China readies antitrust probe of Apple
China’s antitrust watchdog, the State Administration for Market Regulation, is laying the groundwork for a potential probe into Apple’s (AAPL) app store policies and the fees it charges app developers. Apple policies under scrutiny include the cut of as much as 30% on...
Two sells before the tariffs start–more to come, I suspect
Stocks moved down slightly on Friday–with the Standard & Poor’s 500 off 0.50% and the NASDAQ Composite down 0.28%–as investors started to revise their belief that President Donald Trump wasn’t really serious about raising tariffs. And they’re down...
As tech sells off in a rout, where’s the fear?
Don’t think traders and Wall Street market strategists haven’t noticed: on a day when AI stocks like Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) fell 17% each, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.4%. Yes, Wall Street’s “fear gauge”—-the VIX—soared 20% the most since...
Paul Krugman puts some numbers on the effects of Trump’s tariffs
Assuming that conventional economics still has some validity and that economic history has some predictive value, Paul Krugman, who won his 2008 Nobel-prize in economics for his work on international trading patterns, has put some numbers on the likely effects of the...
Tariff trial ballon on how much and who will get hit?
Today the Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would amount to paring back–the Post’s characterization–the tariff plans that candidate Trump proposed on the campaign trail President-elect Trump...
Does Trump’s digital tax deal with France sound familiar?
France and the United States have struck what the Trump administration and the French government are billing as a global framework for digital taxation that avoids a transatlantic trade war (according to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire.) But like the Phase 1...
Now that the U.S. and China have signed that Part 1 trade deal, let the second guessing begin
The United States and China signed a Part 1 trade deal today that contained little in the way of positive surprises and an expected lack of detail. As analysts and economists struggled to fill in the blanks, much of the deeper dive wound up stressing the negatives in...
Stocks slip on news that Part 1 trade agreement between U.S. and China won’t significantly reduce existing tariffs until after the November election
Wednesday is still likely to bring the signing of a Part 1 agreement in the U.S.-China trade war. But the public document is likely to have even fewer details than expected recently and to leave existing tariffs in place until after the Presidential election in...
China almost confirms January 15 deal signing
It’s not exactly a confirmation of President Donald Trump’s announcement that the Part 1 trade deal would be signed between the United States and China at the White House on January 15. But China has scheduled a high-level trade delegation for travel to...
“News” on U.S.-China trade talks takes away, “news” on talks gives back
A day after “news” on the lack of progress of U.S.-China trade talks led to a decline in stocks, “news” of progress in the talks has led to a modest rally. The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed up 0.63% today and the Dow Jones Industrial...
Trump says, No hurry to strike a trade deal with China in 2020, and markets tumble
“I don’t have a deadline,” Trump told reporters today in London. “I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal. But they want to make a deal now and we’ll see whether not the deal is going to be right.” And with that financial markets that...
Where’d that come from? Trump reinstates tariffs on Brazilian and Argentine steel and aluminum
President Donald Trump has reinstated tariffs on steel and aluminum exports from Argentina and Brazil, leaving global financial markets wondering what that means. At best, the move is based on mis-understanding by the White House of how exchange rates work. The...
Tariff roll back or not? Markets certainly don’t know.
The uncertainty extends even to whether or not a Part 1 trade deal between the United States and China will even get signed in 2019. Yesterday, China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng said negotiators had “agreed to remove additional tariffs in phases as...Other signs of global economic stress keep coming in
The U.S.-China trade war continues to erode business confidence in Germany. Business confidence in the country, home to Europe’s largest economy, fell to its weakest level in almost seven years as a deepening manufacturing slump put the German economy on the...
As promised: Trump announces retaliation this afternoon to this morning’s new tariffs from China
That didn’t take long. This afternoon President Donald Trump said he would raise tariffs to retaliation to this morning’s move by China to impose a new 10% tariff on $75 billion in U.S. exports to China. Trump’s move would increase tariffs already in...
China retaliates; Trump promises his retaliation to their retaliation this afternoon
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump upstaged Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell this morning. Powell’s Jackson Hole speech this morning was supposed to be the day’s big market event. (More on this speech in a later post.) But this morning China announced that it...
People’s Bank signals its goal of an orderly retreat in China’s yuan, and markets recover–somewhat
Stocks rallied today on signs that the People’s Bank intends to deliver an orderly drop in China’s currency. This morning the yuan traded slightly above the critical 7 yuan to the dollar currency band. And the bank said it will sell $4.2 billion in yuan...
Trump’s new round of China tariffs freaks out financial–especially bond–markets
So much for any hopes that the resumption of U.S-China trade talks would put an end to the tariff war in anything like the near term. The new round of talks only began on Wednesday, was adjourned after a day, and was scheduled to resume in Washington in September....
Caterpillar earnings miss big, drag on industrials and Dow
Caterpillar (CAT) reported second quarter earnings this morning of $2.83 a share, well below the $3.11 a share expected by Wall Street analysts. And then, to make the future as grim as the present, Caterpillar rearmed its earnings guidance for the fiscal 2019 year of...
President’s remarks remind markets there’s still a trade war going on
At a cabinet meeting today President Donald Trump wanted to remind everyone that he could still impose additional tariffs on Chinese imports if he wants. The President also expressed impatience that the truce in the trade war with China hadn’t yet resulted in a...
China’s economy continues to slow in second quarter
Of course, we can’t trust China’s official GDP statistics. Government economists cook the books so that China’s growth stays within the goals set by the country’s leaders every year. But investors should pay attention to the trend. And this...
Trump interview utterly confuses markets ahead of Saturday meeting with China’s Xi
So what does the United States want out of the Saturday talks between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping? In a Wednesday interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo Trump thoroughly confused expectations. The market consensus had been...
Manufacturing sector contracts more than expected in May in ISM survey–but, surprising pundits, market doesn’t fold
Going into Monday, June 3, the consensus on Wall Street was that if the Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index for manufacturing fell more than expected, U.S. stocks would follow in a rout. A lower than expected reading on the index would...
The importance of the 5% tariff that President Trump just slapped on Mexico is way bigger than the number suggests
It’s only 5%, Wall Street is saying today in what clearly sounds like an effort to convince itself when investors really know better. That unconvincing “happy talk” is why the Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down only 1.24% at the close...
Today it’s all trade war news all the time
Sometimes it’s better to just weigh the news rather than try to analyze it. And that certainly seems to fit today’s market action. Even though the major U.S. indexes managed slight gains as of the close today–the Standard & Poor’s 500, for...
Beijing says, If the U.S. won’t play nice, China won’t play at all
The Chinese government is using the country’s official media to signal that it isn’t interested in resuming trade talks with the United States under a threat of higher 25% tariffs on another $320 billion in Chinese exports to the United States. And to make...Market falls as China retaliates for U.S. tariff hike on Friday
On Friday, the Trump administration raised tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese exports to the United States to 25% from 10%. The move, the administration said, was in response to Chinese efforts to walk back provisions the country had agreed to, according to the White...
U.S. stock market wants to believe U.S.-China talks are “constructive”
The Standard & Poor’s 500 was slightly in the green at the close today at 2881.40. That marked a big turnaround from earlier in the session. As of 11 a.m. New York time the index had dipped to 2826.29. Today it was all about China and the trade/tariff talks...
Rational self-interest argues for a successful conclusion of U.S.-China trade talks in the long run; in the short run it argues that the talks will fall apart first
It is clearly in the self interest of both President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping to reach an agreement that would bring the U.S.-China trade war to an end. In the long-run. That same calculus, however, argues that in the short run both leaders will let the...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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