Written by Gary
US stock markets ended up fractionally (SPY +0.2%) after having slipped off session highs. US job growth slowed more than expected after two straight months of hefty increases.
Todays S&P 500 Chart
The Market in Perspective
Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
Wall Street gains as rate hike bets in check after jobs dataNEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street gained on Friday as a tepid U.S. jobs report did little to change bets for another interest rate hike this year, while investors were on track to kick off a typically dour month for stocks on a positive note. | |
Looming debt ceiling deadline pushing some U.S. fund managers to cashNEW YORK (Reuters) – A potential standoff over the U.S. federal debt ceiling is raising alarm bells among fund managers who fear a repeat of 2011 when a protracted showdown over increasing the government’s borrowing limit and subsequent downgrade of U.S. credit quality led to a more than 15 percent slump in the S&P 500 stock index. | |
Federal Reserve finalizes rules to help unwind big banksWASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve on Friday finalized a new rule that should make it easier to wind down systematically important U.S. banks by creating a safe harbor for financial contracts after a firm defaults. | |
Dow, DuPont complete planned merger to form DowDuPont(Reuters) – Dow Chemical Co and DuPont said on Friday the companies had successfully completed their planned $130 billion merger to form DowDuPont. | |
U.S. job growth slows in August; wage growth retreatsWASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. job growth slowed more than expected in August after two straight months of hefty increases, but the pace of gains should be more than enough for the Federal Reserve to announce a plan to start trimming a massive bond portfolio accumulated as it sought to bolster the economy. | |
Automaker shares rise as Texans must replace drowned carsDETROIT (Reuters) – Shares of the Big Three Detroit automakers rose on Friday despite lackluster August sales, with investors focusing on a likely surge in demand as residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast replace flood-damaged cars and trucks. | |
Nine years on, another Lehman Brothers bankruptcyWILMINGTON, Del (Reuters) – Two affiliates of Lehman Brothers, the U.S. investment bank that collapsed in 2008 and fueled an economic crisis, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late on Thursday, a reminder of the complexity of unwinding a global financial institution. | |
Fed investigated Dudley’s omission of sibling at Wells FargoNEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York Federal Reserve said on Friday its president, influential U.S. policymaker and bank regulator William Dudley, violated its code of conduct by failing to disclose that his half-sister was an employee of Wells Fargo & Co . | |
Lululemon is leaning toward men to bolster growth(Reuters) – Lululemon Athletica Inc is coming off two straight quarters of solid growth and is forging ahead with expansion plans that include a focus on menswear, a move that could breathe life into an ailing athleisure market. | |
Petition To Label George Soros A “Domestic Terrorist” Has 80,000 SignaturesIn less than two weeks, a WhiteHouse.gov petition demanding that billionaire investor George Soros be declared a “domestic terrorist,” and that authorities seize his multibillion-dollar fortune, has garnered nearly enough signatures to force the Trump administration to issue a formal response. The petition, which has attracted 80,000 signatures so far – just 20,000 shy of the 100,000-signature threshold where a response would be required – accuses Soros of being guilty of sedition by financing groups that help support violent Antifa counter-protesters and other dangerous leftist groups. Last week, we reported that a similar petition, this one asking that President Donald Trump declare Antifa to be a terrorist group, had reached the threshold. The petition is still awaiting a formal response, but in one promising development, Politico reported today that the Department of Homeland Security had described the group’s actions as “domestic terrorist violence” in private memos. Over the past week, the mainstream media narrative has turned decidedly against Antifa, with the Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Atlantic publishing stories criticizing the group’s violent tactics. | |
Ford Touts ‘Positive’ Impacts Of Hurricane Harvey As August Auto Sales SlumpEarlier this week when we noted that Hurricane Harvey was likely to have destroyed more cars than Katrina (see post here), we concluded by predicting that auto OEMs would spin the utter devastation in Houston as a ‘positive’ for their inventory crisis. Here’s what we said:
Now, fast forward just a couple of days and it’s almost as if Ford prepped their August sales call notes from our previous post. Speaking to analysts this morning, Ford’s CEO gleefully touted all of the upside potential for the auto industry in the wake of Hurricane Harvey noting that replacement demand will be “a little more positive” than even he expected.
Of course, it’s … | |
Amazon Has Twice As Many Fulfillment Centers As The Rest Of The Entire US Retail IndustryAsk a number of analysts what is the secret to Amazon’s retail (if not overall) success, and 9 out of 10 times the answer will be its meticulous, seamless, and incredibly efficient distribution and logistics system. Or, as Credit Suisse puts it, Amazon has stumbled on (really created) a new distribution model: a “pull” (or demand) model in which the Distribution Center is at the center of the shopping/retail experience, vastly different from the old “push” model, which centered around the retail store. It’s also what Credit Suisse calls the “Amazon Effect”, and is the biggest (not so) secret behind the company’s retail success. Here is how Credit Suisse describes it:
This is also known as the Amazon moat, or why Jeff Bezos’ company, well … | |
A Jobs Pause That RefreshesThe labor market may be cooling just enough to put the Federal Reserve’s mind at ease about slack in the economy, making further rate increases in 2017 much less likely. | |
Meg Whitman Has a Different Mess to Clean UpHewlett Packard Enterprise faces many challenges, including earnings next week and the question of why its CEO was looking elsewhere. | |
Wait Before Investing in Music Industry’s RecoveryUpbeat results from the world’s largest music company aren’t enough to make parent company Vivendi an appealing investment. | |
As Juicero offers refunds, here are 10 foods you should make — NOT buyThese pricey foods are easy to rustle up at home. | |
Media companies need authenticity and consistency to survive, says Time Out CEOIn the last five years, Time Out has made a number of big changes: making the magazine free, launching a new business segment that which saw revenue increase 115% last year, it hired a new CEO, went public on the London Stock Exchange and is experiencing growth in a publishing and media landscape that is facing more than its fair share of challenges. | |
Market Extra: Dow faces an important change to how it’s calculatedThe owner of the 121-year-old Dow Jones Industrial Average is set to tweak an important component of the blue-chip gauge on Friday: its divisor. |
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