31Oct2017 Market Close: Wall Street Indexes On Track For Their Best Monthly Gains Since February, The Stock Market’s Tech Benchmark Just Matched A Nearly 40-year-old Record, US Crude Prices Stable At The 45 Handle

Wall St. set to end month on up note as tech, staples lead

(Reuters) – A jump in shares of consumer companies Mondelez and Kellogg after their quarterly reports, along with further gains for tech stocks on Tuesday, put the three major Wall Street indexes on track for their best monthly gains since February.

Uber CEO says company’s future in Brazil in the balance

BRASILIA (Reuters) – The chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc, Dara Khosrowshahi, said on Tuesday that his company’s future in Brazil depends on government decisions, as the Brazilian Senate prepared to vote on regulating car hailing apps.

Apple could drop Qualcomm components in next year’s iPhones, iPads: sources

(Reuters) – Apple Inc has designed iPhones and iPads that would drop chips supplied by Qualcomm Inc , according to two people familiar with the matter.

Pfizer expects broad interest for consumer health business

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Pfizer Inc, the largest U.S. drugmaker, expects no shortage of suitors for its consumer health business and said it would decide whether to sell, spin off or retain the unit next year.

Kellogg’s surprise sales increase cheers investors

(Reuters) – Kellogg Co surprised investors on Tuesday with its first quarterly sales increase in more than two years, showing it was turning a corner after massive cost cuts and a shift to healthier products, sending its shares up 7 percent.

U.S. business group worries Trump unprepared for commercial talks with China

BEIJING (Reuters) – A top U.S. business lobby in China said on Tuesday it was concerned U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was not making sufficient preparation for talks on imbalances in the bilateral economic relationship ahead of his November visit.

Mastercard posts record profit on higher global spending

(Reuters) – Mastercard Inc on Tuesday posted a record profit and trounced Wall Street expectations, as it battled for consumers and global market share over other payment channels including its bigger rival Visa Inc .

Trump says he is not looking to phase in corporate tax cut

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was not looking for the corporate tax rate reduction that the White House is seeks to be phased in over time.

Exclusive – Orange is the new bank? Telecoms giant ventures into lending

PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) – Telecoms giant Orange launches its own bank on Thursday, aiming to win 25 percent of France’s online banking market by capitalizing on the rising use of smartphones to steal share from established lenders with inferior technology.

3 Potential OPEC Deal Killers

Authored by Zainab Calcuttawala via OilPrice.com,

The Middle East isn’t yet ready to agree on the future of OPEC’s output reduction deal as the bloc’s November 30 summit approaches, during which the cartel is set to decide on the depth and length of the cuts one year from their initial approval.

Here are the three key geopolitical issues wreaking havoc on the region’s ability to collectively raise the price of oil.

1. The Trump Administration’s Ongoing Iran Nuclear Deal Drama

From the day that Donald Trump declared he would run for president, he made it clear that he is firmly against the current deal with Tehran to reintegrate Iran’s economy into the international community in exchange for a smaller and monitored nuclear energy program. He believes the plan gives up too much leverage on the American side for the furthering of U.S. foreign policy objectives in the Middle East.

Earlier this month, Trump officially decertified the nuclear deal, which doesn’t do much in the way of dismantling the agreement, but does give Congress leeway to authorize further sanctions against Iran.

Tehran’s oil and gas industry needs global economic integration in order to fund social services and ensure a prosperous future for the Iranian people. Though Secretary of State John Kerry made his rounds reassuring European nati …

Trump Administration Will Defend Cuba Embargo In Symbolic UN Vote

A series of mysterious sonic attacks on US diplomatic personnel (and more than a few spies) working at Washington’s Havana embassy have provided ample justification for the White House to reverse the US-Cuba detente negotiated by the Obama administration. And in a gesture that – though it has no implications for policy – is considered symbolically important, the State Department said Thursday the US will defend America’s decades-old economic embargo on Cuba by voting against a UN resolution condemning it, the Associated Press reported.

The news comes after at least 24 embassy personnel were targeted by mysterious sonic attacks in Cuba, inspiring the administration last month to withdraw most of its employees from the island nation. While the US hasn’t determined the source of the attacks, the administration kicked out most of the diplomats at Cuba’s embassy in Washington and has accused the Cuban government of not doing enough to keep US citizens safe – though Cuban leader Raul Castro has vehemently condemned the attacks.

Every year, the UN votes on a resolution condemning the embargo, and for years the US has predictably voted “no.” But last year, the US abstained for the first time, as Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro moved forward with the historic warming of relations between the former Cold War foes.

A “no” vote from U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley on Wednesday will mark a return to formal support for the embargo, which Obama had unsuccessfully urged Congress to end. Although the Obama administration eased travel and commerce restrictions on Cuba and reauthorized direct commercial flights between the countries, the f …

This Is The Huge Anti-Trump Protest That Was Organized By… The Russians

From November 2016…

Protesters demonstrating against the election of Donald Trump made their voices heard again Saturday – taking to the streets of New York for the fourth straight day. A crowd of over 5,000 people gathered in Union Square around noon, their ranks rapidly growing and spilling out of the park.

Hand-drawn signs floated above the crowd, carrying messages like “Love Trumps Hate,” “Unacceptable,” and “Dump Trump.”

Chants of “black lives matter,” “popular vote,” and “America was never great” rang from the sea of dissenters.

So which ‘leftist’, anti-Trump group organized these 1000s of people to protest against their democratically-elected President?

Simple.

As The Hill reports, sixteen thousand Facebook users said that they planned to attend a Trump protest on Nov. 12, 2016 organized by the Facebook page for BlackMattersUS.

The event was shared with 61,000 users.

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Will America’s Prosperity Be Completely Wiped Out By Our Growing Debt?

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The federal government is now 20.4 trillion dollars in debt, and most Americans don’t seem to care that the economic prosperity that we are enjoying today could be completely destroyed by our exploding national debt.

Over the past decade, the national debt has been growing at a rate of more than 100 million dollars an hour, and this is a debt that all of us owe. When you break it down, each American citizen’s share of the debt is more than $60,000, and so if you have a family of five your share is more than $300,000. And when you throw in more than 6 trillion dollars of corporate debt and nearly 13 trillion dollars of consumer debt, it is not inaccurate to say that we are facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude.

Debt cannot grow much faster than GDP indefinitely. At some point the bubble bursts, and when it does the pain that the middle class is going to experience is going to be off the charts. Back in 2015, the middle class in the U.S. became a minority of the population

Startups That Never Grow Up

The flood of cash into startups has allowed companies to stay private for far longer than in the past, raising the question of whether many companies are worth the $1 billion-plus values private investors have attached to them.

The Wild Card in This $66 Billion Health-Care Deal

Long-term investors tend not to put much weight on daily share price gyrations. CVS Health shareholders don’t have that luxury.

Samsung Needs to Keep Pushing the Reform Button

The Korean tech giant is raising its dividends and improving its corporate governance. It needs to do more to unlock the discount at which it trades to global peers.

Trump Today: Trump Today: President dismisses ex-campaign aide Papadopoulos as ‘low level volunteer’

President Donald Trump called former campaign aide George Papadopoulos a “liar” and “low level volunteer” on Tuesday, said he wanted to sign a tax bill by Christmas, and said the “biggest story” from Monday was the departure of Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta from his firm.

Market Extra: The stock market’s tech benchmark just matched a nearly 40-year-old record

Forget the dot-com bubble, the Nasdaq Composite just matched a record for all-time closing highs not seen since 1980.

Currencies: British pound boosted by hopes on Brexit talks

The U.S. dollar gave up some of its newly gained ground on Tuesday, easing despite some better-than-expected U.S. data. Its Canadian counterpart, meanwhile, took a dive after data there showed weaker-than-expected domestic growth.