Written by Gary
Wall Street edged higher on Thursday as investors looked beyond disappointing earnings from Ford. It is the 10th session of range-bound trading, following a sharp rally in late June and early July that hit record highs and has left the S&P 500 up 6 percent for the year. Oil is trading at its lowest levels since April as concerns of an continuing oversupply worry investors. US WTI crude was down at $40.58 earlier today and are now down about 20% from their last peak in June.
Here is the current market situation from CNN Money | |
 | North and South American markets are mixed today. The Bovespa is up 0.92% while the S&P 500 gains 0.16%. The IPC is off 0.60%. |
What Is Moving the Markets
| Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
| Tech stocks power Wall St. recovery, S&P hits new high(Reuters) – Wall Street turned positive in afternoon trading on Friday, with the S&P 500 index hitting a record intraday high for the seventh time this month, as gains in Alphabet and Amazon more than made up for losses in energy shares. |
| U.S. growth lackluster as firms run down inventoriesWASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. economic growth unexpectedly remained tepid in the second quarter as inventories fell for the first time in nearly five years and business investment remained weak, offsetting robust consumer spending. |
| SABMiller backs AB InBev offer for biggest-ever consumer mergerLONDON (Reuters) – The board of brewer SABMiller will recommend its shareholders approve a sweetened takeover offer by Anheuser Busch InBev , the company said on Friday, capping a week of high drama about the fate of the consumer industry’s biggest-ever merger. |
| Oil rout erodes second-quarter profits for U.S. majors Exxon, ChevronHOUSTON (Reuters) – Chevron Corp posted its worst quarterly loss since 2001 on Friday and Exxon Mobil Corp reported a 59 percent slide in quarterly profit, both victims of a prolonged rout in crude prices and sinking income from refining, a sign of the broad malaise across the energy sector. |
| Alphabet and Amazon wind up stellar quarter for big tech(Reuters) – Google parent Alphabet Inc and e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc capped a blockbuster June quarter for the five biggest U.S. tech companies as their dominance in key markets helped them defy the “law of large numbers”. |
| Fed’s Williams downplays GDP weakness, sees rate hikesCAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve could raise interest rates up to two times before year end, a top Fed official said on Friday as he downplayed data that showed the U.S. economy grew far less than expected in the last quarter. |
| Exclusive: California regulator says testing to begin on Volkswagen diesel fixLOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Volkswagen AG and the California Air Resources Board will begin testing hardware and software that could help the German automaker avoid buying back as many as 475,000 diesel cars sold in the United States with improperly designed pollution controls, the head of the board told Reuters. |
| Rising revenue boosts UPS profit; 2016 forecast confirmedCHICAGO (Reuters) – United Parcel Service Inc reported a higher quarterly net profit on Friday that met analyst expectations as revenue grew across its business units, and the company reaffirmed its full-year earnings outlook despite global economic uncertainty. |
| Taxing times: why Russian pump prices rise as oil prices fallMOSCOW (Reuters) – The global economic slowdown has hurt millions of households, but has at least had a silver lining: with oil prices falling, the cost of filling up a vehicle with fuel has dropped. |
| US Oil Rig Count Rises At Fastest Rate Since Jan 2010With inventories once again on the rise, demand set to seasonally tumble, and production on the rise, the lagged response to the bounce in crude prices continues in the US oil rig count, rising 3 last week to 374. This is the 8th rig count rise in the last 9 weeks. The 58 rig rise (+18% off the lows) is the fastest since Jan 2010. Oil prices had melted up all day (despite record OPEC production) as the USD weakened, and extended gains despite the rig count rise. *U.S. GAS RIG COUNT DOWN 2 TO 86 , BAKER HUGHES SAYS *U.S. OIL RIG COUNT UP 3 TO 374 , BAKER HUGHES SAYS The lagged oil price continues to lead the rig count…
And the response in oil prices (having bounced off the 200DMA), but the USD remains key today…
Charts: Bloomberg |
| Get Ready For America’s New $29 Trillion DebtSubmitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com, According to Jacques Necker, everything was just fine. The year was 1781, and Necker, France’s finance minister, had just published a report called Compte Rendu au Roi, an accounting of French public finances. Necker’s report showed that, despite extraordinary public services and military spending, France had a net credit position of +10 million livres. In other words, the country was in perfect fiscal health. It turns out that Necker had cooked the books. Rather than being 10 million on the positive side, France had racked up 520 million livres worth of debt and could no longer afford to pay interest. France had spent decades accumulating prodigious debts. They built monuments, parks, and splendid cities that still inspire awe today. They explored the world and expanded their empire. They engaged in almost constant military conquest in far-away lands. This all came at great cost. But it never seemed to matter. The French government knew they were the world’s dominant superpower, and they overspent their national income as if it were their divine privilege to do so. As William Olphus describes in his book Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, the French “tended to see the natural world as cornucopian- that is, as a banquet on which they were free to gorge without limit.” Nearly all superpowers see the world in this way. ‘We’re #1 therefore we no longer have to be fiscally prudent.’ Sir John Glubb, having seen his own British … |
| Why Bank of Japan Dipped Into Bag of Small TricksThe Bank of Japan underwhelmed overexcited expectations for yet another big bang of monetary stimulus. But the BOJ did promise some needed introspection. |
| Just What Banks Didn’t Need, An Equities SlumpCapital-constrained banks have moved away from debt trading, now stock market activity is drying up |
| Little Sign of Post-Brexit Recovery at IAGU.K. flag carrier British Airways is probably a less useful bellwether for recovery than budget airlines Ryanair and easyJet. |
| The Tell: Apple’s historic stock surge could confirm what Buffett already knewThe second-biggest price gain in Apple’s stock is a welcome distraction from recent concerns about falling iPhone sales, and could confirm what Warren Buffett may have believed several months ago, that a bottom has already been seen. |
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