London — Worry about a US-led trade war put world stocks at risk of their first two-day loss of the year on Thursday, while bond markets bounced as China poured cold water on reports that it might stop buying US debt. Europe’s main bourses dipped in and out of the red and MSCI’s world index was down 0.2% after Asian and emerging-market indices had been pulled lower by warnings from Canada and Mexico that North American Free Trade Agreement’s (Nafta’s) days could be numbered. Bitcoin also took a major beating, falling as much as 11% as South Korea — one of the crytocurrency’s biggest markets — said it was drawing up laws to ban trading in it. Benchmark government bonds bounced though after China’s regulator said a Bloomberg report that it was considering slowing or halting its US bond purchases, was possibly "fake news". It also helped the dollar to its fourth gain in the past five days against a basket of top world currencies, having suffered one of its worst years on record in 2017...
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