May 11, 2018 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
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. Â 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.
May 5, 2018 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
The U.S. negotiating team looking to put together a trade agreement with China that would avert a trade war headed back to Washington on Friday after two days of talks that saw the United States propose a $200 billion cut to the U.S. trade deficit with China by 2020–and the widely expected rejection of that proposal by China.
April 17, 2018 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index rose 1.07% to the highest level in four weeks, pushing above its 100-day moving average for the first time in  month. The Dow Jones Industrial average closed up 0.87% The gains in the index are in spite of continued chaos on the trade front between China and the United States
April 12, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
On Saturday in my Saturday Night Quarterback look ahead at the week on JubakAM.com I wrote that the week before the start of earnings reporting season–in other words, this week that we’re now in–was likely to see the market bounce from one idea to the next with one day’s worries sinking the market and the next day’s leading to gains. That’s exactly what we saw yesterday
April 10, 2018 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Global financial markets rallied today on a speech by China’s President Xi Jinping at a regional economic meeting that seemed to pull China and the United States back from the cliff and a potential global trade war. Xi promised to open up China’s economy, to raise the limits on foreign ownership in the aircraft, shipbuilding and auto industries and to reduce tariffs on auto imports and on some other products.
April 10, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The market didn’t reverse or fade today. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index hit 2656 by 10:30 and then, despite a dip that took 20 points off the index around 12:30 managed to close at 2656 for the day. That was a gain of 1.67% for the day and near the top that Monday’s market hit before its end of the day reversal. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 1.79%; the NASDAQ Composite was higher by 2.07%.
April 7, 2018 | Uncategorized |
This week I expect the rotation from worry to relief over the Trump administration’s tariff policy and a potential trade war with China to stay in control of the narrative. Next week we’re likely to shift to earnings stories as companies begin to report really good first quarter earnings. After a couple of weeks of that we’ll either slide back to the trade narrative or start to get ready for the Federal Reserve narrative surrounding a June invest rate hike.
April 6, 2018 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend, Short Term |
For a while today it looked like the markets might have decided to adopt a belief that something would pull President Donald Trump back from the brink of a China/U.S. trade war. Either it was just bluster, a negotiating ploy, or something that would be tempered by other voices in the White House. That was the view powering the rally for the last three sessions, after all. But on further consideration the markets decided to take the President’s call for tariffs on an additional $100 billion in Chinese goods very seriously indeed.
April 5, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Just as financial markets were starting to believe that all the bluster about imposing new provocative tariffs on Chinese imports might indeed be just a negotiating ploy as administration officials loudly proclaimed over the last to days, last night President Donald Trump demanded that his chief trade negotiator find an additional $100 billion in Chinese imports to consider for new tariffs.Â
April 5, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
With all available officials on deck today in Beijing and Washington to talk down fears of a trade war and to talk up prospects for trade talks, the U.S. financial markets have returned to “normal.” And what is “normal” right now? A 0.47% gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index as tech shares recover with Facebook (FB) up 1.81% and Amazon (AMZN) up 2.62%. Normal is also a down day for Treasuries
April 4, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index finished up 1.16% today, closing at 2644.69, as traders and investors decided that the tariff measures targeting China that the Trump administration announced last night and the retaliatory measures announce by China today would never be put into effect. Instead the two countries would talk away their trade differences, or the Trump administration would back down, or something. You’ll note that I’m skeptical.
April 2, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
It’s always hard to attribute a market move to one particular news event, but today the odds are good that this morning’s plunge in stock prices is in reaction to China’s decision to impose tariffs on 128 U.S. products in response to the Trump administration’s new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. The big target in China’s move is U.S. pork exports–the United States exported $1.1 billion in pork to China in 2017.
