Last week Donald Trump thought it might be best to delay any trade deal with China until after next year’s US presidential election. Now he says the two countries are “very close” to a deal.

As ever with Trump, it’s hard to take any statement at face value but, on this occasion, the timing probably means something will happen within days. The critical element is the approach of Sunday’s deadline for the US to decide whether to impose tariffs on a further £119bn of Chinese consumer goods.

At the very least, that tit-for-tit round of tariffs may now be cancelled – that’s the natural reading of Trump’s latest tweet. In other words, an escalation in the trade war now looks less likely, which is why the US stock market hit record highs on Thursday.

The open question, though, is whether a “BIG DEAL”, as Trump put it, will actually be a small deal, in which the US agrees to roll back some of the current tariffs while China commits to taking greater quantities of US agricultural goods and pledges to respect a few more intellectual property rights.

That’s the rough outline of the “phase one” deal that investors have focused on in recent weeks. But remember that economists are generally agreed that such a limited de-escalation wouldn’t do much to boost sluggish global growth or remove underlying tensions between the US and China. Stock markets may be celebrating too soon.

Dixons Carphone: phone business loses money as electricals side makes profits

Where would Dixons Carphone be without Carphone? Well, the share price, expressed in old Dixons currency, would be substantially higher, for starters. The so-called “merger of equals” of 2014 has turned into a lopsided takeover in which the mobile phone business loses money almost as fast the electricals side can make profits. The net result for the group at the half-year stage, ignoring one-offs, was a miserable profit of just £24m, down by more than half.

Naturally, the architects of the overhyped merger moved on to well-paid gigs elsewhere, leaving chief executive Alex Baldock to try to put a positive gloss on Carphone, where revenues fell by almost a fifth. The good news, of a sort, is that the unit’s performance was “in line with plan”. Unfortunately, that plan imagines £90m of losses at Carphone over the full year.

What Baldock means is that the figure would be worse if he had not successfully pleaded for mercy from the network operators and secured some relief on contractual terms that obliged Carphone to flog unrealistic numbers of mobile packages.The arrangements roll off anyway eventually, so when might Carphone pull its weight again? It’s anyone guess: mere break-even is pencilled in for “by 2022”. Yes, from the point of view of former standalone Dixons shareholders, the Carphone deal was horrendous.

Still, Baldock seems to be digging deeper into business than his hapless predecessor Sebastian James ever did. The electricals side is gaining share in a subdued UK market and the reliable Nordics division continues to do its stuff. The company is sticking to its forecast of overall full-year profits of £210m.

If investors want a fresh reason to fret, however, it’s that Baldock’s self-help plan seems to rely heavily on encouraging punters to buy new gadgets on “buy now, pay later” credit deals. Many retailers do this, of course, and Baldock may be right that Dixons can operate in a “responsible and safe” manner. Yet credit-fuelled expansion doesn’t feel like high-quality growth. The worry is minor compared to the Carphone calamity, but talk of “transformation” feels premature.

Hargreaves Lansdown to share lessons learned from Woodford debacle – so where are they?

It is six months, almost to the day, since Chris Hill, the chief executive of Hargreaves Lansdown, promised the investment platform would learn from the Neil Woodford debacle, specifically as it related to “best buy” lists. At various moments since then, such as in August in the full-year results, Hill pledged to share these “learnings and improvements” with the outside world.

So where are they? They remain a work in progress, apparently, even though one improvement should be bleedin’ obvious: favourite fund lists, if they’re to reclaim any credibility, need to discover a sceptical tone, instead of being slavish devotees of the cult of the superstar fund manager. Hargreaves’ one-dimensional promotion of Woodford was excruciating.

Perhaps Hill will have deeper insights to offer at the end of his long period of reflection. Or perhaps he’s learned nothing and is hoping the Woodford saga fades away.