Morning Briefing
China data nudge to global growth fears
Overnight, China reported as larger than expected December trade surplus ($57.06 billion against an expected $51.53 billion) but a December year over year 7.6% drop in imports that argued for a slowdown in China's domestic economy. Economists had expected a 5%...
Bad retail sales results from Macy’s fail to dent stocks
Big-box retailer Macy's (M) cuts its guidance for comparable store sales, earnings, and revenue for fiscal 2019 on weaker than expected holiday sales. Kohl's (KSS) reported a 1.2% increase in holiday comparable store sales. The company said that fiscal year earnings...
Fed members talk up flexibility on interest rates; odds of an increase rise from 0%
In the last few days the heads of the Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, St.Louis, Dallas, and Cleveland Federal Reserve Banks have all said that the Federal Reserve will be patient on any interest rate increases in 2019 with even the most hawkish officials, such as Boston's...
Samsung echoes Apple’s revenue warning; tech sector shrugs
Overnight Samsung Electronics announced that for the quarter that ended in December quarterly profit and revenue missed estimates on sputtering demand for memory chips. Operating income fell to 10.8 trillion ($9.6 billion) won for the South Korean giant. That was well...
How good is Fed chair Jerome Powell at herding cats?
It's an extraordinarily busy week for the Federal Reserve--verbiage wise. Saturday, January 5, John Williams, head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Raphael Bostic of the Atlanta Fed, and Mary Daly of the San Francisco Red all spoke. Today, January 7, Bostic...
Stocks rally on huge job gains; acceleration in wage growth puts Fed betwixt and between
The U.S. economy added 312,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported this morning. The government statisticians also revised November's report to show the addition of 176,000 jobs instead of the prior report of 155,000. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com...
U.S. stocks take a beating as weak manufacturing index follows on Apple sales warning
Last night's warning from Apple that sales for the December quarter would be well below the company's earlier guidance bled into a weaker than expected reading this morning from the Purchasing Managers Index for the Manufacturing sector. The ISM Manufacturing Index...
Asian manufacturing data spur stock tumble
It's not just China anymore. Unfortunately. The Caixin Media and IHS Markit Purchasing Managers Index for China's manufacturing sector fell to 49.7 in December from 50.2, its lowest reading since May 2017. That confirms a trend seen in the official government PMI on...
Stocks take Trumps’s Saturday tweet of “big progress” in China trade talks with a grain of salt
On Saturday President Donald Trump reported “big progress” in trade talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping after a long phone call on Saturday. The President added that negotiations were “moving along very well” toward a comprehensive deal. The statement from...
Why the rally isn’t holding: After yesterday’s 1,000 point gain, today the profits are on the downside
Yesterday, Wednesday December 26, U.S.markets staged a historic rally with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining more than 1,000 points. All of the major U.S. indexes gained better than 4% on the day. Today, Tuesday, December 27, as of noon New York time, the Dow...
Santa Claus rally–but on very little substance
Traders seem determined to use the traditionally low-volume days between Christmas and New Year's to stage the traditional Santa Claus rally--bear market or no bear market. But today's substantial rally seems stitched out of very thin cloth. We had a recommendation...Jim’s Stock Alerts
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