Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:   

• China Doubles Margin Requirement for Stocks to Curb Leverage. (video) China moved to contain leveraged wagers on its stock market, cutting by half the amount of borrowed money investors can use to buy shares, as authorities seek to prevent a repeat of the excesses that led to a $5 trillion rout earlier this year. Margin requirements will be raised to 100 percent from 50 percent starting on Nov. 23, the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses said in separate statements after local exchanges closed on Friday. The rule change means that an investor with 1 million yuan ($156,895) in their account is limited to borrowing another 1 million yuan from a broker to buy more shares. Previously, they could borrow as much as 2 million yuan. While the move is likely to weigh on investor sentiment when mainland markets re-open on Monday, the Shanghai bourse said it will help prevent systemic risks from building in China’s financial system. Surging margin debt helped amplify the record-breaking boom -- and subsequent bust -- in Chinese stocks earlier this year as ready access to leverage gave the country’s millions of individual investors increased buying power.
• China Probes Market Watchdog's Vice Chair After Stocks Rout. China’s top graft-buster announced an investigation into a senior official at the nation’s securities regulator on Friday, as the government deepens its crackdown on the financial industry in the wake of a $5 trillion stock-market selloff. Yao Gang, one of four vice chairmen at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, is under investigation for “alleged serious disciplinary violations,” the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement on its website, employing language that often refers to corruption probes. Yao, 53, assumed his post in 2008 and had been put in charge of the regulator’s issuance department since 2002, according to the statement. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
• Half of Russia's Richest People Are Planning to Cash Out. It’s been a quarter century since the fall of the Soviet empire triggered one of history’s greatest wealth transfers. Now bankers are preparing for another as Russia’s first generation of capitalists makes way for the next. Confidential surveys of dozens of millionaires and billionaires conducted since European and U.S. economic sanctions began last year show Russia’s wealthy are finding little support within the country’s legal framework to pass down businesses. A majority say they’re taking the issue of succession seriously for the first time.
• Euro-Area Growth Misses Estimates as ECB Ponders More Stimulus. (video) Euro-area economic growth unexpectedly slowed in the third quarter, underscoring the vulnerability of the region’s recovery as the European Central Bank examines the need for fresh stimulus. Gross domestic product in the 19-nation bloc rose 0.3 percent, data showed Friday, down from 0.4 percent in the previous period, which was also the median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg survey. Germany and France’s economies each grew 0.3 percent, while Italy’s expanded 0.2 percent. With a slowdown in emerging markets testing the strength of the pick up in the currency union, the data will provide ECB President Mario Draghi with more visibility heading into December’s monetary policy meeting. The central banker has signaled additional stimulus is in the pipeline, citing renewed downside risks for growth and the region’s inflation outlook, which risks becoming entrenched well below the ECB’s goal of 2 percent. 
• Ferragamo Falls After Signaling Sales, Profit May Miss Estimates. (video) Salvatore Ferragamo SpA fell as much as 8.1 percent after the Italian luxury shoemaker said full-year sales and profit may miss analysts’ estimates amid weak demand in the U.S. and Hong Kong. “Certainly it is quite challenging to reach the consensus, but it is something that we have in mind,” Chief Executive Officer Michele Norsa said on a conference call. He said the consensus is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of 315 million euros ($340 million) on revenue of 1.42 billion euros. “We live in a very volatile environment.”
• Brazil Real Leads World Losses on Speculation Levy to Be Ousted. Brazil’s real led world losses after a news report that President Dilma Rousseff has been persuaded to replace Finance Minister Joaquim Levy. A government official denied. The wire service of Valor Economico newspaper reported that Rousseff has not yet decided on a replacement for Levy, and there is no set date for his exit. Later, a government official with knowledge of the discussions said the president doesn’t plan to remove Levy and hasn’t been persuaded to appoint former central bank chief Henrique Meirelles to the top economic job. The real slumped 1.4 percent to 3.8257 per dollar at 3:43 p.m. in Sao Paulo, the most among 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg. 
• Emerging-Market Rout Worsens as China Lending Signals Slowdown. Emerging-market stocks headed for the biggest weekly drop since September and currencies slid as the worsening commodities rout and slowing credit growth in China undermined the outlook for global economic expansion and trade. The Colombian peso slumped to a six-week low, leading currencies lower. Equity gauges in China, Hong Kong and Colombia led losses Friday as the MSCI Emerging Markets Index pierced through the 50-day moving average for the first time since May. Energy companies paced weekly declines among 10 industry groups as Brent crude traded below $45 a barrel amid a bigger-than-expected U.S. glut. Russia’s ruble headed for its worst weekly drop in more than two months, while the currency of net-oil-importer Turkey advanced the most among peers. China stock-index futures slid after the country doubled margin requirements for stocks trading.
• Europe Stocks Have Worst Week in Two Months on Growth Concerns. (video)
  Worse-than-forecast data on euro-area growth, coupled with lingering concern about a Federal Reserve rate increase, dragged European stocks to a three-week low. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 0.8 percent at the close of trading in London, with three-fourths of its shares down, as data showed euro-area gross domestic product in the third quarter increased less than economists had forecast. The measure lost 2.7 percent this week, the most since the beginning of September. “There are still ongoing concerns about slowing economic growth, and there are other worries about more QE in Europe versus a potential rate increase in U.S., which creates a dichotomy,” said Patrick Spencer, equities vice chairman at Robert W. Baird & Co. in London. “The higher dollar, higher rates and slower growth make investors worry, and the numbers in China haven’t been so great lately.”
• Commodity Stocks Slide as Collapse in Raw Materials Deepens Pain. It’s another week to forget for many of the world’s commodities producers. Copper smelters, oil explorers and iron ore miners tumbled in Asia following a collapse in returns from raw materials to the lowest in 16 years. The Bloomberg World Mining Index, a gauge of the world’s biggest producers, fell 5.7 percent in a fifth week of losses while a similar measure of energy shares was heading for the biggest drop since August. Prices of everything from gold to oil to copper are getting hammered. The latest catalyst is mounting expectation the U.S. will raise interest rates in December, strengthening the dollar and cutting the appeal of raw materials. There are also fresh signs that government stimulus is doing little to stem the worst economic slowdown in a generation in China, the biggest consumer of energy, metals and grains.
• IEA Says Record 3 Billion-Barrel Oil Stocks May Deepen Rout. (video) Oil stockpiles have swollen to a record of almost 3 billion barrels because of strong production in OPEC and elsewhere, potentially deepening the rout in prices, according to the International Energy Agency. This “massive cushion has inflated” on record supplies from Iraq, Russia and Saudi Arabia, even as world fuel demand grows at the fastest pace in five years, the agency said. “Brimming crude oil stocks” offer “an unprecedented buffer against geopolitical shocks or unexpected supply disruptions,” the Paris-based agency said in its monthly market report. With supplies of winter fuels also plentiful, “oil-market bears may choose not to hibernate.”
• Goldman Says Only China Can Rescue Metals as Miners' Cuts Won't. Only a substantial rise in Chinese metals demand is likely to be sufficient to balance copper and aluminum markets, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which said recent output cut by miners aren’t large enough to rescue prices. Copper fell to the lowest since 2009. “While recent supply cuts in copper and aluminum may appear to bring the markets closer to balance, the cuts in our view are not sufficient to do so,” analysts including Max Layton said in a report received on Friday. “It is our view that the supply cuts confirm the bear case for these metals.” The rout in metals prices spurred by China’s slowdown and a rising dollar has prompted miners including Glencore Plc and Alcoa Inc. to cut capacity this year. Copper futures in London are headed for a fifth straight weekly loss, dropping on to the lowest price in six years. Metals demand in China, the top user, slipped again in October, Goldman said, citing an in-house gauge of consumption in Asia’s top economy. 
• Mester Says `Strong Case' Liftoff Conditions Have Been Met. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said a strengthening U.S. economy is ready for higher interest rates as she predicted growth of 2.5 percent to 2.75 percent through the rest of this year and next year and called for a gradual path of tightening after liftoff. “Given the economic outlook, starting the process to normalize interest rates will help ensure that we can, indeed, take a gradual approach,” Mester said, according to the text of a speech she is scheduled to deliver later on Friday to the City Club of Cleveland. “Delay risks having to move rates up more steeply in order to promote attainment of our goals over time.”Mester, who votes next year on the policy making Federal Open Market Committee, said a “small increase in interest rates from zero is not tight monetary policy” and likely wouldn’t provoke a reaction in markets that would affect the outlook for the economy.
• As Bubble Deflates, Startup Investors Are Trying to Cash Out. With Silicon Valley startups staying private longer these days, investors, company executives and rank-and-file employees are increasingly eager to cash out early. In recent weeks, growing fears of a bubble have given insiders even more incentive to sell their shares. Typically company founders try to limit such transactions, but a cottage industry has sprung up to help facilitate the sales on the quiet.

MarketWatch.com:

• Retail sales report suggests car-sales boom may be nearing end.

Fox News:

• Christians facing 'Indonesian jihad' as churches burned on imams’ orders: report.

CNBC:

• Cashin says: Keep an eye on commodities. (video)
• Christmas season will be 'a bloodbath' for retail: Analyst.

Zero Hedge:

• EU Commissioner's Dire Warning: "The Only Alternative To Europe Is War".
• The European Union Is Disintegrating: Austria Builds New Fence; Germany, Sweden Resume Border Checks. (map)
• Crude Slips As US Oil Rig Count Rises For First Time In 3 Months. (graph)
• The 'Fed-Calmed' Canaries In The Coalmine Are Once Again Keeling Over.
• "We Arrested Some Folks" - How China "Fixed" Its Stock Market.
• Albert Edwards Explains Why The "Global Economy Will Be Thrown Into Chaos".
• The Bubble Finance Cycle - What Our Keynesian School Marm Doesn’t Get.
• "Deflationary Mindset" Remains As UMich Survey Shows Inflation Outlook At 35 Year Lows. (graph)
• The Last Two Times Business Inventories Were This High Relative To Sales, The US Was In A Recession. (graph)
• Retail Stocks Are Crashing At The Fastest Pace In Over 4 Years. (graph)
• WTI Crude Tumbles To $40 Handle, Fastest Plunge Since December 2014. (graph)
• Key Manufacturing Industry Crumbles To Post-Crisis Lows. (graph)
• What Rate Hike: Annual PPI Drops Most On Record Even As Gas Prices Rise In October. (graph)
• Here Are Europe's Best And Worst Performing Economies In The Third Quarter. (graph)

Business Insider:

• Nordstrom(JWN) is the retailer that has experts worried there's something wrong in the US economy.
• Wall Street bonuses are set to fall — and it's 'more than a blip'.

Interfax:

• Russia Sees No Oil Output Reduction in Near Future. Russia has no plans to reduce oil production from current 10.7m b/d, citing Energy Minister Alexander Novak. Russian oil output rose to a record 10.78m b/d in October.