04Oct2019 Pre-Market Commentary: Wall Street Is Pointing To A Fractionally Higher Opening, DOW Futures Up 54 Points, Gold Extremely Volatile, Markets Expected Fall Later In The Session

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money

European markets are mixed today. The FTSE 100 is up 0.27% while the CAC 40 gains 0.16%. The DAX is even.

Firmer oil still set for heavy weekly loss on demand worries

Oil prices rose on Friday but remained on track for a second consecutive weekly loss after sliding on fears that slower global economic growth would hurt energy demand.

‘Sahm Rule’ enters Fed lexicon as fast, real-time recession flag

Astronomers get to name comets and biologists get to name species, but come up with something cool in economics and you might be memorialized with a law or a rule or a “curve.”

BP to make Bernard Looney CEO as climate challenge looms

Bernard Looney, who will replace Bob Dudley as chief executive of BP when he retires next year, faces the tricky task of navigating the energy major through a rising tide of environmentalism and the move to a low-carbon economy.

Dudley’s decade at the helm of BP almost didn’t happen

BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley’s decade at the helm of one of the world’s biggest oil companies almost didn’t happen.

U.S. states fight back against Purdue’s bid to halt opioid lawsuits

U.S. state officials are due on Friday to launch a counterattack against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP over its attempt to shield the company and its controlling Sackler family from thousands of lawsuits accusing the company of fueling the opioid epidemic.

Factbox: Dudley departure forms part of change of guard at UK Plc

BP on Friday appointed its head of upstream Bernard Looney as chief executive to succeed Bob Dudley when he retires next year, the latest in a series of changes in senior management at some of Britain’s biggest companies.

Exclusive: U.S. helps Mastercard, Visa score victory in Indonesia in global lobbying effort

U.S. trade officials, at the request of card networks Mastercard and Visa , convinced Indonesia late last year to loosen rules governing its new domestic payment network, according to Indonesian government and industry sources, and emails reviewed by Reuters.

India’s SpiceJet could take more of Jet Airways’ 737 MAX planes: chairman

Indian low-cost carrier SpiceJet Ltd may consider taking some of the Boeing 737 MAX planes that were due to be delivered to now bankrupt Jet Airways but are still sitting in Seattle, its chairman said on Friday.

Lolla-payrolls-alooza

Lolla-payrolls-alooza

Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank

Yes, it’s US payrolls day once again. And for once it’s an interesting payrolls day, because after a long, long time in which that benchmark series really didn’t seem to matter that much, today it really does. After all, markets are now frazzled by fear that what is obviously a synchronised global manufacturing downturn may be seeping into the services sector: yesterday’s final services PMI in the Eurozone was just 51.6, in the UK 49.5, and in the US either 50.9 (Markit) or 52.6 (ISM), the latter down from 56.4 and vs. 55 expected. Indeed, the US ISM survey saw the employment index slump to 50.4, the lowest in years.

As such, the last thing markets, central banks, or governments will want to see today is a weak US payrolls report confirming that the last man standing, and still global consumer of last resort for everyone except China, is about to slump. The consensus for today is 145K, which would actually be seen as fine against a normal backdrop considering how long in the tooth this expansion already is. The crazy thing is now that a mere 10-15K miss on that expectation, which is nothing more than a rounding error in the scale of the US labour market of 130m plus, could likely be enough to trigger either manic or manic-depressive swings in many markets. US 10-year yields are at 1.52% this morning, for example: want to bet where they will close if we get a weak payrolls print? Or a strong one?

And that craziness is against a global backdrop of a true Lollapalooza of meshugga. For example, US pol …

Hard Data Gets Put To The Test

Hard Data Gets Put To The Test

Authored by Bryce Coward via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,

United States and indeed global economic data have been weak ” at least that is the unabated message from the PMI data that were released this week on both manufacturing and services. At this stage everyone knows the survey data, or œsoft data, are weak. The important question now is whether that weakness will spill over into hard economic data that admittedly comes with a lag. Indeed, for the Fed to take a much more aggressive stance they will need to see the soft data weakness bleed into the hard data.

In this respect today, Friday, October 4th, is shaping up to be one of the most important market days of the year as the September US employment report gets released. The US employment report is about as hard as the data come.

In our view, employment is challenged here and the onus is on the labor stats to pull a rabbit out of the hat. We now have leading data from both the manufacturing sector as well as the services sector that show employment in a declining trend. On the manufacturing side, the most recent ISM data showed the employment component to be in contraction with a reading of 46.3 (sub 50 readings indicate contraction). The same is almost true of the ISM services PMI, which has the employment component hanging on for dear life at just 50.4. In any case, both services and manufacturing employment surveys have turned sharply south since earlier in the year. This puts a great deal of pressure on the hard data to to show some serious re …

Here We Go: Ukraine Reviews Probe Into Corrupt Biden-Linked Gas Company

Here We Go: Ukraine Reviews Probe Into Corrupt Biden-Linked Gas Company

After a week of non-stop “bombshell” leaks about the Democrats’ impeachment probe into President Trump, which is supposedly trying to determine whether Trump pressured the newly elected Ukrainian President to push for investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden and their ties to a domestic gas company, the media is now being forced to confront another uncomfortable reality: That Ukrainian prosecutors appear to be finally moving ahead with a review of an investigation into a Biden-linked gas company, even after the alleged “quid pro quo” had been taken off the table.

Barely 12 hours after President Trump “recommended” that Ukraine and China start looking into the Bidens, WSJ reports that Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office is reviewing investigations into a gas company that once paid Hunter Biden $50,000 a month to sit on its board.

Markets plunge sharply: RBI and other factors that led to it

Markets plunge sharply: RBI and other factors that led to itRBI slashed FY20 GDP growth forecast sharply to 6.1 per cent from 6.9 per cent.

Inside ByteDance’s Tik-ing controversy

Inside ByteDance’s Tik-ing controversyByteDance defends these practices as being part of what it calls “standard marketing practices”.

How RBI guv tackled 5 uncomfortable posers

How RBI guv tackled 5 uncomfortable posersThe cut in FY20 real GDP growth projection was one of the bigger talking points after today’s meeting.

Rail Week Ending 28 September 2019 Intuitive Sectors Continue to Worsen

Written by Steven Hansen

Week 39 of 2019 shows same week total rail traffic (from same week one year ago) contracted according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) traffic data. The economically intuitive sectors rolling averages remain in contraction – and declined.

Economic Report: U.S. adds 136,000 jobs in September, unemployment rate hits 50-year low

The U.S. created 136,000 new jobs in September, while the unemployment rate hit a new cycle low of 3.5%, the Labor Department said Friday.

Futures Movers: Oil attempts to snap 8-day losing streak

Oil futures trade modestly higher Friday, attempting to break an eight-day string of losses for the U.S. benchmark.