Asia bourses follow Wall Street higher, glitch rocks fund world and mobile phone addiction

The daily briefing “FirstFT” from the Financial Times.

Major markets across the Asia-Pacific region were broadly positive this morning, taking their cue from a strong overnight session on Wall Street. In China, both the benchmark Shanghai Composite and the tech-heavy Shenzhen Composite were up about 2 per cent, offering respite to investors after the wild gyrations of previous days.

On Wednesday, US stocks snapped a six-day losing streak in a volatile and tense session that saw the S&P 500 post its biggest one-day gain since November 2011. (FT)

In the news

Fed’s Dudley cools on rate rise William Dudley, the head of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve and an influential voice on the central bank’s policy-setting committee, told a conference that while it was “important not to overreact to short-term market developments”, the argument for tightening monetary policy as early as September “seem[s] less compelling to me [now] than it was a few weeks ago”. (FT)

Glitch rocks fund world The US fund management world was struck on Wednesday by a computer glitch, keeping dozens of mutual and exchange traded funds from expeditiously pricing securities. The glitch prompted emergency meetings at a number of groups, with Bank of New York Mellon pinning its problems on a SunGard Data Systems issue. (FT)

Republicans take potshots at China Beijing has become the latest bogeyman of the US presidential election. Republican presidential candidates have taken shots at the Chinese leadership over the recent market turmoil, with one contender urging President Barack Obama to rescind his invitation for a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. (FT)

Walmart ditches assault rifles The world’s largest retailer will stop stocking AR-15s and other so-called modern sporting rifles when it resets its stores with autumn inventory. However, the move was motivated more by falling consumer demand than the ongoing issues with gun control in the US, the company said. (Quartz)

Monsanto drops bid The seeds group dropped its $46bn offer for rival Syngenta on Wednesday, sending shares of the Swiss group tumbling. Monsanto said it was told by Syngenta that its latest offer — its third — did not meet the company’s expectations. (FT)

It’s a big day for

US growth Economists expect the country’s GDP to have grown 3.2 per cent sequentially in the second quarter. (fastFT)

New Orleans Barack Obama travels to Louisiana to mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which laid waste to vast swaths of the Big Easy. A decade on, the city’s economy is thriving, with start-ups flourishing and tourism on the up. (NYT)

Food for thought

No end to the burger wars McDonald’s has shot down a proposal by Burger King to put aside decades of rivalry and come together to create one ” delicious, peace-loving burger“. The idea was laid out for the world to see in full-page advertisements in US newspapers and the internet, but quickly dismissed by McDonald’s chief executive, who said: “A simple phone call will do next time.” (FT)

China explainer The country’s stock market rout has sent global markets into a tailspin, hammered the currencies of resource-rich developing countries and potentially delayed a US Federal Reserve rate rise originally expected later this year. Here is a visual summary of how China got here. (FT)

A new kind of Facebook friend The social media group looks set to challenge Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana, with the unveiling of an AI-powered virtual assistant . The M service, which will run within Facebook Messenger, has been created to do everything from organise birthdays to calling companies so users do not have to spend hours on hold. (FT)

Are you a mobile addict? Worldwide, there are 280m “mobile addicts” – people who use their smartphones more than 60 times a day. And the time spent on such devices is also increasing: US consumers on average now spend 220 minutes each day – a 35 per cent increase from a year ago, according to research. (USA Today)

Blood test detects cancer relapse A blood test could have the potential to save lives by detecting cancers that have started to grow again following treatment. According to scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, the test found traces of cancer eight months before doctors would normally have noticed. (BBC)

Video of the day

Correction foretold As US stocks enjoyed a rebound, John Authers examines how investors were prepared for a sell-off in equities and why they are not showing other signs of panic. (FT)

This article is published in collaboration with FirstFT. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: FirstFT is the Financial Times’ editors curated free daily email of the top global stories from the FT and the best of the rest of the web.

Image: A man talks on a mobile phone near the Pudong financial district in Shanghai July 17, 2014. REUTERS/Carlos Barria.