the big question for the week is “Will Congressional Republicans pass something that keeps the government funded after the March 14 deadline. My opinion? House Republicans will unite to give the White House what it wants. In the Senate the way forward is more complicated.
Just minutes after a slide that drove the S&P 500 down over 1%, the gauge staged an “oversold bounce” after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told a New York audience that the economy is fine. “Despite elevated levels of uncertainty, the US economy continues to be in a good place,” Powell said at an event Friday in New York hosted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “We do not need to be in a hurry, and are well positioned to wait for greater clarity.”
Apple (AAPL) has confirmed that it’s delaying the release of a new AI Siri digital assistant. The company now expects to roll out the software sometime “in the coming year.” The effort will give Siri “more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps,” the iPhone maker said in a statement. “It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features.” Apple’s struggles to finish the new AI capability for Siri has been a one secret for the last month or so after Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported on the delay. The Siri AI features were first touted in June 2024 at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference. When Apple announced the features at WWDC, it didn’t provide an arrival date for the Siri upgrade, Gurman reported. Within the company, though, the plan was to include the new technology in iOS 18.4, which comes out in April.
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 151,000 in February, and the unemployment rate rose just a tad to 4.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics today
Would I prefer a decent jobs report like this–the labor market, the report said, remains solid–to a poke in the eye with a sharp stick–or big negative number? Certainly. I’m not rooting for a recession. Too much pain for too many people–especially for those of us who don’t have much to begin with. But the report is, basically, meaningless if you want to know where the economy or jobs market is now or even where it was on February 28.
After the last year, it’s clear that investors DO need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows to avoid unpleasant climate shocks to their portfolios. For the next year, the likely forecast includes a less active hurricane season–good news for the U.S. Southeast–but higher temperatures for much of the globe–bad news for California and the U.S. West. And bad news for price volatility in agricultural commodities.
So first stocks sold off after President Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. Then stocks rallied when the White House said tariffs on auto imports from Mexico and Canada would be postponed by a month. Today, the tariff news is that higher duties on agricultural products imported from Mexico would be postponed fora month. But at the close today the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was down 1.58% and the NASDAQ Composite was off 2.11%. The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index, the VIX “fear index,” was up 15.27% to 25.27. There was so much going on in the financial markets today that it’s impossible to say how much of today’s decline was due to a growing realization that delays of a month are essentially insufficient to reorder supply chains constructed by years or decades of investment.
The reason to own shares of Las VEGAS sANDS (LVS0 is the strength of its position in the gaming market in Macao, and developments that look to add faster revenue growth in that market in the relative near future. Morningstar calculates that the stock is currently trading at about 20% below fair value.
The reason to sell Las Vegas Sands is that the trade war between China and the United States is likely to get worse before it gets better. And Las Vegas Sands’ operations in Macao are totally exposed to changes in policy and regulations from the Chinese government.
Russia’s oil-tax revenue in February slumped by almost a quarter year-on-year, suggesting producers have reined in output to meet the country’s OPEC+ quota.
President Donald Trump is exempting automakers from newly imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one month, the White House said Wednesday, after pleas from U.S. automakers who have spent years building supply chains that stretch across international borders.
Sales of the heaviest category of trucks in North America collapsed in February. ACT Research reported on Wednesday that February preliminary North America Class 8 net orders were down 34% year-over-year to 18,300 units.
The odds of a U.S. recession are still low, but an increasing number of Wall Street economic models say the odds are climbing.
Two examples I’ve seen today suggest that consumers will feel the pain very soon.
