Written by Gary
US three major indexes closed in the green (SPY (+0.2%) while gains in Apple and other stocks offset a slump in energy shares.
Todays S&P 500 Chart
The Market in Perspective
Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
Wall Street choppy as investors worry about trade war(Reuters) – Wall Street was mixed in choppy trade on Monday as investors fretted about an escalating trade war between Washington and its trading partners, while gains in Apple and other stocks offset a slump in energy shares. | |
Largest U.S. business group attacks Trump on tariffsWASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobbying group and customarily a close ally of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, is launching a campaign on Monday to oppose Trump’s trade tariff policies. | |
Tesla shares fall despite hitting Model 3 production target(Reuters) – Shares of Tesla Inc reversed course to trade down 4 percent on Monday after Wall Street analysts questioned the electric carmaker’s ability to maintain an increase in production that helped it meet a long-elusive target of making 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week. | |
Report of Trump bill rejecting WTO seen by trade experts as hot airGENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the drafting of legislation that would mean abandoning key disciplines agreed at the World Trade Organization, Axios news website reported late on Sunday, to a skeptical response from trade experts. | |
Dell moves to go public, spurns IPO(Reuters) – Dell Technologies Inc said on Monday it would pay $21.7 billion in cash and stock to buy back shares tied to its interest in software company VMware Inc , returning the computer maker to the stock market without an initial public offering. | |
U.S. fund managers zero in on software as tariffs upend tech sectorNEW YORK (Reuters) – Worries that a broadening trade war between the United States and China will upend the global supply chain are prompting some U.S. fund managers to buy shares of companies they believe will shield them from such disruptions. | |
Investors seek cover as trade battles rattle world marketsLONDON (Reuters) – Investors have sharply increased their use of hedging strategies, signaling concerns that the intensifying trade battle between the United States and China might hit economies from Germany to South Korea. | |
NYC taxi commission study backs pay rise for NYC Uber, Lyft driversNEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City’s cash-strapped Uber and Lyft drivers have been campaigning for bigger paychecks, and their effort got a boost on Monday from a study two economists conducted for the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. | |
Volkswagen components business to become independent entityFRANKFURT (Reuters) – Volkswagen said its components development and manufacturing business would become an independent entity within the group from January 2019, alongside the VW Passenger Cars business and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles. | |
Bitcoin Bounced, Tesla Trounced, Platinum Pummelled, Yield Curve CrushedIt all just has that feeling… “It’s not a happy start to the second half. Trade war concerns, U.S. sanctions, Trump’s rants and political problems in Europe, as well as worries about slowing emerging-market growth are all playing their part.” – Saxo’s Ole Hansen. China was ugly overnight… Europe also closed red – but rebounded from the gap down open… < … | |
Jim Kunstler Fears The Democrats’ “Turn For The Worse”Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, The Democratic Party has steered itself into an exquisitely neurotic predicament at a peculiar moment of history. Senator Bernie Sanders set the tone for the shift to full-throated socialism, and the primary election win of 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a New York congressional district seems to have ratified it. She promised voters free college tuition, single-payer health care, and free housing. Ah, to live in such a utopia! One can actually understand why New Yorkers especially would fall for that agenda of promises. When I was a child there in the 1950s and 60s, New York was a mostly middle-class city. City College of New York, with a really distinguished faculty, was free. That’s right, stone free. Much of that middle-class was educated there, including most of my high school teachers. In the 1950s and 60s, it cost a few hundred dollars to have a baby in the hospital, and less than that to receive three stictches in the ER. Back then, New York real estate was mostly rental housing and not subject to the deformations of wa … | |
Chamber Of Commerce Turns On Trump With Campaign To Oppose TariffsThe US Chamber of Commerce has been opposed to President Trump’s trade war since before Trump even won the Republican nomination. Back in March 2016, CoC President Tom Donohue warned that Trump “would be impeached” if he followed through with his threats of slapping tariffs on China and Mexico. Now, more than two years later, the chamber – which bills itself as the largest interest interest group representing US businesses – is launching an all-out offensive to oppose Trump’s trade policies, according to Reuters. The campaign, which officially launched Monday, is described as “an aggressive effort by the business lobbying giant. Using a state-by-state analysis, it argues that Trump is risking a global trade war that will hit the wallets of US consumers.”
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The Myths Of Stocks For The Long Run – Part VAuthored by Lance Roberts, Michael Lebowitz, CFA and John Coumarianos, M.S. of Real Investment Advice Part I – “Buy & Hold” Can Be Hazardous To Your Wealth Part II – Why Crashes Matter & The Saving Problem Part III – Valuations & Forward Returns Part IV – The Math Of Loss Choosing The Right Portfolio Benchmark
Benchmarks serve an important role in growing one’s wealth. Most importantly they provide a yard-stick to see how we are doing in meeting our future retirement goals. For those that rely on professionals to manage their money, a benchmark allows the client to gauge how the manager is performing versus what the market is providing. We do not disparage the use of benchmarks. However, the purpose of this article is to help you understand the differences between an equity index and your portfolio. As we discussed in Part 2 of this series, the proper benchmark for any portfolio is the rate of inflation plus a rate of growth that achieves the specific level of inflation-adjusted dollars required at retirement. Meeting such a benchmark guarantees you meet your goal. No other index can claim that. Benchmarking to th … | |
Tariffs Aren’t China’s Strongest Weapon Against the U.S.China has yet to really deploy one of its most effective means of economic blackmail. | |
Currencies: Mexican peso and euro slide on political uncertaintyThe big currency stories of Monday were Mexico’s election, which saw leftist front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador win the presidency, and Germany’s leadership spat over immigration. | |
Poor New Yorkers suffer more when the subway is delayedSubway delays mirror the social and economic inequality of the city. | |
One country is catching up with the U.S. as the most popular destination for foreign workersThe U.S. remains the top destination for people in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. |
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