Written by Gary
Major indexes sink after opening, lingering growth concerns underscored by renewed weakness in oil, copper prices, weaker dollar, and ongoing buying interest in longer-dated securities (SPY -1.8%).
Here is the current market situation from CNN Money | |
 | North and South American markets are mixed. The Bovespa is higher by 0.37%, while the S&P 500 is leading the IPC lower. They are down 1.62% and 0.58% respectively. |
What Is Moving the Markets
| Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
| Exclusive: White House mulls new year executive order to bar Huawei, ZTE purchasesPresident Donald Trump is considering an executive order in the new year to declare a national emergency that would bar U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by China’s Huawei and ZTE, three sources familiar with the situation told Reuters. |
| Exclusive: New allegations against Ghosn concern payments to Saudi businessman – sourcesFresh misconduct allegations brought by Tokyo prosecutors against ousted Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn center on the use of company funds to pay a Saudi businessman who is believed to have helped him out of financial difficulties, two company sources with knowledge of the matter said. |
| Dramatic stock market rally runs out of steamA dramatic global stock rally faded on Thursday after a fall in Chinese industrial profits offered a reminder of the pressures on the world economy. |
| Oil prices fall more than 1 percent as U.S. stock markets retreatOil prices fell on Thursday after rebounding 8 percent in the previous session, with prices pressured by concerns over a faltering global economy and worries about a glut in crude supply. |
| France’s Vinci in $3.7 billion swoop on UK’s Gatwick airportFrance’s Vinci is taking advantage of a Brexit hit to UK asset prices to buy a majority stake in Britain’s second-busiest airport, London’s Gatwick, for 2.9 billion pounds ($3.7 billion), the construction company said on Thursday. |
| Wall St. falls more than 2 percent after consumer confidence dataU.S. stocks extended losses on Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding nearly half of its more than 1,000 point gain notched in the previous session after data showed consumer confidence in December fell to its lowest level since July. |
| U.S. regulator SEC to operate on partial basis due to federal shutdownThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Thursday that it will partially operate with reduced staff during to the ongoing federal shutdown. |
| U.S. jobless claims signal labor market strength after rough patchThe number of Americans filing applications for jobless benefits fell marginally last week in a sign of labor market strength, with claims appearing to stabilize after drifting higher in recent months. |
| China’s Sinopec suspends top officials at trading armSinopec has suspended two top officials at its trading arm Unipec and is evaluating the details related to certain crude oil transactions that have incurred some losses, the Chinese state oil company said on Thursday. |
| Arab League Set To Readmit Syria After Eight Years As UAE Embassy Reopens In DamascusAssad’s “normalization” with both Arab and increasingly international countries who were a short time ago enemies is moving fast. First the embassy of the United Arab Emirates has formally reopened Thursday in Damascus, which is the first time a Gulf country has re-established official relations with the Assad government since all GCC states first shuttered their embassies there in 2012. Related to this and more significant, Gulf nations are now reportedly leading efforts to readmit Syria into the Arab League after the organization expelled Damascus eight years ago when the conflict first began.
At the time the Arab League cited “brutal repression” of protests against President Bashar al-Assad — deeply ironic and hypocritical at the time — given that Damascus pointed out both Bahrain and ally Saudi Arabia violently snuffed out protests that rocked Bahrain’s monarchy in 2011 as part of the “Arab Spring” movement. But the significance of likely rapprochement with Arab states is huge, coming after eight years of war driven by … |
| On This Day: Art Cashin On One Of History’s Most Famous AssassinationsBy Art Cashin of UBS Financial Services On this day (+2) in 1916, one of history’s most celebrated but most inept assassinations began. In the retelling of most assassinations we hear how the victims might have been spared if….! You know the drill – if the guy guarding Lincoln’s box had not gone for a drink or if the Archduke Ferdinand had not had his car forced up a side street, etc. etc. But this assassination was more like Larry, Moe and Curly plan the Normandy Invasion. The proposed victim was a semi-literate preacher who passed himself off as a Russian monk. Pre-dating some TV preachers, in an age with no TV, he preached that you needed God’s forgiveness. And, to give God a wide enough target, it is necessary that you sin a lot. So, many of his convocations turned into what we might secularly call today – drunkfests or orgies. (But, he said God does need a large target.) Critics of the preacher called him “The Mad Monk”. He called himself “Rasputin”.
Anyway, Rasputin hit pay-dirt when he appeared to cure the hemophiliac son of Czar Nicholas II. Viewing the cure as a miracle, the Czarina demanded that all decisions be cleared with the miracle-maker, Rasputin. That made him the most powerful man in Russia, which did not sit well with the nobles. Thus, the assassinatio … |
| Certainty Is FrayingAuthored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, As we look ahead to 2019, what can we be certain of? Maybe your list is long, but mine has only one item: certainty is fraying.
Confidence in financial policies intended to eliminate recessions is fraying, confidence in political processes that are supposed to actually solve problems rather than make them worse is fraying, confidence in the objectivity of the corporate media is fraying, and confidence in society’s ability to maintain any sort of level playing field is fraying. When certainty frays, capital gets skittish. Predicting increased volatility is an easy call in this context, as capital will not want to stick around to see how the movie ends if things start unraveling. The move out of stocks into government bonds is indicative of how capital responds to uncertainty. The coordinated efforts of global central banks to backstop and boost markets also backstopped confidence in the banks’ monetary policies. Regardless of the long-term impact of the policies of quantitative easing and repression of interest rates, capital could count on the … |
| “No End To Shutdown In Sight” As Trump Promises “Whatever It Takes” To Fund The WallDuring a surprise visit with US troops in Iraq on Wednesday, President Trump offered his own spin on Mario Draghi’s famous “whatever it takes” line when asked about what it would take to break the impasse and deliver a funding bill to end the partial government shutdown, which entered its sixth day on Thursday.
Illustrating just how difficult it might be for Trump to work out a compromise, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that she would work to pass a funding bill similar to one passed by the Senate last month that doesn’t include the $5 billion in wall funding (instead, they’re standing by their offer of $1.3 billion) – though it’s unlikely that the president will sign it, or that both chambers can muster the supermajority needed to override the president’s veto.
Senate and the House of Representatives were set to meet at 4 pm EST on the sixth day of the shutdown and resume debating ways to end it. That will include Senate considera … |
| December 2018 Conference Board Consumer Confidence Again Declined
The latest Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index’s headline number is 128.1 (1985=100), down from 135.7 in November. |
| The Ratings Game: Water stocks are a bargain for 2019 after selloff, analyst saysStocks of companies active in the water sector are looking oversold given the strong fundamental outlook for the sector, Boenning & Scattergood said Thursday. |
| Olive Garden parent Darden Restaurants, Chick-fil-A are names to watch in 2019Olive Garden may be the best known name in the Darden Restaurants Inc. portfolio, but it’s just one piece of what makes Darden an RBC Capital Markets top stock pick for 2019. |
| Outside the Box: These 8 stocks are investment newsletter gurus’ picks for the market rebound they expect in 2019Attractive bargains are to be found among the U.S. market’s rubble, writes Michael Brush. |
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