Here's what you need to know on Thursday.
1. China and the USA's trade battle intensified on Wednesday after China retaliated against a series of tariffs announced by the US on Tuesday. China plans to impose tariffs on more than 100 American products with a combined trading value of over $50 billion, swiftly firing back at the US just hours after the Trump administration made similar proposals on Chinese products.
2. The escalating skirmish might just end up to Trump's benefit, according to Dutch bank ING. Raoul Leering, head of international trade analysis at Dutch bank ING, argued that Trump's actions — imposing a total of around $50 billion worth of tariffs on more than 100 products coming from China — may rally other countries around him, benefiting US trade outside of China.
3. US stocks climbed back up after getting clobbered Wednesday morning. The Dow Jones industrial average erased a more than 500 point loss, led by gains in shares of Apple and IBM.
4. Asian shares bounced from two-month lows on Thursday as world equities recovered from a sell-off triggered by escalating Sino-U.S. trade tensions, with investors hoping a full-blown trade war between the world's two biggest economies can be averted. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.2%, a day after it hit its lowest level in almost two months.
5. Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump's top economic adviser, told Fox Business that the brewing trade war with China would end in a "pot of gold." Kudlow also told reporters that China tariffs may not even go into effect as they are part of a negotiating tactic.
6. The Facebook data of up to 87 million people were affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social network said on Wednesday. It's far more than previously thought, with earlier estimates putting it at around 50 million. In a conference call with reporters, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company had made a "huge mistake" by not recognizing its responsibilities.
7. JPMorgan's top banks analyst Kian Abouhossein said in a note Wednesday that Deutsche Bank needs to slash its US business. The US business consumes 20% of Deutsche Bank's capital, has 10,000 staff, and yet delivered a return on equity of less than 2% in 2017, according to Abouhossein. Deutsche Bank should slash its equities business and investment banking business, he said.
8. Italian state lender CDP will buy a stake of up to 5 percent in Telecom Italia, two sources close to the matter said on Thursday. The move is aimed at protecting the country's interests in the former phone monopoly, whose assets are considered strategic and where the top shareholder is France's Vivendi, with a stake of just under 24 percent.
9. Amid the volatility in February and March, a "single winner" emerged, according to Larry Hatheway, the head of investment solutions and chief group economist at GAM. "With the advent of two-way markets, where people who buy stocks can make money or lose money (which was largely absent in 2017), you're beginning to see investors focus on what can deliver hopefully reliable or predictable, perhaps less volatile performance," he told Business Insider.
10. Employees of Coinnest, South Korea's fifth largest cryptocurrency exchange, were detained on Thursday in connection with the alleged embezzlement of assets, Maeil Business Newspaper reported on Thursday, citing prosecutors. Coinnest was not immediately available for comment, although the company's websites appeared to be operating as normal.