We dont have trading in tokyo. It is the emperors birthday. John, good morning. Japan is closed or the emperors birthday today. China stocks are gaining. Apple as well and also foxconn part of that. Japan is closed. U. S. Gdp better than forecast. More details on what is happening as far as asiapacific stocks. Lets get back to our top stories. Apple finally signing a long awaited deal to get iphones sold through china mobile. Stephen engle is our china correspondent and he is in beijing. This is a long time coming. It is a pretty significant deal as well. X years six years worth of negotiation coming to fruition. Accessll give apple to access to customers on chinas biggest wireless at work. China telecom corp. The china apple have been offering since about 2009. Telecom has offered it since march of last year. The big stumbling block for apple and china mobile has been mobiles insistence to have apple make a handset that could be used on the Homegrown Technology that china mobile was forced by authorities to use. 3g network. No other carriers globally have adopted chinas own homegrown platforms and apple had resisted up until now. China mobile always the big prize for apple. It has 760 million wireless subscribers, 62 of chinas total users. Apple has seen its share in the Chinese Market dwindle. It is number six right now. Cheaper models from samsung, lenovo, xiao mei and other domestic players have outsold the more expensive iphones. Iphones are more expensive and they are highermargin. They attract a higher enduser. Mobile, this is important. It removes the competitive disadvantage that it had in drawing those highend subscribers. Its first annual profit decline in at least a decade. This could give a boost on those highermargin iphones. In a note earlier this month on the impending deal, this deal is potentially negative for china unicom and positive for china mobile as existing iphone customers of unicom and telecom possibly migrate over to china mobile. They are unlikely to renew their contract at expiry. We also heard from china mobile that it will offer four g in 16 cities by the end of this year. It has gone from beyond trial to commercial rollout in more cities by the First Quarter of next year. Thanks, steve. This deal could actually be very good news for apples bottom line. Will that boost earnings . Lets get more as we get over to tim in taiwan. You have been conducting research on what apple means for its suppliers. The interesting thing that we found is the companies that have the highest proportion of their own revenue exposed to apple, where apple is the largest in many cases of a companys revenue comes from apple, those companies, their shares fell this year. They fell significantly. They have very large exposure to apple and their shares have fallen quite a lot this year. Apple itself, their stock hasnt done fantastically this year but outperformed other companies. What we have seen is the idea that having apple as your client hasnt necessarily paid off for those companies. Certainly for the people that have had long positions on those stocks this year. Consideredpple was the golden client . The customer everyone wanted . Things have changed. What has changed . You are right. It was the goose that laid the golden egg for Many Companies. A lot of companies have fought very hard to get into the apple supply chain. The reason for that is pretty straightforward apple is really competitive on margins. That because they come out with one phone a year on average, and it is pretty much a set model, not too many tweaks or combinations of it as opposed to samsung or htc, you get that order, you have got massive volume, incredible growth coming in. In the tech industry, volume is king. That is where you get your private from. If youre just doing a few devices, you cant get a lot of profitability. If you are making components for apple and you get that growth coming you can make a lot of money. That is the way it worked before. Butnue at apple is slowing not growing at the same clip that it used to. If you look at a chart of the Revenue Growth of apple in the last sixeight quarters, it is falling off. It is more than the year before. That growth is what the suppliers have been betting on, making sure they can still get higher growth quarter by quarter, year by year, that is falling off. It means that investors are not as keen on the companies that were very big with big exposure to apple as they might have been a few years ago. Atght, lets take a look the other stories out there. Softbank recently bought sprint. It could be pursuing another u. S. Phone company. Sources say the chief executive has spoken to a number of banks about dying majority stake in t mobile. The Hyundai Group planning to sell assets and it is doing so to boost its cash reserve. The car business is going to remain intact. They will be selling off three Financial Companies and also restructuring some shipping operations too. The group will focus on shipping logistics and machinery distance for business for further growth. A quick check on the shares, securitieschant and just moving to the upside. Merchant up nearly 15 . John mentioned this before, the imf. It is growing more bullish on the u. S. It is more optimistic about the recovery there. Christine lagarde said last weeks budget in washington and the fed decision to stop whining start winding back stimulus ease doubts about the future. We see the fed having taken some very well communicated action concerning the tapering of their program. Those are good signs. In addition to which, we see some good numbers. Growth is picking up and unemployment is going down. All of that gives us a much stronger outlook for 2014 which brings us to raising our forecast. Marketsxt, asias giving investors a bumpy ride. We will look into 2014 next. Lets look into what is happening as far as trading goes. In japan, the emperors 80th birthday meaning that markets are closed. Kospi is up. The Australian Market also up here as well. Wan, singapore, malaysia higher. Prospects for the mama session as well, futures for india are indicating a gain. We did see a friday nifty close of 1. 75 to the upside. We are starting off this curtailed week with gains. Joining us is steve goldman. Thank for joining us. Lets start off with the year that is about to conyers. End. What do you think will continue into next year . I think for me, the Biggest Surprise was the strength of equity markets. 2014 repeat what we have seen in 2013i think will be the big challenge. It is hard to see how equity markets and risk markets in general can rally to the extent they did in 2013. 53 or thereabouts. That is probably not going to happen again next year. I guess it is going to be the real litmus test for abenomics, what happens in japan and whether we actually begin to see proper growth Profit Growth to ming through. Also, wages going up and a bit of self a bit of inflation which is sustained. In japan, you have a lot of optimism surrounding the fiscal and monetary plans that came through. I think level Central Banks continue global Central Banks continue to provide liquidity and you saw risk markets respond to that. I think 2014 at least from the u. S. Perspective, youre going to see a little bit of curtailing of that liquidity. To whatbe a question of extent the markets are already pricing that in versus to what extent the Central Banks are still going to want to force investors to move back into risk markets. That is going to be key too. Stimulus gradually being eased and the normalization of monetary policy. Today too. Look, what i would say is that Global Growth story seems to be on a slow recovery pattern. Central banks are going to continue to promote that liquidity. You are going to have some troubles like in europe in 2014 and the question is, will markets respond like they did in 2013. Like i said earlier, i think it is going to be more of a challenge in. 14 because a lot of the good story has already been priced into some markets. Where you are at the moment, what is the vibe you are getting for next year . You have the reserve bank looking like it has the wiggle room to cut Interest Rates further. It is an economy which is a bit fragile. It is. There is going to be a transition from that Mining Investment or Service Sector and manufacturing. The challenge for australia has been the strength of the currency. That transition needs to happen at a much Weaker Exchange rate. We have seen the weakening of the aussie dollar toward the end of the year especially now when the fed is beginning their tapering program. I think a lot of the story for australia in 2014 is going to be the currency. How weak it gets as opposed to the u. S. Dollar and to what extent the economy can transition towards service and manufacturing. When you talk about mining, it is a reflection of what is going on in china as well. It is not going to have a hard landing or anything like that, most people say. What will happen when it comes to equities . We have had four years of declining equity markets there. The challenge for china has always been that they have too Many Companies producing exports. The competition is tremendous. You are seeing good growth. You are seeing the Chinese Government probably accomplishing its goal of continuing to move people out of the Agricultural Sector into manufacturing. Fact is that corporate profitability in china really isnt that good because there is so much cap edition. You expect that to change in 2014. I would say probably not. The main goal for china is to continue growth by pulling people out of farming and into manufacturing. In the end, china is very competitive. Stillate profitability really isnt that good. I am not sure youre going to see a significant change in 2014. That is not to say there arent Good Companies in china. There definitely are. There is still a lot of excesses that need to be pushed out. Steve, had a great christmas. This promises to be a quiet week in the runup to christmas. There are some stories on the agenda. Report orsent us this new york. Mondaying ahead to trading on wall street, it will be a much shortened week because of the holiday and volume will be lower as a result. We kick off the week on monday with the latest data on u. S. Personal spending which analysts say likely accelerated. On tuesday, the latest data on new home sales and durable goods orders which were expected to climb. On thursday, we get initial jobless claims. All exchanges will be closed wednesday to observe the christmas holiday. Washington will also be scaled down throughout the week. Congress in recess and the Supreme Court on official break. President obama will also be out of town for the holiday. He gave an optimistic outlook on the economy in the new year. Pressnal press on 7 conference of the year before heading on vacation. 14 can be a breakthrough year for america. Outlined in detail earlier this month, we know there is a lot more we have to do to restore opportunity and broad based growth for every american. That is going to require some action. Since winning the white house in 2008, the first family has vacationed in the president s native hawaii which is where he will be this week. The airnt and his force flies in about 22 vehicles so the president and golf, attend a basketball game at his alma mater and visit his favorite restaurants. Up next, thailands opposition ramping up the rhetoric as it vows to drive yingluck from power. The latest on those protests in bangkok coming up. Hong kong and shanghai getting underway. Just a minute away eight minutes away. Hang seng futures up 0. 3 . The premarket ending its auctions high. China mobile gaining as well 1. 3 as it inks a deal with apple to sell the iphone. Turning to events in thailand where antigovernment protesters have stepped up pressure on the government. They are vowing to continue their campaign to drive the Prime Minister from office. The opposition says it will boycott the upcoming elections. Lets get the latest from our South East Asia correspondent. To theseof an end bangkok protests. No end insight, not for the moment. Pressure is building with a prolonged protest and the boycott. The government is expecting up to 70,000 protesters today in various sites in bangkok. At their peak, there were 200,000 key ministries disrupted and the government was forced to dissolve parliament on december 9. Here is what Prime MinisterYingluck Shinawatra had to say. It is regretful the democrats decided not to take part in the election. She says the democrats aim is political reform. That cant be achieved without the polls. As Prime Minister agree to use live ammunition in 2010, they closed the alliance with a protest movement which is spearheaded by someone who could be tried for treason if the government so chooses. To preventpledged the vote from going ahead. It is important to note that yingluck was democratically elected and the democrats have lost every National Election over the past two decades. They have struggled to win support especially from the rural areas. Yingluck retains a huge base. Electionappens to the given this boycott by the democrats . Will they go ahead with it . Ahead. Elections will go yingluck said the vote will go ahead as planned and must be held within 60 days after parliament is dissolved. Parliament as we said earlier was dissolved on december 9. After the democrats resigned en masse to join the demonstration. Based on preliminary talks, 45 parties are ready to participate. I want to show you how the markets have responded. The bank and marked down about 8 . The worlds second worst performer in that time after the philippines. The baht continues to weaken. It was pushed to down by the protests and the fed tapering. No surprise that investors are nervous even though demonstrations are not new in thailand. Investors just want more clarity. Now lets check in with the headlines around the world. Has charged 13 people in connection with a fatal fire at a garment factory november last year. 112 workers died in the blaze. Officers say the emergency exits were locked. The website bdnews24. Com says many executives may have fled the country. Mikhail khodorkovsky has vowed to campaign for Political Prisoners in russia after he was released by president vladimir putin. He spoke at checkpoint charlie in berlin. He said he would not Fund Opposition parties in his homeland. He has friends who are still in prison including his former business partner. On the International Space station have successfully removed a faulty cooling pump which completes the task well ahead of schedule. It means that only two may be needed rather than the three originally planned. It forced the crew to turn off all nonessential equipment and hold scientific research. Chinas lunar lander and rover have spent the weekend taking pictures of each other. It is before they resumed their exploration of the moons serpas. They reached the moon on the 14th of december. The rover will spend the next three months looking for Natural Resources while the lender will serve as a landing site over the next year. Lets tell you what we have got coming up after the break. We check in with the markets. Blackberry continues its hemorrhaging of cash. It is trying to turn the corner and it is hoping that a deal with foxconn will help. Details on this deal coming up and indeed also getting a look at the reaction for foxconn shares in taipei. In hong kong and shanghai in about three minutes. We have numbers coming up with futures indicating positivity. The worlds biggest mobile operator striking a chord with apple. After declines, shanghai is aiming to avoid its worst run since 1991. The Casino Industry betting on a happy new year in japan. We will hear from sheldon adelson. We are getting hong kong started off and shanghai as well coming into the mix. Expected as we head towards christmas. What are we seeing . A fairly upbeat tone from the u. S. Better thanr gdp forecast and the imf quite bullish on the u. S. Growth because of three things, the fed tapering, the communication being very well received. Number two, the jobs are consistently declining. Number three, the budget, no impasse, no shutdown. You have shanghai compass it composite braking declines today. Rising. Keepwell your eyes on china mobile and china unicom and China Telecom. This after the apple story with china mobile today. China mobile shares rising 1. 5 . China mobile accounts for watch out for those shares in the u. S. Open. The biggest supplier to walmart, shopping is a great big part of christmas. Shares are largely lower. Volumes are very low. Japan today is shut for the emperors birthday. We have market volumes low because of the u. S. Story again. Tomorrow is a half day in china and hong kong. One of the bestperforming stocks on this monday morning is because of apple. Those markets there in china getting underway, the main concern of investors today is this deepening cash shortage. David is here with the latest. It is those interbank lending rates, whatever you want to call it. We are just getting underway. You saw john showing a little bit of gains at the open on shanghai, the shanghai composite. Perhaps a good sign is that earlier on, we saw borrowing costs have come down at the start. We are at 5. 5 for this one week benchmark. We are not seeing a lot of movement but it is still very early. This is what happened yesterday at the session. Friday, you see that on your screen. We started the day lower and as we moved through the session, that quickly went up. Lets see if this holds at 5. 5 . The market is not exactly in good spirits. We were at nine days of losses on friday. Shanghai composite it is ridiculous the way this market has performed this year. So what is the view of what is going on with these rates . I think it is good to get a view of the thr