Skip to main content

S&P 500 and DJIA Hit by Middle East Tensions

From Seeking Alpha and Barron's:

A New Year's Jolt. Stocks fell, oil jumped, and Treasury prices rose as markets were roiled by the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian military commander.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 234 points, or 0.8%, to 28634.88. The S&P 500 dropped 0.7%, to 3234.85, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.8% to end the week at 9020.77.

Oil spiked about 3%, and defense stocks jumped, with Lockheed Martin shares rising 3.6% and
Northrop Grumman stock gaining 5.4%. with WTI crude settling 3.1% higher at $63.05 per barrel after spiking as much as 4.8%. Risk sentiment also was dimmed by the weakest reading for the ISM Manufacturing Index since June 2009, which raised concerns of slowing U.S. economic growth.

Details were reached on the China-U.S. "Phase One" trade deal, which are expected to nearly double American exports to China over the next two years. China also said it would crack down on intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers and deepen access to its financial markets, while both sides suspended additional tariffs and the U.S. reduced existing levies. Similarly, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation to implement USMCA after the inclusion of tougher labor and auto content rules.

Despite a weakening economy, Sweden's Riksbank swam against the tide of global monetary policy by hiking its benchmark repo rate by a quarter point to 0.0%. The move, which ends half a decade of negative rates, may have other central banks admit to some downside amid fears of penalizing good savers, supporting companies that might otherwise collapse and inflating bubbles in the property market. Kicking the unconventional addiction is not easy, with rates still negative in the eurozone, Hungary, Japan, Denmark and Switzerland.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for the comment. Will get back to you as soon as convenient, if necessary.

Popular posts from this blog

California: A Model for the Rest of the Country, Part 2

Part 1 here . On Leaving the Golden State Guest Post by NicklethroweR . Posted on the Burning Platform. The fabled Ventura Highway is all that separates my artist loft from the beach where surfing first came to the United States. Both my balcony and front patio face the freeway at about eye level and I could easily smack a tennis ball right on to the ever busy 101. Access to the beach and boardwalk is very important to a Tourist Town such as mine and I can see one underpass from my balcony and another underpass from the patio. Further up the street are two pedestrian bridges. Both have been recently remodeled so that people can not use it to kill themselves by leaping down into traffic. The traffic, just like the spice, must flow and the elites that live here do not like to be inconvenienced as they dart about between Malibu and Santa Barbara. Another feature of living where I live would have to be the homeless, the insane and the drug addicts that wander this particular...
Post a Comment
Read more

Factfulness: Ignorance about global trends. The world is actually getting better.

This newsletter was powered by  Thinkr , a smart reading app for the busy-but-curious. For full access to hundreds of titles — including audio — go premium and download the app today. From the layman to the elite, there is widespread ignorance about global trends. Author and international health professor, Hans Rosling, calls Factfulness  “his very last battle in [his] lifelong mission to fight devastating global ignorance.” After years of trying to convince the world that all development indicators point to vast improvements on a global scale, Rosling digs deeper to explore why people systematically have a negative view of where humanity is heading. He identifies a number of deeply human tendencies that predispose us to believe the worst. For every instinct that he names, he offers some rules of thumb for replacing this overdramatic worldview with a “factful” one. In 2017, 20,000 people across fourteen countries were given a multiple-choice quiz to assess basic global literac...
Post a Comment
Read more

Habits of Highly Successful Traders, Part 1

(Part 2 is here .) Trading is different than investing. Simply put, trading is short-term, investing long-term.  The goal of investing is to gradually build wealth over an extended period of time through the buying and holding (and selling at a appropriate time) of a portfolio of stocks, ETFs, bonds, and other investment instruments. Trading involves more frequent transactions, such as the buying and selling of stocks, commodities,  currency pairs , or other instruments. The goal is to generate returns that outperform buy-and-hold investing. While investors may be content with  annual returns  of 10 percent to 15 percent, traders might seek a 10 percent return each month.  Trading is hard work. Don't let anyone fool you. But if you're interested in this, it can be rewarding. However, you must have discipline and be able to follow rules. Most traders blow up their accounts. But the good ones follow certain habits. These habits can work well for investors al...
Post a Comment
Read more