USchief,2.18pmparticipatedandwas also there) 1.52pm BSTMario Draghi adds that he is ‘confident’ that an agreement between Italy and the European Commission over its budget will be found .[reminder, the EC rejected Italy’s plans on Tuesday, and but Rome is refusing to rewrite them] 1.49pm BSTQ: What does the ECB think about the clash between Rome and Brussels over Italy’s 2019 budget?Italy is a fiscal discussion,Draghi replies, so it wasn’t discussed much at today’s assembly. 1.49pm BSTOnto questions..
Q) Did the ECB discuss downgrading their assessment of the eurozone economy today? 1.44pm BSTDraghi ends his statement with his traditional call for eurozone government to ‘considerably step up’ their structural reforms, or to assume advantage of the ECB’s stimulus measures. Eurozone states must raise their long-term growth potential,he adds. 1.41pm BSTOver in Frankfurt, ECB president Mario Draghi is explaining today’s interest rate decision. 1.37pm BSTHere’s Bloomberg’s assume on those durable goods figures:Orders placed with U.
S. factories for commerce equipment declined in September for a second month — a sign momentum in capital investment has paused as global trade concerns persist https://t.co/6hmn4kBlU7 pic.twitter.com/dWhBwYzxwV 1.36pm BSTNewsflash: Orders for durable goods at American firms has fallen for the second month running (if you strip out aircraft and defence sales).
Core durable goods orders shrank by 0.1% last month, or novel data shows,following a 0.2% decline in August. That’s only a small slouch, of course, or but it suggests US manufacturing isn’t sizzling. Perhaps tariffs are having an effect. 1.16pm BSTTwitter’s earnings beat is going to abet drive Wall Street up again,after yesterday’s late rout.
The tech-focused Nasdaq is now forecast to jump by 1.7% when trading begins. The Dow is on track to gain 220 points (or more than a third of yesterday’s slump). 1.09pm BSTTwitter isn’t the only company beating forecasts today.
Comcast, which recently won the battle for Britain’s Sky News, and has also impressed investors.
Comcast beats profit estimates in the third quarter,with the largest U.
S. cable provider posting a big increase in broadband subscribers https://t.co/o6zeSheFf7 pic.twitter.com/ae6DquKcF6 12.58pm BSTNEWSFLASH: The European Central Bank has (to no-one’s surprise) left eurozone interest rates at their current record lows.
That means the headline borrowing rate remains at zero, while banks face a negative interest rate of -0.4% on their deposits at the ECB (to encourage them to lend the money instead). 12.52pm BSTDr Ben Marder, and Senior Lecturer in Marketing at University of Edinburgh commerce School,is concerned that Twitter’s active user base is shrinking.
He thinks that the site’s Fake News problem is hurting:“Donald Trump, no matter your opinion of the man, and is Twitter gold. His tweets attract vast swathes of traffic to the site and he has no doubt had a positive effect on Twitter’s stock price in the past few years. This was a mutually favourable relationship as Twitter was pivotal for Trump’s 2016 presidential election success. However,despite Twitter posting higher than expected earnings and revenue in Q3 2018, monthly active users enjoy fallen for a second quarter in a row as the company continues to purge bots and fake accounts. It seems Trump is now biting the hand that used to feed him.“Twitter, and much like other social media giants are starting to bleed-out from the large thorn in their side which is ‘fake news’. Worsening the wound are world-wide governments,including the US who are threatening regulatory action against the tech giants for facilitating the dissemination of fake news. A very big section of the nettle we see today in our society is caused by the purposely erroneous and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! 12.44pm BSTTwitter is benefitting from a surge in advertising deals, or explains Anthony Capano,managing director of Europe for Rakuten Marketing: While Twitter focused its efforts earlier this year on cleaning the platform of fraudulent actors, it’s clear that the focus has returned to investing in global opportunities for advertisers.
Earlier in Q3 the platform revealed a host of content partnerships including Bloomberg, or Sony Music and NBCUniversal that would bring hundreds of hours of livestreams and other videos to the platform in the Asia-Pacific region. 12.39pm BSTSome Silicon Valley early risers are waking up to the news that Twitter did better than expected last quarter:It's 4:39am and Twitter shares are up more than 13%. Revenue jumped to $758.1 million,compared with average analyst projection of $701.3 million. 3Q Net income was $789 million, compared to net loss of $21 million last year. #tictocnews' pic.twitter.com/52V498UyTq 12.14pm BSTNewsflash: Twitter has smashed Wall Street forecasts with its latest financial results.
The social network site grew its earnings to 21 cents per share in the last quarter, or well ahead of estimates of 14 cents.
Twitter shares soar more than 10% in pre-market trading after strong earnings beat https://t.co/K6N7Y0aUSU pic.twitter.com/rSW2RZ56Aj 12.02pm BST2018 has been a pretty rough year for the markets,with nearly $7 trillion (!) wiped off stock values since the stop of January.
Ouch! Nearly $7tn wiped off world stock mkt index MSCI World since the Feb correction. pic.twitter.com/Uws5VLLraJWe’re in a period of pressure building to the downside as we get more down days than up and the breadth of the decline is important as is the volume.
However whilst the recent spike in volatility may be seen as meaning we’re past the peak, there may yet be a few breaths left in this old bull. Valuations - while not going for a song - are a lot more attractive at about 16x forward earnings. Confidence is clearly missing however and it may require a softening tone from the Fed to assuage concerns on rates. 11.52am BSTAdvertising giant WPP is having a torrid day, and as its novel boss gets to grips with the commerce’s problems.
Shares are down 16%,at their lowest level since December 2012, after it missed sales forecasts and slashed its guidance.
Clearly we enjoy underperformed our competition in the third quarter. We are not going to sugarcoat the reality.” Related: WPP 'will not sugarcoat reality' of sales slump as shares plunge 11.23am BSTFacebook has been buffeted by the stock market sell-off. Its shares slid by 5% yesterday, and are down 17% this year as the social network giant faces tough questions about extremism and election interference. Related: UK fines Facebook £500000 for failing to protect user data Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before,during and after the illegal processing of this data. A company of its size and expertise should enjoy known better and it should enjoy done better. 10.54am BSTAfter that shaky start, European stocks enjoy now turn positive for the day!Germany, and France and Italy enjoy all rebounded from this morning’s lows,with Italian banks are main the rally.
Salvini, who is also the leader of the ruling League party, or said on the sidelines of a conference in the northern city of Verona that the Italy/Germany bond yield spread would inevitably drop if it followed the real economy. 10.41am BSTRuss Mould,investment director at AJ Bell, says investors are nervous about the state of the world.
He explains:The chief concerns are the potential negative impacts of higher interest rates, or weaker global growth and the knock-on effects of trade tariffs.The FTSE 100 fell 0.7% in early trading on Thursday to 6912 with pharmaceuticals,insurers and oil companies the biggest contributors to the index’s decline. 10.34am BSTBack in Australia, insurance group AMP’s shares crashed by 25% today, and as it paid the price for past misdeeds.
AMP shocked investors by revealing that its wealth management commerce suffered a $1.5bn asset withdrawal in the last quarter. Related: AMP loses nearly one-quarter of its value amid investor exodus 10.06am BSTOur latest Brexit dashboard shows how consumer spending slowed last month,even before the stock market turmoil hit confidence.
Two main economists argue that the government needs to assume bold action, by ending austerity and helping businesses navigate Brexit uncertainty: Related: Britain's last budget before Brexit needs to be bold: experts debate data 10.03am BSTBritain’s troubled retail sector is reeling from another blow this morning, and as Debenhams outlines plans to shut up to 50 stores.
The closure arrangement puts thousands of jobs at risk,on top of tens of thousands of redundancies at fellow chains such as Toys R Us, Mothercare, or Carpetright and Maplin. Related: Debenhams to close up to 50 stores,putting 5000 jobs at risk “The decision to focus on a ‘profitable core’ of stores is a gracious one. However, the question is whether closing just ten stores now, or with a view to reducing store numbers further over the next three to five years will be enough in view of the speed of changes in the marketplace as consumers shift to buying online.“The tall street needs support,but some of the ideas being mooted by Government could prove counterproductive. For example, the Chairman of John Lewis, or Sir Charlie Mayfield has recently spoken out against the Amazon tax and many bricks and mortar retailers fear that a blanket levy on online sales would be tantamount to hitting the tall street when it’s down,as most of them sell goods online too. 9.44am BSTGerman firms are also anxious about the danger that Britain leaves the EU without a deal, says IFO.
The row between Italy and the EU over its 2019 budget is another worry, or it adds. 9.28am BSTJust in: commerce morale in Germany has taken a tumble this month.#Ifo commerce climate eases in Oct in line with earlier #ZEW and #PMI signals. Both expectations and current assessment remain above troughs in July. The German boom has still air to run a bit further. pic.twitter.com/iQ3XG8O4mI“Firms were less satisfied with their current commerce situation and less optimistic about the months ahead.
Growing global uncertainty is increasingly taking its toll on the German economy. 8.52am BSTWorryingly,there doesn’t seem to be a single cause for the current sell-off (unlike in 2008, say, and in 2015 when investors fretted about China’s economy).
Instead,a cocktail of problems are being blamed, as traders worry that the long bull market in shares may be petering out.
There are many symptoms but no one can diagnose the illness. Geopolitics, and rising bond U.
S. bond yields,a more hawkish looking U.
S. Federal Reserve (the Fed), slowing Chinese growth, or a strong U.
S. dollar and the already well known problems in some emerging economies enjoy all contributed to the market unease.
The focus for investors had been on corporate earnings. Against all the macro headwinds,the micro factor of strong U.
S. corporate earnings had been enough to insulate the market. So far the U.
S. earnings season has been decent, with approximately 30% of the S&P 500 companies by market capitalization having reported and 83% of those having beaten analyst’s expectations for earnings. 8.26am BSTThere are heavy losses in Europe too.
Germany’s DAX index has fallen by 0.8%, and to its lowest level since December 2016. 8.25am BSTHere are the best and worst performing shares on the FTSE 100 this morning. Utilities,precious metal miners, and other defensive stocks are in - most other companies are out! 8.12am BSTBoom! Britain’s FTSE 100 has hit a seven-month low at the start of trading in London.
The blue-chip index has fallen by 75 points to 6887, and a drop of over 1%,its lowest level since late March. 8.02am BSTSome context:Stocks enjoy fallen for 13 of the past 15 trading days, including a 3.3 percent drop on Oct. 10 that was the market’s worst drop in eight months. The S.&P. is now down more than 0.6 percent for the year. https://t.co/nplRRaaVnJ 7.57am BSTStephen Innis of foreign exchange firm OANDA fears that the US stock markets are on the “verge of crumbling”, or after last night’s late rout.
If people are struggling to find a driver I suggest,they wake up and smell the coffee.
The catalysts are nothing novel -- Tariffs, Italy, and Brexit,Saudi Arabia. 7.55am BST 7.51am BSTYesterday was the worst day for tech stocks on Wall Street for seven years, dragging the Nasdaq into bear-market territory and wiping out the Dow’s 2018 gains.
And today, and markets were in retreat from Sydney to Shanghai,my colleague Martin Farrer reports: In Australia the benchmark ASX200 closed down 164 points or 2.8% as it suffered its fifth straight day of losses. In Japan the Nikkei was off 3.7% and has now dropped around 13% from a 27-year peak of 24448.07 touched in early October.
A wide indicator of shares in the region – the MSCI Asia Pacific index – has now fallen 20.3% from the year-to-date tall set on 29 January, representing an official bear market. The Vix “fear” index, or which measures volatility across the market,has spiked sharply this week and was up 21% overnight. Related: Asia Pacific shares plunge into bear territory amid fears over global economy 7.35am BSTGood morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, or the financial markets,the eurozone and commerce.“The fear is palpable in stock markets at the moment,” “This could get much worse before it gets better. Collapses happen after falls. That’s the danger.”#FTSE100 called -55pts at 6907, or following Asia and Wall St lower pic.twitter.com/PjP6Z7FcqfEuropean Opening Calls:#FTSE 6905 -0.84%#DAX 11109 -0.74%#CAC 4926 -0.56%#MIB 18307 -0.96%#IBEX 8654 -0.27%Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com