Written by Gary
US stock market index futures are pulling back from the Wall Street highs seen in the previous session as the Senate tax bill ran into significant hurdles and the Senate vote has now been delayed.
Here is the current market situation from CNN Money | |
European markets are mixed. The FTSE 100 is higher by 0.10%, while the CAC 40 is leading the DAX lower. They are down 0.67% and 0.53% respectively. |
What Is Moving the Markets
Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
Deficit doubts on tax bill cool Wall Street rally(Reuters) – U.S. stock futures pointed to a reversal of some of this week’s gains for Wall Street on Friday as a delay in voting on a Republican tax overhaul kept investors on edge about its passage. | |
Bitcoin pauses below record peak; gained 55 percent in NovemberSYDNEY (Reuters) – Bitcoin hovered around $9,600 in volatile trade on Friday, after tumbling about 15 percent from an all-time high hit this week as some money managers warned ominously of a bubble and further falls in the stratospheric cryptocurrency. | |
Sale of the century? $300-billion Saudi state sell-off moves slowlyDUBAI/RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s $300-billion privatization program was billed as the sale of the century when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled his plan to great fanfare. Nineteen months later, it is moving at a snail’s pace, bankers, investors and analysts familiar with the process say. | |
Exclusive: Tezos founders push for legal bailout from Swiss foundationNEW YORK/ZURICH (Reuters) – The couple behind the embattled Tezos cryptocurrency tech project wants the Swiss-based Tezos Foundation to cover their costs for lawsuits accusing them of fraud related to an online fundraiser it ran, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. | |
British Labour leader Corbyn tells Morgan Stanley: ‘We’re a threat’LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned Morgan Stanley that bankers are right to regard him as a threat because he wants to transform what he cast as a rigged economy that profits speculators at the expense of ordinary people. | |
Beauty contest: China make-up brands rein in South Korea rivalsSEOUL/SHANGHAI(Reuters) – As a diplomatic spat between Beijing and Seoul raged this year, many South Koreans felt decidedly unwelcome in China. South Korean businesses were shunned, K-pop concerts were canceled and tourist trade dried up. | |
Germany removes Tesla from subsidies list as too priceyBERLIN (Reuters) – A German government agency has removed Tesla from the list of electric cars eligible for subsidies, sparking a row with the U.S. company over whether its Model S is too expensive to qualify for the scheme. | |
U.S.-listed Chinese financial firms drop as China sets new rules(Reuters) – U.S.-listed shares of Chinese financial firms slipped in premarket trade on Friday after Reuters reported that China’s regulators had circulated new rules to local governments to clamp down on cash loan firms. | |
Too cold for a theme park, Disney looks to toy stores in RussiaMOSCOW (Reuters) – Though too cold for a theme park, Russia’s underserved toy market makes it an attractive business prospect for Walt Disney Co , the head of its Russian operations said on Friday. | |
John Kerry: Israel And Saudi Arabia Urged A Preemptive US Strike On Iran Prior To Nuclear DealFormer Secretary of State John Kerry revealed earlier this week that just prior to negotiations on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the leaders of Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia pushed hard for the US to preemptively strike Iran. Kerry divulged the information during a panel discussion at a nuclear weapons reduction forum at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday where he defended the deal, saying those that wanted harsher action would have led the nation into another major Middle East war. Kerry described the lead up to the deal as involving intense and aggressive lobbying toward military escalation by the three countries, whose leaders attempted to personally intervene. “Each of them said to me: You have to bomb Iran, it’s the only thing they are going to understand,” Kerry related at Tuesday’s forum. He further explained, “I remember that conversation with President Mubarak. I looked at him and said: It’s easy for you to say. We go bomb them and I bet you’ll be the first guy out there the next day to criticize us for doing it. And he went: ‘Of course, ha-ha-ha-ha!'” Kerry also identified Benjamin Netanyahu as taking a clear lead role in pushing for direct military action against Iran, saying, “It was a trap in a lot of ways. But more importantly, Prime Minister Netanyahu was genuinely agitating towards action.” Though it’s not clear exactly when these exchanges took place, Kerry chaired the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2006 … | |
Frontrunning: December 1Tillerson, Cohn Could Leave White House in Wave of Senior Departures (WSJ) Senate grapples with tax cut plan’s impact on deficit (Reuters) Here’s Where the GOP Tax Plan Stands Right Now (BBG) Markets ignore best European factory data in 17 years (Reuters) Tax Debate Plays Out in TV Ads Targeting Key States Across U.S. (BBG) Hedge Fund Tips for 2018: Oil at $80, No End to Technology Boom (BBG) China’s Tech Giants Have a Second Job: Helping Beijing Spy on Its People (WSJ) As OPEC extends output cuts, Asia turns to North America for more oil (Reuters) MIT Study Suggests the U.S. Is Vastly Overstating Its Oil Output Forecasts (BBG) Bitcoin pauses below record peak; gained 55 percent in November ( | |
Trump Cancels UK “Working Visit” Amid Outrage Following “Britain First” RetweetsAs discussed yesterday, President Donald Trump’s decision to unleash a series of “truculent tweets” showing videos of Islamist mobs destroying Christian artifacts and, in one video, pushing a boy off a building has elicited howls of outrage from both American lawmakers and liberal leaders across the “open” west. Amid the growing global outrage, no world leader responded more stridently than UK Prime Minister Theresa May, who successfully pressured US diplomats to drop plans for Donald Trump to conduct a visit to Britain in January amid a war of words between the two countries’ leaders. May emphatically criticized Trump for tweeting the videos, saying “I think we must all take seriously the threat that the far-right poses.” Trump had been scheduled for a ‘working visit’ in the first month of 2018 to formally open America’s new London embassy, according to the Telegraph. The trip, a scaled down version of a state visit with no meeting with the Queen, was organized to allow Trump to visit the UK without triggering the outpouring of protests that would accompany an official state visit. According to the Telegraph, rather than being cancelled, Trump’s brief working visit has been “pushed into the long grass.” Meanwhile, no new data have been released. A senior US diplomat appeared to confirm this: “The idea of a visit has obviously been floated, but not December and not January. I would not expect a Trump visit in January.” Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, hinted the trip could be delay … | |
Russian Parliament To Ban Access To All US ReportersIn response to the recent crackdown against RT and Sputnik who saw their TV station credentials recently yanked by the US government, which is rapidly descending into a neo-McCarthyite abyss, Russia’s parliament said it would bar U.S. media from reporting within its walls in retaliation. Olga Savastyanova of the State Duma told Russian news agencies on Friday that she expects the Duma to adopt the ban next week. “By our decision we are offering this move for the consideration of the State Duma Council and plenary session. We are expressing our attitude to the inadmissibility of attacks on democratic values, freedom of speech and the right to receive objective information,” Savastyanova told RIA Novosti on Friday. Savastyanova emphasized that the ban was a reciprocal action introduced after RT America was stripped of accreditation with the US Congress. According to current regulations any foreign reporter must receive an accreditation with the Foreign Ministry to work in Russia. Once received, this document grants free access to the Parliament. Separately, the AP reported that Igor Morozov, member of the information policy committee at the Federation Council, told the RIA Novosti news agency that the upper chamber of the Russian parliament would support the ban and could vote to enforce it later this month. As of this moment, foreign correspondents in Russia can access the Russian parliament and some government agencies with their press credentials issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry; that access will likely be lost in a few days. The action is retaliation to a Wednesday decision by a committee that governs Capitol Hill access for broadcast journalists, which withdrew credentials for Russia’s RT after the company complied earlier this month with a U.S. demand that it register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Russia has denounced the m … | |
Chinese Battery Champion Has Fully Charged IPOChina has the world’s largest market for electric cars and wants its companies to dominate globally when it comes to the batteries that power these vehicles. That makes the initial public offering of a turbocharged player at the center of that effort well worth watching. | |
Credit Suisse Decides the Best Target Is One You Can HitTidjane Thiam has learned to be a little more cautious since he took the reins at Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank’s CEO set fresh profit and payout goals its investor day, but the strong share-price reaction is a slight surprise. | |
Kroger Investors Cleaning Up in Aisle FiveSupermarket chain Kroger, slammed by Amazon’s entry into the grocery business and other competitive fears, is bouncing back and still looks like a bargain. | |
The Tell: Blockchain — bitcoin’s underlying technology — could next disrupt the transportation sectorBlockchain, the decentralized ledger technology that is the underlying foundation of digital currencies like bitcoin, has been hailed as having world-changing potential for industries ranging from health care and banks to manufacturing. Now, another sector could be poised for blockchain-related disruption: transportation. | |
Now’s the time to increase exposure to financial stocks, CFRA saysAs Washington reduces regulations and taxes and more borrowing steepens the yield curve, bank stocks may outperform. | |
MarketWatch First Take: Nutanix envisions what it will look like without hardwareNutanix Inc. answered investors’ wishes with the news Thursday that it will begin to shift to software-focused sales and eliminate hardware pass-through sales from its balance sheet, but the move will come with some short-term pain. |
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