28Aug2017 Market Close: Wall Street Closed Mostly In The Green, DOW Off 5 Points, WTI Settles Down In The Mid 46 Handle And The US Dollar Remains At The Low 92 Level

Energy, bank shares weigh on Wall Street as Harvey pummels Texas

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Energy and bank shares weighed on the Dow and the S&P 500 on Monday as Tropical Storm Harvey crippled the U.S. energy hub in Texas.

Expedia’s Khosrowshahi poised to take Uber CEO job: memo

(Reuters) – Expedia Inc Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi is poised to accept Uber Technologies Inc’s [UBER.UL] offer to become its new CEO, according to an internal memo sent to Expedia staff, putting him in charge of turning around the loss-making, scandal-ridden ride-services company.

Oil falls but gasoline jumps as Harvey hits U.S. refiners

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. crude oil futures fell more than 3 percent on Monday but gasoline prices surged to two-year highs as Tropical Storm Harvey kept hammering the U.S. Gulf Coast, knocking out several refineries which backed up crude supplies and disrupted fuel production.

GE shifts strategy, financial targets for digital business after missteps

NEW YORK (Reuters) – General Electric Co wants its industrial software business to cut costs and lift profits next year under new chief executive John Flannery, and is considering expanded partnerships and the possible sale of some equity in the unit, according to people familiar with the business.

Fitbit takes aim at Apple with new smartwatch launch

(Reuters) – Wearable device maker Fitbit Inc on Monday launched its newest device, the Ionic smartwatch, with features ranging from fitness tracking to contactless payment, as it gears up to compete with rivals such as Apple Inc .

U.S. home improvement retailer, oil refiner shares climb after Harvey

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Shares of U.S. home improvement retailers and oil refiners climbed on Monday as flooding from Tropical Storm Harvey in Houston, Texas, was likely to worsen in the fourth-largest U.S. city.

U.S. goods trade deficit widens in July; retail inventories fall

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. goods trade deficit increased in July as exports fell, suggesting that trade would make a modest contribution to economic growth in the third quarter.

Whole Foods slashes prices on some produce; also selling Amazon’s Echo

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – On its first day as part of Amazon.com , organic grocery chain Whole Foods Market Inc slashed prices on popular items like avocados and apples on Monday by a third as it bid to shake off its “Whole Paycheck” reputation for high prices.

Western Digital group finalizing $17 billion deal for Toshiba chip unit: source

TOKYO (Reuters) – A consortium led by Western Digital Corp is close to an agreement to buy Toshiba Corp’s $17.4 billion chip business, with the U.S. firm’s CEO in Tokyo to finalize the long and contentious talks, a person familiar with the matter said.

Grocery Bonds Plunge As Amazon Slashes Whole Foods Prices

Amazon has officially owned Whole Foods for less than a day but early channel checks suggest they’ve already slashed in-store prices by nearly 50% on certain products which is causing some heartburn for grocery bond investors. Of course, if we owned 6-8 year paper in a business competing with a company who has a demonstrated willingness to consistently lose money for as long as it takes to gain market share, we’d be a little worried too.

As we noted earlier this morning, early examples observed at the Whole Foods store on 57th Street in Manhattan indicated price cuts of up to 43%:

organic fuji apples were marked down to $1.99 a pound from $3.49 a pound;

organic avocados went to $1.99 each from $2.79;

organic rotisserie chicken fell to $9.99 each from $13.99;

banana prices were slashed to 49 cents per pound from 79 cents.

Of course, per Statistica, there are roughly 40,000 grocery stores in the United States of which less than 400 are owned by Whole Foods/Amazon.

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Wanted: Interplanetary Legal Experts to Hassle Asteroid Miners

Via The Daily Bell

Space police. When is it too soon to make a new federal policing agency to make sure no one is illegally mining asteroids?

We can call it the EPA, Extraterrestrial Protection Agency. They can ignore newly structured interplanetary property rights, and insist that space-dust runoff from the asteroid mining operations are causing mass extinctions on Mars.

You might think space would be vast enough so that property rights in the final frontier were not a huge issue. But to say politicians want to control everything on Earth is an understatement. They also want to control everything in space.

Legal experts are left wondering, how will taxes be structured for space mining companies? Who will own the resources mined? And does this violate a 1967 treaty which says nations cannot claim celestial bodies as their own?

What The Buffett Indicator Is Really Predicting

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Every so often an article is produced that is so misleading that it must be addressed. The latest is from Sol Palha via the Huffington Post entitled: “Buffett Indicator Is Predicting A Stock Market Crash: Pure Nonsense.” Sol jumps right in with both feet stating:

“Insanity equates to doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a new outcome. These predictions have been off the mark for almost 10 years. One would think that would be enough for the experts to re-examine the situation, but instead, they use the same lines they used 10 years ago. One day they will get it right, as even a broken clock is correct twice a day.”

Sol should be careful of throwing stones at glass houses. While we are indeed currently in a very bullish trend of the market, there are two halves of every market cycle.

“In the end, it does not matter IF you are ‘bullish&rsquo …

Army Begins Releasing Water From 2 Houston Dams, Flooding Thousands Of Nearby Homes

The US Army Corps of Engineers began releasing water into the Buffalo Bayou – the main body of water running through Houston – from two flood-control dams whose water level has risen too rapidly, a move that will flood thousands of nearby homes. Emergency workers said they began to release water from the Addicks and Barker dams located 17 miles west of downtown Houston early Monday to prevent uncontrollable flooding of the Houston metropolitan area from torrential rains released by Tropical Storm Harvey, according to ABC News.

Engineers were forced to start the process earlier than previously announced because water levels in the reservoirs had “increased dramatically in the last few hours,” officials said early Monday, adding that the release would likely cause additional street flooding that could spill into homes. This is the first time engineers have done this for flood control, officials said.

“If we don’t begin releasing now, the volume of uncontrolled water around the dams will be higher and have a greater impact on the surrounding communities,” Col. Lars Zetterstrom, the Corps’ Galveston district commander, said in a statement Monday. “Both reservoirs are rising more than half a foot per hour,” Zetterstrom added. “Residents adjacent to the reservoirs need to be vigilant because the water in the reservoirs is rising rapidly.”

“It’s going to be better to release the water through the gates directly into Buffalo Bayou, as opposed to letting it go around the end and through additional neighborhoods …

Harvey’s Lessons for U.S. Energy

The hurricane’s hitting the Gulf Coast of Texas highlights how the U.S. now relies on fewer refineries, run closer to their limits, to turn crude into fuel and get it to consumers.

Uber Gets a Lift From CEO Pick

Uber’s CEO pick, Dara Khosrowshahi, has the skills needed to prepare the troubled company for an initial public offering.

Gilead Has Earned Benefit of the Doubt

When taking a big chance, it helps to have a good track record. Such is the case at Gilead Sciences.

Personal Finance Daily: How to get rich on YouTube and how much coffee you need to drink to live longer

Monday’s top personal finance stories

Called to Account: Earnings season is still a headache, and shareholders shouldn’t stand for it

Once again, earnings season was a confused mix of badly-written releases with missing numbers and tables, all issues that should raise red flags.

Market Extra: Value of all digital currencies hits record around $160 billion as bitcoin, Ether climb

Bitcoin and Ether currencies rose on Monday, helping digital currencies hit an all-time valuation record.