela. But there’s some speculation that the Trump administration will attempt to drive it down ahead of the autumn’s midterm elections by unleashing “a few million barrels” from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as Bill Clinton did in 2000. He may not resort to this tactic and, arguably, it wouldn’t make much difference anyway. Oil company investors are “probably safe betting on oil prices staying where they are or going higher”.