It’s actually amazing to me that U.S. stock markets weren’t down more today given all the uncertainty regarding trade relations between United States and China, between the United States and its NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico, and between the United States and the European Union.
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. Today’s 10:20 post is a representative item: “10:20 a.m.: Target (TGT) has cut its next-day delivery fee nearly in half in one of the most visible efforts to capitalize on Amazon’s (AMZN) decision to raise the price of its annual Prime membership to $119 from $99. Target has dropped the delivery price for household essentials to $2.99 from $4.99 and waived it altogether for customers paying with a Target card. The Target Restock service lets shoppers get 35,000 everyday items like paper towels and baby food for a flat delivery fee. And as Target noted in announcing the cuts, “Membership fee? Nope.” Target has also teamed with Google Home to let customers restock with a voice command using Google’s Alexa.”
Today, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a May 17 deadline for the Trump administration to submit a proposal NAFTA revision to Congress–if President Trump wants this Congress to vote on a revised agreement. The odds of an agreement emerging from current talks and moving on to Congress on that schedule are just about nil. At the same time news of significant horse trading is coming out of U.S.-China trade talks.
The is a week with plenty of potential economic trends–although none is so strong that geopolitics couldn’t seize control of the world’s financial markets
I know it’s hard to pay attention to NAFTA while we’re anticipating President Donald Trump’s sit down with North Korea’s President Kim and pondering the effects of the President’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, but the talks to negotiate a new deal with Mexico and Canada on NAFTA are getting very, very close to a deadline. And it looks like there won’t be an agreement in time for Congress to vote. No one, however, is quite sure what that would mean.
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. A representative item resembles this from today: “10:20 a.m.: Shares of soybean giant Bunge (BG) are up 3.75% today on a Reuters report that agricultural investor Continental Grain plans to push Bunge to a deal to sell itself to Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) or another buyer. Continental has increased its position in Bunge according to a filing with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Archer Daniels reported approached Bunge about a takeover in January. Last year Bunge rejected an offer from commodity trader Glencore.”
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. I launched this new feature on JubakAM.com on December 1. It runs only on JAM and won’t appear anywhere else. The blog includes items such as this from today: “11:20 a.m.: NAFTA worries take a bite out of Mexican peso with the currency down 7% against the dollar in the last month. At 19 pesos to the dollar, the currency is still above the 21 pesos to the dollar level it sunk to at the beginning of the year. Still this isn’t goo background as the country heads into a presidential election scheduled for July 1, 2018.”
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. I launched this new feature on JubakAM.com on December 1. It runs only on JAM and won’t appear anywhere else. Such as these items: “10:20 a.m.: The ZEW survey for October showed economic sentiment iamong German investors climbing to 17.6 from 17.0 points in the previous month. The index, however, still remains below the long-term average of 23.8 points” and “10:40 a.m.: Japan’s Nikkei stock market index recorded its eleventh straight gain today. The market hasn’t had a losing session yet in October. In that period the Nikkei is up 4.8% on growing conviction that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is headed to a smashing election victory that will assure the continuation of Abe-nomics and a weak yen.”
