Sebastian Tong

Financial Journalist & Trainer

United States

A financial journalist with over two decades of experience, I've worked across three continents for two of the world's biggest news organizations.

I've held various reporting, editing and training roles in London, Hong Kong and Singapore, previously for Thomson Reuters and now for Bloomberg.

I'm currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area as a senior editor with Bloomberg's Breaking News team, coordinating special coverage and handling market-moving news.

[email protected]

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Portfolio
Chron
07/11/2020
Who has short shorts: Elon Musk sells them for real at $69.42

Elon Musk made good on a promise to produce a pair of "short shorts" to mark his triumph against investors who had bet against Tesla Inc., unveiling the item Sunday among the range of branded apparel for sale on the electric-car maker's online store.

Bnn
Emerging debt crises hold lessons, warnings for Greece

As speculation about a Greek restructuring intensifies, investors could do worse than to look at how emerging economies have faced down debt crises. With some 300 billion euros ($428.3 billion US) in outstanding public and private debt, a Greek workout would be unprecedented.

Reuters
12/13/2010
Analysis: New orthodoxy for markets is more Beijing than DC

Whether Brazil's capital tax to discourage hot money flows or Hungary's unorthodox deficit-slashing plans, states are adopting policies that have less to do with the 'Washington consensus' espoused by the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and more in common with China's particular brand of state activism in the economy.

Reuters
11/11/2011
Analysis - Baltic experiment has lessons for euro zone

LONDON (Reuters) - In their battle to bolster state finances and avoid sovereign defaults, euro zone policymakers may do well to examine the efforts of tiny neighbour Lithuania to reform state-owned enterprises.

Reuters
02/08/2011
Buyer beware or beware the buyers?

Hundreds of Bangladeshi investors have rioted on the streets of Dhaka in recent days over stock prices that have plunged nearly 18 percent since the start of the year. Police used batons and tear gas to break up protests that blocked roads around the country's main stock exchange.

Reuters
05/27/2011
Analysis: Iraq more exposed to legal claims as fund winds down

The winding down of the Development Fund of Iraq (DFI), set up after the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, could see commercial and sovereign claimants intensify efforts to seize Iraqi assets, often in compensation for events in the first Gulf War.

Reuters
08/04/2010
Analysis: Emerging market correlations shift, spark rethink

Generating outperformance from what is defined as a riskier asset class has become more challenging as these fast-expanding economies become more intertwined with their developed peers. More than mere diversification away from mature markets, portfolio allocations into this asset class will increasingly be driven by a recognition that emerging equities, currencies and bonds are moving out of sync with each other.

Reuters
12/06/2011
Analysis - Bond insurance market evolving, not dying

LONDON (Reuters) - The failure of credit default swaps to pay out to bondholders burnt by Greece should have spelt the beginning of the end for a bond insurance market accused of exacerbating Europe's debt stresses. That it may not underscores just how much investors have learnt to use the much-maligned derivatives for other purposes than purely guarding against default.

Redorbit
06/26/2006
Malaysia's converts test freedom of faith

By Sebastian Tong "What they did was wrong. They shouldn't decide our beliefs for us," said the woman - who asked not to be named - of her ordeal in 1999. The ruling comes amid calls for capital punishment for apostasy, and follows a spate of civil suits by Malaysians seeking official recognition of their decision to leave Islam.

Reuters
12/16/2011
A shoe, a song and the promise of the West

I found myself at Selfridges this week, specifically in what the London retailer says is the world's largest shoe department. Slightly dazed by cornucopia of women's shoes on slick display, I was roused only when the haze of muzak wafting over the PA system was suddenly dispersed by the jaunty strains of the Chinese New Year ditty 'Gongxi Gongxi'.

Reuters
08/04/2010
PIGS, CIVETS and other creature economies...

Given the ubiquity of BRICs and PIGS, it seems everyone else in the financial and business world is attempting to conjure up catchy acronyms to group economies with similar traits. All with varying degrees of success.

Reuters
05/28/2010
Spend Save Man Woman

Far from being lauded as a virtue, China's high savings rate has been blamed for the economic imbalances underlying the global financial crisis. The criticism being that the Chinese spend too little and rely too much on exporting to Western consumers.

Wn
09/21/2006
Singapore housing boom brings out ghosts, feuds -

By Sebastian Tong 48 minutes ago SINGAPORE (Reuters) - As neighborhood spats go, Chow Ai Hwa's legal battle to ensure that her husband's ghost has access to his former home in Singapore is unusual.