Five things to know for the day: China edition - Bloomberg

As noted by Bloomberg, there are five key elements currently driving broader market sentiment into the week, with China, as always, near the top of the list.

Key quotes

"China announced fresh measures to ease the funding strains of private companies, as top officials seek to restore confidence in the world’s second-largest economy. The State Council announced it would support bond financing by private firms on Monday, and said the central bank will provide funding to facilitate this. 

Southeast Asia is seeing a boom in foreign direct investment as the intensifying trade war between the U.S. and China prompts companies to shift production to the region. Vietnam saw manufacturing inflows jump 18 percent in the first nine months of 2018, according to a Maybank Kim Eng Research Pte. note on Monday. In January through July, Thailand’s net FDI rose 53 percent from a year earlier, according to central bank data. In the Philippines, net FDI into manufacturing surged to $861 million in the same period from $144 million a year earlier. “The U.S.-China trade war may be attracting more firms to set up in Asean to circumvent the tariffs,” Maybank economists Chua Hak Bin and Lee Ju Ye said in the note.

Don’t get too excited by the steepest rally in Chinese stocks since 2016, says Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The Shanghai Composite Index’s two-day gain is a sentiment-driven, short-term rebound that is unlikely to be sustained, said David Cui, BofAML’s head of China equity strategy who predicted China’s 2015 equities crash. 

Most U.S. equities  fell Monday, with financial and commodity shares pacing losses ahead of a spate of key earnings reports this week. The dollar rose to the highest level in two months. More than three stocks fell for every two that rose in the S&P 500 Index, with banks tumbling the most."