♪ carol: welcome to bloomberg businessweek. i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. we are in new york city. carol: this week, the bloomberg 50. from finance to politics, these are the people that shaped 2019 in unexpected ways. jason: plus, a growing pushback on stock webex. carol: and a different type of crisis that asks if homelessness

is a crime. jason: all of that and more. but first, our top story, nato's 70th turned out to be less of a birthday party and more of the thanksgiving dinner for a big, dysfunctional family. carol: that's right. not all of them got along. a few snide remarks. in the end, everyone seemed to accept they were stuck with each other. that's according to mark champion, who covered it. let's talk about nato and what a week it was. mark: it was. i mean, the buildup was pretty extraordinary. this was supposed to be a celebration. it wasn't a full summit. they do that every two to three years. this one they felt they had to do because it was the 70th. they kept it really short because they specifically didn't want to create a big target for unscripted problems with president trump, which they've had before.

so, and then all of a sudden, in the weeks before, you had the french president macron coming out and talking about whether he wasn't so sure the rest of nato allies would go to the defense of turkey under the article five defense clause, which is at the core of nato. it caused a huge blow up. and then of course you had turkey itself, which had begun a military operation in syria against the will of allies. people were apprehensive going in about this thing could just blow up. instead of being a celebration, a demonstration of the union of the unity of this aliance, it would be the opposite -- this alliance, it would be the opposite. jason: it ended up more awkward and uncomfortable more than anything. you had hot mic issues, extended

press conferences, the president once again, as he seems to like, at the center of it. mark: absolutely. and really, the key question going in, and what everyone was wondering to themselves when he landed, what was he going to do? he had a binary choice. he could either decide, i will throw in with macron -- he's raising a lot of questions about nato. i'm raising questions about nato, not just on spending, but various times the president called nato obsolete. and, you know, he could have done that. he chose instead to present himself as a savior of nato, and its protector. and it's an unlikely role, given all that's gone before. but the bottom line there was that he's had some success in getting the other nato allies to spend more on defense. he's been banging on that particular drum for the three

years he's been in office. and defense spending has increased sharply among the allies. it actually began before he came into office, but he's happy to take the credit. the other leaders are happy to give it to him. carol: there's been a fair amount of conversation that all the members have to contribute their fair share. i want to ask you about boris johnson. he was at the summit. he was a subject of the magazine, more specifically his character and temperament. his anger, who knew? tell us about how that might impact his campaign and possibly his election. mark: yeah, so this has been a really extraoridnary campaign. they're very short in the u.k. one has to remember that. they're basically, long, a month to six weeks. they're extremely short, really packed in, all the debates. it happened very fast.

we are towards the last week. this particular campaign is extraordinary, we have both parties making big plays in terms of changes of public spending and fiscal policy and all these sort of things. in the end, it really comes down to trust in the two main candidates. one of them is boris johnson. and he's always had a big issue with trust. and the anger is a piece of that. and we have this article in this issue of businessweek, which really runs through very carefully remind you of the times when he has flown off the handle. and people already don't trust him because he has a record. he was fired for not telling the truth while a cabinet minister. he was fired as a journalist for not telling the truth. there's already a trust issue for him.

he has a colorful personal life, which has raised trust questions. if you add on top of that the possibility of a blowup because he doesn't keep his temper, which has happened before, then that is one of the things people running his campaign are very concerned about. they kept the campaign on a very tight leash and him on a very tight leash and kept his exposure quite limited. jason: we're going to leave it there. thank you for joining us from london, a busy time between hosting nato and this big election. for more on this magazine, here he is, joel weber. it's the most wonderful time of the year. joel: this is our favorite issue of the year. we look for things that are

measurable. because this is bloomberg. carol: all industries. joel: we try to look across everything and that's what makes this special. you can have a list of people that are expected names. warren buffett could be there every year. but we're looking for measurable contributions in 2019. we go back to january through now and find who really sparkled. jason: even a chicken sandwich. joel: it broke the internet, the popeyes chicken sandwich. people got stabbed over it. really, it speaks to the ability for brands. a chicken sandwich of all things can really break the internet. carol: we reach out around the bloomberg organization. is there a name that surprised you? joel: this is a team sport. we pull from bureaus around the world.

we look for leaders and business people and ceo's. one of my favorite ones was the black hole, if you forget all the things that happened, this is a huge deal, the team that discovered a black hole. that was one of my favorite ones because it's a photo of nothingness. and it marked an incredible scientific achievement. jason: 2019 feels like a black hole kind of year in many ways. joel weber, thank you so much. carol: a pushback. jason: soros, yes, that soros, george soros, gets a little conservative. carol: they are indeed. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ carol: welcome back. i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. join us for bloomberg on the

radio, catch up on every daily show through our podcast. you can get it on apple podcast, soundcloud, or bloomberg.com. carol: you can find us online. who wins when companies buy their own shares? it is a good question. one argument is the companies that come out on top. jason: our economics editor is here with his story and this week's businessweek explainer. >> last year, s&p 500 companies bought back $806 billion with of shares, 55% more than the year before. this year, they are on track for $740 billion, the second-most ever. one commissioner had his staff study 385 recent buybacks. they found shares rose 2.5% more than the days after buyback than otherwise expected. they also found twice as many had executive selling in the

eight days after buyback announcement as they do on an ordinary day. the value of those executive sales is more than five times higher. when a company buys back shares, it signals confidence in the future, when executives sell shares. it seems like a legal version of illegal pump and dump stock manipulation. the sec wants the agency to rewrite the rules. he wants to bar insider sales after buyback is announced. an sec chairman has not agreed. although he says he's happy to continue the conversation. carol: let's get more on rewriting the rules. jason: you heard from him and here he is again, peter coy. peter: it focuses on other things which is gotten other things, which is what executives

do. robert jackson is one of the commissioners of the sec, not the chairman. he has commissioned his own staff to look into this. what he found is stocks tend to go back as an expression of confidence by management in the future of a company. no wonder the start goes up a bit. but, what do executives do? they are more likely to sell their shares in the immediate aftermath of this buyback announcement, taking advantage of that pop in the start. -- in the stock. if you're a cynic, you would say this is a legal version of an illegal pump and dump stock many -- manipulation. carol: right, so this is insiders taking advantage. there's been research showing the insiders are selling right after the announcement of a buyback. peter: there's always a steady griddle -- dribble. they are cashing in on stock

options. there is a fivefold increase on the dollar value of stock sales right after a buyback announcement versus before. the number of executives doing so is also up. jason: what does jackson want to do about this? peter: you can think of a wide solution. he has a narrow, tailored solution, which seems unobjectable. bar insiders from selling in the immediate aftermath of a buyback. as he says, who thinks it's a good idea for executives to be doing this right after buybacks announced? who benefits except for those people? jason: there are already restrictions on when insiders can buy and sell shares. peter: yeah, so this would be a new thing they would not be allowed to do. carol: how likely is this change to be implemented?

peter: what he's betting on is articles like this one will start to generate some interest in this in the general public. so far, the chairman of the sec, jay clayton, has not gone along with this. he was asked about it last year and kind of demurred. still willing to talk about this, i don't want to have a big roundtable about it, but he's susceptible to political pressures like anybody else. if the pressure mounts, the world could change. jason: let's talk about a story that's one of my favorites. it's one of finance's most legendary names, george soros. there's a new era for his money. carol: that's so true. it's a different fund, in part because it has to be.

that's made his job especially tough. she's of the legendary shop. jason: cathy burton covered him for years. she wrote the book. top managers, including mr. soros. here she is with her story. >> they struggled mightily with performance the past three years since don started. jason: remind us who she is, where she came from. >> she came from ubs. she ran the hedge fund business, as well as the equity business and other businesses at the asset management part of ubs. and she was chosen to run this new sort of management, managing money for the foundation, not for george and his family. carol: take a step back because i feel like there was a long period where george soros could only do really smart things. if you could work there, it was a really cool thing. remind us of his past.

>> sure. so, as you said, it used to be the major best performing hedge fund in the world and george sat on top of it. they made tons of money. and then in 2017, he transferred most of his wealth to his foundation. that meant the foundation was no longer managing money for george, whipping it around. they had to be much more conservative because they didn't want to lose money, they just had to ensure they could find other projects every year. jason: that such a key point because if you go back to the culture and ethos of the original soros, it was big, big bets, i mean huge bets that paid off unbelievably. but swinging for the fences and a lot of ways, right? kathy: absolutely. they made so many bets. the biggest one was george betting against the pound. they made $1 billion and they

bet $10 billion. $10 billion on that bet. and they wanted to bet $15 billion. they just couldn't get it done. carol: alright, so that's where george soros is. we have seen the hedge funds shut down or folks take the money to have family offices. the world has changed dramatically. kathy: it's harder to make money. it's been in the office for many years now. now it has to be more conservative. jason: coming up, a different kind of housing crisis that goes to one of the most important issues of our time. is homelessness background? carol: plus, the cost of education. when one state experience with a free tuition program. another big problem of our time. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

♪ jason: welcome back. i'm jason kelly. carol: and i'm carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio. jason: 960 in the bay area, and london on dab digital and through the bloomberg business app. we turn now to a different kind of housing crisis. carol: the u.s. supreme court made review a lawsuit that changes how cities treat the homeless. one city is unfortunately home to many homeless, seattle. >> it started a decade ago in boise, idaho. six homeless people brought a case against the city, basically

saying that the local ban on camping in public places is unconstitutional. it represented cruel and unusual punishment because basically there was no place for them to go. there weren't enough spaces for them in shelters and effectively, they were being penalized for being homeless, which is something you can't do under the law. carol: this is wild. i think it could change dramatically, based on your reporting, because it gets to the idea that housing is a basic right. noah: yeah, that's a larger question that looms. the legal issue is much narrower. just to complete the story, the boise won at the district court level, but then it was appealed to the ninth circuit, which covers a giant swath of the u.s.

west from alaska to arizona. the appellate court found in the favor of the homeless folks. so, as a result, you have a ruling out there right now that says that these sorts of bans on public camping are unconstitutional. and it's a big deal because it's a ruling that goes beyond boise now. it's something that matters to cities like los angeles and seattle. and it's created a lot of discussion in cities throughout the west about how they can tackle this giant problem of homelessness. jason: in your story, noah, you do talk about some of what cities have done to try and combat this, especially at a time where if you talk to people in los angeles, san francisco, seattle, they talk about this massive rise in homelessness, which obviously has something to

do, large part to do with the affordability of housing. what have we seen those individual cities do to combat this so far? noah: well, what you've seen broadly is an uptick in laws that criminalize camping or sleeping in public. the ninth circuit decision really calls some of those into question. it's made a lot of cities back away from those bans. the question long-term, the bigger question that looms, is how are you going to solve homelessness? a lot of people in the west and across the country recognize it's a problem, but there's a robust and active debate on what you do about it. on the one side, the folks who are arguing on behalf of the homeless folks from boise, they say that criminalizing people for sleeping on the streets when they have no alternative is

counterproductive. carol: from the high cost of housing to getting an education. jason: a story explores one state's free college program. is it a model for the nation? >> tennessee were the first state to implement a statewide free tuition program for every high school graduating senior. and they could go to community college or technical college completely free. that started in 2014. it started as an economic program. the idea was, tennessee took a look around its workforce and realized, with an increasingly skilled economy and advancing economy, there weren't going to have enough skilled workers. as a result, they came up with tennessee promise, and a complement program for adults, cotenancy we connect, that works to get tennesseans a secondary education. so whether that's a technical certificate or community college

degree or whatever it may be. and the results have been promising. you see college going rates increase, enrollment in community colleges increase, graduation rates improve. but at the same time, the dropoutroving, still could use a little bit of improvement. it's almost 50% of students are dropping out after three years using the program. so, the idea is that you look at these dropout rates and tuition is not a factor, but the other cost of college, the financial aid program doesn't address, like transportation or housing or the cost of books are really weighing on these low income students. jason: what has been learned in tennessee that can and cannot be applicable to other states?

>> so for tennessee, it has its own program, the first to offer to all students that were graduating from high school. but other states have their own version of programs. some have residency requirements. new york requires you to live in the state after you receive the aid. other states offer it for four year education while others offer it for two. i think the lesson i heard from experts in this area is that a one-size-fits-all approach is really challenging, especially with higher education, where each state is different and each state has come up with their own program to serve them. so, looking at it from a one-size-fits-all approach is really challenging. but that is different from having a federal framework and giving states more wiggle room to decide what's best for themselves. carol: coming up, the bloomberg 50. these are the people who shaped 2019 in unexpected ways.

jason: we've got a chat with one of the names from the list, ceo joey levin. this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

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♪ jason: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. still ahead, growth opportunity for a greener smartphone. jason: is it time for coco chanel to get into watches? i don't know. carol: we've got to talk about that the merck 50.

jason: who has the most subscribed youtube channel? who's the biggest dealmaker? i just have fast did popeyes run out of the fried chicken sandwich? bloomberg editors from around the world answer those questions and many more for the third annual list. carol: we cover a lot. it is a look at the finance, politics, and science and technology, whose 2019 complements merit recognition. >> to get on the list it's not a , lifetime achievement award. this many people i want to put on this list, but they don't have data or a metric to sort of proove why we should include them. so, a lot of it is looking at the numbers, figures, and saying they did have a great year and we can show this to a stock price going up or acquisition or a million other ways. carol: i'm always curious about the debates you have because i am sure people are like, disney has to be on this list. no, they don't have to be on this list. bret: there is a lot of that.

every year, i think this person is going to be on the list. and they wind up not on it. that sort of happens because we decide either the metric isn't strong enough, that it wasn't important enough -- that's what happens a lot. you sort of look at how business shapes up, and it doesn't merit including. carol: is there a name on the list that might surprise someone, like kylie jenner or rihanna? bret: for every kylie or rihanna, there's a name you haven't heard of. someone like wolf is an interesting story. is a 19-year-old that decides to travel around india and says this is terrible. all these hotels have roaches. what if i take hotels that are

150 rooms or smaller and standardized? have hot water in the showers. his hotel chain is aiding 70-80 hotels a day, which is insane. and they are the number two hotel in the world, poised to overtake marriott. the most amazing tidbit is the way they use analytics to figure out what works. they found if they put portraits of marilyn monroe in rooms, people consider those hotels boutique. that increases revenue 10-11% per hotel. jason: one, it's not always just single people. it's one of our favorite storylines, the u.s. women's national team. a shoe in on the list because in part this was much more than just winning the world cup.

bret: their metric is the number of people that watch set records for any soccer game, not just women playing. for men, for women. they're also on the list for their pay equity battle. they're now basically this is going to come to trial next year, and they are one of the groups fighting hard for pay equity. their argument is a pretty good one, which is that they play more games. they've won four world cups. don't we deserve more? we're seeing australia just granted their women's team the same amount of money as their men's team. carol: i also wonder about what businessweek covers so well, corporate stories and corporate trends. who was with being on the list? bret: great question. somebody that i love is ethan brown, right? if you look at business, really

hard to overlook fake meat. beyond meat is this company. you've got impossible. now you have pretty much every other company as well. their stock price is up 200%. huge ipo. it's just a space that's going to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years. he's a shoe in for that. that is an area that we have covered at length. kevin mayor at disney, with the launch of disney plus, signing up nearly 10 million people right away. one of the themes -- kevin feige over at marvel with avengers endgame and obviously they work together. jason: just changing the world. bret: and then you have ian at warner bros.

you're seeing a ton in the streaming world, a lot of people reshaping how we watch tv. jason: the combined market value of the incubator and match group is up to $10.5 million this year. levin worked on wall street right out of college. but when he brought him over in 2003, he became a real dealmaker. here's my exclusive chat at the world headquarters in new york city. joey: i came to do mergers and acquisitions, which is what i was doing as a banker, and barry had told the market he wanted to spend $10 billion on acquisitions. i thought sounds like a lot of fun. this was 2003. the internet was not popular. people said advertising doesn't work on the internet. we're not buying eyeballs anymore. this is overdone.

we thought there is still opportunity. we spent most of our money in travel. we were active in that. we were very involved in this process. it was a great group of people. i learned a tremendous amount from. started to do acquisitions and some finance stuff, started running my first business in 2009. jason: go back to joining. at that point, barry diller is capital b, capital d. he's not an unknown at this point. what were your first impressions? joey: people had all these things, you're going to your first meeting, don't look at him. but don't look away from him.

i was like, what? there were all these rules. you go into the meeting, he's a regular person. but he's very intense, very sharp, and gets to the point very quickly. sort of intolerant of nonsense or waste, but he's a person in a meeting. the thing that i appreciate right away and still appreciate very much is culture of debate and discussion and challenging. in a lot of ways, hard to do as a leader because you say to everybody, is actually everything i say, you should challenge -- essentially everything i say, you should challenge. and you should make sure you get to the right answer. it's, definitively, a better way of getting to the answer. it doesn't work for everybody. some people don't like that culture. but it worked well for me and my personality.

but i didn't really get to know barry until several years. jason: m&a has been at the core of this company in a lot of ways, both buying and selling, in many ways. how does that help define the culture? there's a lot of movement and there's a lot of constant coming and going, in many ways, and a lot of innovation, but also potential friction among these new things happening. how do you manage that? joey: there's a lot in there. we like the friction. we like that things challenge themselves and each other. we have multiple businesses in the same category competing with each other. we'd rather disrupt ourselves than have somebody disruptors. we're often, if we have a thesis on a category, we want several teams going after it. it's ok if they compete with each other and challenge each

other in going after that end result. in many ways, you can predict some components of the future. nobody can predict the future, but you can say here's one way , of doing something. here's a better way. five years, 10 years, are people going to be doing the better way or the worst way? they're definitely going to be doing the better way. but you do know that that's what the future is going to look like. what do we try to put bets against that feature so we can meaningfully participate in it. that sometimes leads to conflict. that is sometimes ok with us. jason: coming up, calling with a potential greener take on the smartphone. carol: over at chanel, they get

serious about luxury watches. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

♪ jason: welcome back. i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. join bloomberg on the radio. you can also catch up by listening to our podcast at apple podcast, wherever you find your podcast. jason: you can also find us on businessweek.com. carol: as far as human rights and the environment are concerned, smartphones are a nightmare. jason: not to mention difficult to repair and recycle. i'm scared of opening that up, that is unless you're a company in amsterdam that figured out how to fix that with the fair phone. carol: checking that out is stephan in berlin. stefan: it is the sustainable

answer to all the other smartphones out there. smartphones in general are pretty bad when it comes to sustainability. they are built in questionable environments, using metals and minerals mined in war zones, and it's basically impossible to recycle them or repair them, meaning they'll often get tossed. that's not a good thing. carol: i'm thinking in this moment and movement, where folks are looking for greener solutions to everything, i'm curious why this hasn't happened sooner or taken off more. put it in perspective. we sell more than a billion smartphones around the world, yet this is a small part of the market. stefan: yes, the cell phone is still a niche product.

last year 1.4 billion , smartphones were sold around the world. the fair phone has a modest target of selling 150,000 models next year. however, you know, these products are catching on. the fair phone is catching on because the source is sustainable minerals from fair trade sources and from places where they ensure there is no child labor or armed conflicts involved. it's using recycled plastics and you can easily take this phone out and open it up and repair it yourself for a fraction of the cost, getting your iphone or samsung galaxy repaired. carol: that blows my mind. jason: let's talk about the element. carol: comes with a screwdriver. jason: exactly. how do they make something one can fix oneself? stefan: yeah, so basically they

had the problem, which is when you have your iphone's broken and you want to repair it yourself, that's basically impossible. not only will you not open it, but you void warranty. so they tried to come up with a new model and design that makes that possible. the phone ships with a tiny screwdriver that you can use to open the device, and very simply, easily replace seven key components from the screen that we know breaks easily, to the camera, to the battery, to all kinds of key components that usually you won't see or touch in other smartphones. jason: can chanel make up for lost time? carol: old age could be a beauty goldmine. this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

♪ carol: welcome back. i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. you can also listen to us on the radio. carol: am 960 in the bay area and always on the bloomberg business app.

jason: we turn to two stories. carol: one is chanel channeling the watch business. jason: the other about cosmetics for the elderly. carol: we got the details from jim ellis. jim: we looked at chanel's boutique and is facing these well-known names and watches, like rolex, and there's chanel, which is normally thought of as a female centered brand that's big in real fashion and also in fragrance. we think about the blazers and purses, but you don't think about watches, even though they've been in the watch business. now they decided to make a push. that's tricky because the brand is associated with a feminine fashion orientation, and that's not where the biggest watch companies are, the biggest are things that men buy. it's a male focused kind of

business and this is a tough way for chanel people to shoulder their way in. carol: is it going after men specifically, or men and women? jim: it's all in. they have a watch called the j12. it's a unisex watch. it's sized and styled in a way that looks good on both men and women. carol: has it done well? jim: it has done well but it is just the beginning. other companies have had a hundred years or couple hundred years in watches. this is definitely a 110-year-old brand, but associated with fashion. two watch aficionados, the notion of a fashion watch, that's not a compliment. jason: watches are a funny corner of the market. we've talked about the watch trade with chris reiter, who runs the pursuit section, who i imagine was consulted in this, but i do wonder why -- not to be too cynical about chanel, but what makes them so special?

carol: chanel is special, but go ahead. jim: that's something they've had to contend with among the inside watch crowd. they've been not just wanting to sell watches, but make better watches. they've invested in making their own movements, which is the hard part of watchmaking. not just putting a quartz movement on something, but instead saying they are going to have mechanical specialists in switzerland making their watches. they also own minority ownership in very expensive swiss watch companies. they know how to make watches. it's been shown. they won the sort of the oscars of watches in geneva the last two years for best women's watch. one of them was extremely technical. they have the product.

the issue is can they break into something that people haven't typically thought of as being controlled by a few other companies, particularly at a price point that a luxury company needs to charge. carol: going after watches, they have a cosmetics line. i don't know if they are looking to tap into the elderly consumer market. but in japan, cosmetics for the elderly is a thing. jim: i did not see this one coming. jason: tell us what's going on. jim: we all know that japan has the oldest populace of any country right now. and so, it wasn't a big stretch for consumer product companies to say oh, the elderly, there may be a good market. but when you think of cosmetics, it's aimed at the young. you target everything about

looking like you're 20, with the skin of 20-year-olds. instead, in japan, where almost half the women are over 50. carol: i love that over 50 is elderly. i'd like to put that out there. jim: in another 15-20 years, they will be over 60. this is an aging population. all of a sudden, people said they shouldn't be ignored. this is an affluent population, as well. if we bought a product aimed at that market, we can get more. companies are coming out with lines that look at that. polo orbis, they are doing that. they are also using older influencers, as well. jason: that was one of the things that jumped out at me. in the same issue where we are celebrating kylie jenner at the ripe old age of 22 with her line, that she does a deal with cody, here we have a throwback to my era, kate moss, 45 years old.

jim: the spokesperson. 45, while it seems young to me, is not young to that world. therefore, what they're saying, a more mature skin. one of the interesting things, polo orbis, one of the biggest cosmetic companies in japan, is using one of its influencers, a woman who is one of the world's oldest beauty consultant. she's 99 years old. she's helping women with their skin forever. it was really interesting to see there are all sorts of tricks, strategies people use when they are dealing with older customers. it means the bottles have to have larger text so it doesn't strain your eyes as much. it also means you use wax on some of the eye products so it

doesn't hurt the skin. and special combs that have little dots of black at the end of teeth to go for the roots of hair that is turning gray. there are all sorts of things people are using to say, i understand your aging, but you can still look your best way and we'll help you with that thank you. spend money with our company. jason: does this have the potential to go global? jim: i think so. is not just japan aging quickly. china, even though it's a developing market, it's also a rapidly aging market. china is where these companies are expanding as the next step. also, the u.k. is another market that has an aging population, particularly aging female population. this is something that's a lot bigger in years to come. carol: businessweek is available on newsstands now.

jason: and online and our mobile app. what is your must read? carol: bloomberg 50. we widdle it down with reasons why you should know about them. some are household names, some are not. jason: we'll be talking to a lot of them monday night in new york city. we'll have a live broadcast from our radio show. we'll be hosting with joel weber. carol: and we'll be hosting the interviews next weekend show on bloomberg businessweek. jason: for more bloomberg television, it starts right now. ♪

daybreake to australia. we are counting down to asia's major market open. ♪ paul: here are the top stories in the next hour. weaker than expected shipments last month show why china needs a trade deal. global demand increasingly hurting the economy. oil set to expand three days of gains after opec announce more production curbs.