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LONDON — Most stock markets advanced on Wednesday and bitcoin broke above $20,000 for the first time, as prospects brightened for more US economic stimulus and a Brexit trade deal.

Potential for an earlier EU rollout of coronavirus vaccines boosted investor's mood further.

The dollar faltered, however, as a surge in virus cases and further restrictive measures continued to drive a tug-of-war between long-term optimism and near-term pain.

Bitcoin, the leading virtual currency, traded above $20,000 for the first time, marking an astounding leap in the past year as financial markets developed more appetite for riskier assets.

Just 12 years old, bitcoin reached a record-high $20,787 before easing back to $20,612.

It has seen a meteoric rise since March, when it stood at $5,000, spurred by online payments giant PayPal saying it would enable account holders to use cryptocurrency.

The pound built on recent gains as British and European negotiators press on with talks on a post-Brexit trade deal.

Traders were awaiting the conclusion of the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting, hoping for some guidance on its plans for monetary policy in the new year.

"Stock markets were off to a promising start in Europe and Wall Street is poised for small gains as negotiations on both sides of the pond see much needed progress," noted Craig Erlam, analyst at Oanda trading group.

After months of stuttering talks between lawmakers in Washington, there appear to be signs of progress on a new rescue package for the world's top economy.

Hopes that the EU economy can get back on track next year got a lift on Tuesday when the European Medicines Agency said it had brought forward a meeting to decide on authorising the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by more than a week to December 21.

The vaccine is already being administered in Britain, the US and Canada.

That came as the US Food and Drug Administration recommended experts give the go-ahead later this week to a second vaccine, produced by Moderna.

"Progress over an economic relief package in Washington, Brexit deal optimism that could settle by week's end, and the likely seamless rollout of multiple highly effective vaccines have mixed to paint trading screens Christmassy green," said Axi strategist Stephen Innes.

The need for a big rollout of the vaccine has been laid bare by soaring infection and death rates around the world, which have led governments to impose strict containment measures leading into the Christmas holidays.

LONDON — European and US stock markets mostly rose on Tuesday on optimism over US stimulus and vaccines, but London stumbled ahead of the capital's tightened coronavirus restrictions as dealers also tracked Brexit trade talks.

Asian equities closed lower as surging COVID-19 infections forced global governments to impose tighter containment measures, trumping optimism over vaccines.

"The market continues to be dominated by the twin narratives of US stimulus and Brexit," said analyst Chris Beauchamp at trading group IG.

"Despite a miserable session in Asia, where traders fretted over Europe's return to broad lockdown policies, European markets have managed to clock up some decent gains."

The British pound rose as Brussels and London continued to pursue extended talks for a long-awaited Brexit trade deal.

"The picture still remains unclear with respect to the future trading relationship between the UK and the EU but seeing as negotiations are still ongoing, that is good enough in traders' eyes — the door is open for a deal," said CMC Markets anlayst David Madden.

London stocks fell 0.4 per cent in afternoon trading with the British capital set to face tighter coronavirus restrictions from midnight.

Added to the gloom, official data showed Britain's unemployment rate rising as the pandemic destroyed a record amount of jobs.

On the upside, Frankfurt added 0.9 per cent and Paris won 0.3 per cent in early afternoon eurozone deals, as US lawmakers inched towards finally agreeing a new stimulus for the world's top economy.

Lockdowns and vaccines 

Sentiment was also boosted after Joe Biden was confirmed as the next US president on Monday, with the Electoral College formalising his victory over Donald Trump, all but extinguishing the incumbent's efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election.

While the US on Monday began inoculations, its death toll hit 300,000 and analysts warned that while there is light at the end of the tunnel, there was still a lot of pain ahead.

Soaring case numbers have forced leaders to reimpose measures to stop the disease spreading, with New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio saying a "full shutdown" could be announced soon.

That comes as countries around the world struggle to get a grip on the crisis.

While London faces new tough restrictions as it follows swathes of Britain into the highest tier of containment, The Netherlands was preparing to enter its strictest lockdown since the pandemic began.

Turkey, France and Germany were also imposing tougher measures ahead of the Christmas holiday.

But a second coronavirus vaccine took a step towards emergency use approval in the US when a FDA briefing document recommended experts give Moderna's jab a green light when they meet on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the European Medicines Agency said on Tuesday it had moved forward a meeting to decide on authorisation for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by more than a week to December 21.

Stimulus optimism 

Wall Street stocks opened higher, with the Dow adding 0.6 per cent as investors expect lawmakers will finally adopt some stimulus measures.

A group of bipartisan lawmakers has split off contentious elements into separate legislation, raising hopes that a smaller $748 billion package including additional unemployment benefits and rent assistance will win support.

"Optimism is fairly high something will get done since Democrats seem willing to drop state and local aid for now," said Edward Moya at currency trading platform Oanda.

LOS ANGELES — Reddit has acquired the Tik Tok-like app Dubsmash, both companies said on Sunday, as big tech moves to carve out territory in the lucrative short-form video-sharing market.

In a statement, Reddit said it had been drawn to Dubsmash — which reports over a billion video views a month — because of its commitment to diversity and promoting under-represented voices.

"Both Reddit and Dubsmash share a deep rooted respect for how communities come together," Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said.

"Dubsmash elevates under-represented creators, while Reddit fosters a sense of community and belonging across thousands of different topics and passions," he added. 

News of the deal comes as big tech scrambles to acquire space in the massive video-sharing app market following the success of TikTok, which is now under sustained pressure from the US government over its Chinese ownership. 

Dubsmash, which allows users to lip-sync to popular music or dance along to their favorite songs, has been described by tech press as the "number two" video-sharing app online.

Neither company has disclosed how much Reddit paid for Dubsmash, though the tech news website The Information earlier this year reported that a similar offer from Facebook had been in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Facebook later opted to develop its own TikTok-like platform, known as "Reels", as did popular video messaging service Snapchat. 

Dubsmash clawed its way back from the brink of collapse following brief success in 2017, with executives rebuilding the company from scratch to become one of the web's top video sharing platforms.

Its rapid rise has not been without hiccups, however, and last year the company was subject to a massive data breach when hackers obtained and then shared online some 162 million account details.

TOKYO — Confidence among major Japanese manufacturers has recovered further after plunging on pandemic woes to its worst level since the global financial crisis, a key survey showed on Monday.

The Bank of Japan's (BoJ’s) December Tankan business survey — a quarterly poll of about 10,000 companies — showed a reading of minus 10 among big manufacturers, after recording minus 27 in the previous survey and minus 34 in the June survey.

The latest figure compared with a market consensus estimate of minus 15.

The June figure was the lowest since June 2009 when worldwide financial shocks hammered the planet's third-largest economy.

The short-term business sentiment survey reports the difference between the percentage of firms that are upbeat and those that see conditions as unfavourable.

A negative reading means more companies are pessimistic than optimistic. It is considered to be the broadest indicator of how Japan Inc. is faring.

The latest reading comes after the government last week approved more than $700 billion in fresh stimulus to fund projects from anti-coronavirus measures to green tech, the country's third such package this financial year.

"The sharp rebound in the Q4 Tankan supports our view that Japan's economy will rebound relatively swiftly from the dislocation caused by the pandemic," said Tom Learmouth, Economist at Capital Economics in a commentary.

Japan officially exited recession last month after three quarters of contraction, but the world's third-largest economy now faces a spike in COVID-19 infections, with record numbers of new cases reported in recent weeks.

The latest survey also comes ahead of the Bank of Japan's two-day monetary policy meeting from Thursday, which is widely expected to keep the current monetary easing tools but also likely to extend its special measures in response to COVID-19.

"We think the BoJ will explain that the economy continues to need policy support, especially with higher uncertainty due to the arrival of a third wave of infections," UBS economists Masamichi Adachi and Go Kurihara said in a report.

Confidence among big non-manufacturers improved to minus 5 — against a market consensus of minus 6 — after logging minus 12 in September.

The latest figures show a steady recovery from the low of minus 17 in June, but are still well below the March figure of plus 8.

Japan was struggling with the effects of natural disasters and a hike in consumption tax even before the pandemic crippled the global economy.

Once it hit, there were no mandatory lockdowns in the country, with the government instead asking people to stay at home — a request that was largely heeded.

But that, coupled with a shuttering of the country's borders, battered tourism and consumer spending, with the hospitality industry hit particularly hard.

KUALA LUMPUR — Bangladeshi migrant worker Sheikh Kibria recalls the filthy, overcrowded dormitory where he was housed by the world's biggest rubber glove manufacturer when a coronavirus outbreak erupted and infected thousands.

Malaysia's Top Glove saw profits soar, and its stock price jump as much as 400 per cent this year as countries worldwide rushed to buy protective gear as the pandemic intensified.

But in interviews with AFP, the south Asian migrants working flat out to make the gloves — who typically earn around $300 a month — described appalling living conditions, in cramped dormitories where up to 25 people sleep in bunk beds in a single room.

Some claim the company did not do enough to protect them despite repeated warnings.

The scandal has added to growing pressure on the firm, already under scrutiny after the United States banned the import of some of its gloves over allegations of forced labour earlier this year.

The infections also prompted factory closures and look set to have an impact on global supply.

Top Glove, which commands about a quarter of the world's market, has warned of delays to deliveries and rising prices.

'Didn't keep workers safe' 

More than 5,000 workers — almost a quarter of the firm's workforce — have tested positive after the outbreak at an industrial area housing factories and dormitories outside the capital Kuala Lumpur.

"The accommodation is so overcrowded," said the Bangladeshi worker Kibria.

"The room itself is a bare minimum. It is quite impossible to maintain cleanliness when so many people live in a single room. It is like an army barracks — only less maintained."

When the situation escalated last month, Top Glove began shifting infected workers to hospital and their close contacts to quarantine centres, reducing the numbers in dormitories.

Kibria, 24, was suspected of having COVID-19 so was first put in hospital, although he later tested negative and was moved to a hotel.

But critics say the actions were too little too late.

"The company had discussed decreasing people in the rooms before infections began but it never happened," a Nepali production line worker, Karan Shrestha, told AFP.

"The rooms stayed crowded — and in the end coronavirus cases started to increase."

"The company didn't keep the workers safe. They are greedy and were more concerned about their income and profits," he added.

AFP used pseudonyms to protect the workers' identities, as they were fearful about speaking out.

'Really scared' 

As cases spiralled, the government ordered 28 Top Glove factories to close, out of the 41 it operates in Malaysia.

Authorities are planning legal action against the company over poor worker accommodation, which could result in heavy fines.

The firm, which has 21,000 staff and can produce 90 billion gloves a year, insists it is making improvements.

It has spent 20 million ringgit ($5 million) purchasing new worker accommodations in the past two months, and plans to build "mega-hostels" kitted out with modern facilities that can house up to 7,300 people.

"We are mindful there is much more to be done to uplift the standard of our employee welfare and promise to rectify shortcomings immediately," said managing director Lee Kim Meow.

His comments came this week as the company announced a 20-fold jump in quarterly net profit to 2.4 billion ringgit ($590 million).

For those campaigning for low-paid migrants, the controversy highlights how companies continue to put profits before people.

"The company, its investors and its buyers have prioritised the delivery of more gloves, more quickly and at higher profitability over the welfare of its mainly migrant worker labour force," said Andy Hall, a migrant labour specialist who focuses on Asia.

Malaysia, a relatively affluent southeast Asian country of 32 million, has long attracted migrants from poorer parts of the region to work in industries ranging from manufacturing to agriculture.

Top Glove says the vast majority of workers who tested positive have already been released from hospital, and some factories are now reopening.

But some workers remain terrified at the prospect of returning to the production line, despite the company trying to enforce social distancing and providing protective gear.

"If we work in the factory, I would be really scared," said Salman from Bangladesh, speaking from his hostel.

"Even with extra safety, it is really tough to prevent an outbreak."

NEW YORK — Stock markets and the pound stumbled on Friday after London and Brussels warned that a no-deal Brexit was now a strong possibility.

When closing bells rang, London stocks had fallen by a collective 0.8 per cent, while Frankfurt gave up 1.4 per cent and Paris was off by 0.8 per cent.

Wall Street also had a lackluster day, with both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq retreating even as the Dow eked out a gain.

"We are starting to see the first meaningful de-risking from investors amid concern over Brexit," remarked Stephen Innes, chief global markets strategist at AXI. 

Rabobank analyst Jane Foley added: "In the past few weeks, the market consensus has gone from being reasonably confident that the EU and the UK would agree on a skinny deal to fearing that no deal may now be the mostly likely outcome."

'Low expectations' 

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has told the bloc's leaders there were "low expectations" that a post-Brexit trade deal could be struck with Britain, EU sources said. 

The clock was ticking down to the latest deadline, on Sunday, to make a call on prolonging negotiations or give up.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the chances of not reaching a deal were "very, very likely", in which case Britain would trade with the EU on terms established by the World Trade Organisation.

Talks continued on Friday between EU and British negotiators but they were struggling to break deadlocks on issues that included fishing rights and fair trade regulations.

The possibility that Britain will leave the EU without a deal weighed on pound sterling as investors contemplated cross-Channel trade being subject to tariffs and quotas from January 1.

The Bank of England said Friday that financial services faced "some disruption" when the deadline passes, but added that UK commercial lenders — already dealing with effects of the coronavirus pandemic — were well-prepared.

Back in the United States, analysts cited disappointment at the lack of progress in congressional stimulus talks as a factor in the market's sluggish performance.

The US Senate approved a one-week budget stopgap that avoids a government shutdown, but the outlook for a long-awaited coronavirus relief package, without which analysts fear a renewed downturn in economic activity, remained uncertain.

Among individual stocks, Disney jumped 13.6 per cent after reporting that the company's year-old streaming TV service Disney+ had passed 86.8 million subscribers, beating its "wildest expectations," the company's CEO said.

The growth in Disney+ has helped offset weakness in other company businesses during the pandemic, especially theme parks.

SANTA CRUZ, United States — Uber will sell off its air transport unit to flying taxi maker Joby Aviation, the company said, as it streamlines operations to navigate a ride-share market scuttled by the pandemic.

The deal will see Joby acquire Uber expertise and software, and able to offer its all-electric, vertical take-off and landing passenger aircraft on the ride-hailing giant's app.

While financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, they include Uber investing $75 million into Santa Cruz-based Joby, which has said it hopes to have its flying taxis in operation as early as 2023.

The sale of Uber Elevate — dedicated to electric aircraft and delivery drones — to Joby will "accelerate the path to market" for flying taxis, Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said in a joint release on Tuesday.

Founded in 2009, Joby Aviation is developing a four-passenger electric aircraft that takes off and lands vertically, like a helicopter, though it has multiple rotors.

The firm envisions the aircraft as a mode of commercial transport, rather than for sale to individuals, with its pilots ferrying commuters around.

Uber said it had already invested $50 million in Joby during a fundraising round early this year.

News of the sale came shortly after Uber announced an agreement to sell its autonomous car division to Amazon and Hyundai-backed Aurora in a deal that gives it a 26 per cent stake in the startup developing self-driving technology.

As part of the deal, Uber will invest $400 million in Aurora to merge the teams from both firms seeking to advance the technology for driverless ride-hailing.

The companies expect the self-driving technology to be initially put to use for long-haul trucking.

Khosrowshahi will also join the Aurora board of directors as part of the deal. The merged firm will work on the technology to be known as Aurora Driver.

Last month Uber reported that it lost $1.1 billion in the recently ended quarter as the pandemic walloped its ride-hailing business, while boosting its food delivery service.

BEIJING — China's consumer prices dropped more than expected in November on falling food costs, with a key gauge turning negative for the first time in 11 years due to pork prices, according to official data released on Wednesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge of retail inflation, fell 0.5 per cent on-year due to a high base of comparison in the same period last year, said Beijing's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

This continued a recent slide driven by easing prices of pork — a staple meat in the world's second-largest economy whose prices rocketed after an African swine fever outbreak ravaged stocks.

Pork prices dropped 12.5 per cent, widening October's fall and dragging the headline figure down, while other food items such as eggs, chicken and duck also saw a slide in prices compared with last year.

But core CPI, which strips out food and energy prices, "continued to remain stable", rising 0.5 per cent from a year ago, official data showed.

Capital Economics' senior China economist Julian Evans-Pritchard said November's headline figure was "almost entirely driven by improvements in pork supply and isn't evidence of faltering demand". 

"To the contrary, broader price pressures are starting to pick up on the back of the improvement in economic activity," he added.

There was improvement in factory-gate prices, however, with the producer price index (PPI) falling 1.5 per cent on-year last month — a smaller drop than the 1.8 per cent fall a Bloomberg poll of analysts expected.

NBS Senior Statistician Dong Lijuan said "market demand continued to pick up, and industrial product prices continued to rise" in November.

PPI measures the cost of goods at the factory gate, and prices have been dragged by the coronavirus fallout.

OCBC Bank's head of Greater China research Tommy Xie said: "The improving PPI definitely reinforces the expectation that the Chinese [economic] recovery is on track."

LONDON — Stock markets dipped on Tuesday in cautious trade amid vaccine rollouts and US stimulus hopes.

The pound slumped for a second day running with post-Brexit trade talks on a knife-edge.

The yen dipped against the dollar but soon recovered after Japan's government approved more than $700 billion in fresh stimulus to fund projects from anti-coronavirus measures to green tech.

Meanwhile, the euro climbed on data showing German investor confidence rebounded in December, buoyed by hopes that vaccines — expected to win approval for general use in the EU imminently — could help end the coronavirus pandemic.

"Risk appetite is struggling to find direction amid Brexit headlines, rising COVID-19 case counts, and possible further US sanctions on China on the one hand and hopes for US fiscal stimulus and US vaccine approval," said Axi strategist Stephen Innes.

"Investors are pinning their hopes on the ultimate holiday stocking stuffer, which is the capacity for [US] stimulus overwhelming a near-term downturn."

Nurses on Tuesday cheered as an elderly British grandmother became the first person in the Western world to receive an approved vaccine against COVID-19, at the start of a marathon campaign health officials hope heralds a fight-back against the global pandemic.

Last week, UK regulators became the first in the world to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for general use, and the first jabs were administered across the country from early Tuesday.

It comes as the outcome for a post-Brexit trade deal remains up in the air, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson preparing to visit Brussels for talks with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.

With the two sides divided over fishing rights, rules for fair trade and an enforcement mechanism for regulatory standards, there is a growing fear a deal will not be done before the December 31 deadline. 

Analysts, meanwhile, said that the next leg-up for equities would be news that US lawmakers had finally reached an agreement on a new rescue package for the battered economy.

Democrats have largely thrown their support behind a bipartisan proposal worth $908 billion while there is optimism Republicans will eventually come on board.

But US stocks opened lower, with the Dow slipping 0.2 per cent in the first couple minutes of trading.

"After a recent rally to record highs, US stocks continue to retreat as the markets assess the likelihood of further fiscal relief as talks appeared to have stalled," said analysts at Charles Schwab brokerage.