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There has been feverish talk over the past few days that the UK and European Union are close to agreeing a deal to determine the future of the continent’s financial services industry, but that talk is premature: real negotiations likely haven’t even started yet.

Evergrande’s $1.8bn bond at the end of October sent ripples through Asia’s bond market. It also set a dangerous precedent for a market that is already accused of letting standards slip.

FX and equity markets jump as a possible US-China trade deal is back in sight, Chinese president Xi Jinping promises more developments on free-trade zones and a registration-based stock system, and the Dubai International Financial Centre takes action to expand Chinese institutions’ access to the Middle East Africa and South Asia (MEASA).

In this round-up, MSCI proposes plans to increase four-fold the weighting of A-shares in its emerging markets (EM) index, China and the Philippines are launching a peso and renminbi trading platform next month, and weaker external demand drags down China's PMIs.

In this round-up, Chinese president Xi Jinping promises more support for the private sector, Australia’s state of Victoria becomes the first in the country to support the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Xi and US president Donald Trump discuss trade on a phone call ahead of their meeting at the G20 later this month.

Too little capital, too much sketchy stuff on the balance sheet, too poor a set of earnings figures; maybe Germany should look closer to home before criticising other countries’ banking systems.

Bitcoin has its birthday on Halloween. Make of that what you will. The shadowy phantom (or cabal of phantoms) known as Satoshi Nakamoto published the bitcoin whitepaper 10 years ago.

Global equity markets' red October caught many by surprise. It was an unusual coincidence of mostly positive earnings reports and the worst month of stock performance for some time. Anyone looking to bring a deal to the market should pay more attention to the direction of travel than scavenging for positives with which to paint a rosy picture.

Is banking due its own #MeToo moment? So far, there have been few whistle blowers in this testosterone filled industry, perhaps suggesting either that banks are much less sexist than some might fear, or that there are still a lot of stories yet to surface.

Clawback columnist Philippe Espinasse says the latest proposals by Hong Kong’s Law Society could spell bad news for international securities lawyers in the city.

Recent developments may help push the risk of cyber attacks onto the capital markets through catastrophe bonds and other insurance-linked securities (ILS). But investors are likely to be wary about taking on too much exposure.

Central banks and international financial institutions have raised a storm over vanishing investor protection covenants in leveraged loans. But most warnings about the market have avoided assigning blame where it is richly deserved — to the private equity industry.