Category: Stock Market News

Exchange-traded funds that track both Canada’s and Mexico’s stock markets fell on Wednesday, following a report that suggested U.S. President Donald Trump may announce a withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement. The iShares MSCI Mexico ETF sank 2.5% while the iShares MSCI Canada ETF lost 1.1%. The S&P 500 fell 0.2%. According to Reuters, which cited two Canadian government officials, Canada is increasingly convinced that President Donald Trump will announce that the U.S. will exit Nafta. The trade pact is currently being renegotiated with the latest round of talks scheduled for later this month in Montreal. A dissolution of Nafta is seen as detrimental to both Mexico and Canada, which benefit from free trade with the world’s largest economy.

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Oil prices on Wednesday settled above $63 a barrel for the first time in more than three years after the Energy Information Administration reported an eighth-straight weekly decline in U.S. crude supplies, along with a fall in weekly production. February West Texas Intermediate crude rose 61 cents, or 1%, to settle at $63.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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U.S. stocks, struggling to maintain record-setting altitude in 2018, took a firmer slide Wednesday afternoon amid a report that Canadian officials expect that President Donald Trump will end the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to a Reuters. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off about 41 points, or 0.2%, at 25,344, the S&P 500 index was off 0.3% at 2,743, while the Nasdaq Composite Index retreated 0.4% at 7,134. The main benchmarks had been treading water, trying to recover from an earlier slide, before reports about Nafta surfaced. The U.S. dollar also strengthened against Canada’s loonie and the Mexico’s peso . Discussion to redraft the 23-year old trade pact between Mexico, Canada and the U.S. has been thorny.

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The U.S. dollar spiked against its Canadian counterpart and the Mexican peso on a Reuters report that Canada is increasingly convinced that President Donald Trump will announce that the U.S. will exit the North American Free Trade Agreement. The report cited two government sources. Nafta, the trade pact between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, is currently being renegotiated with the latest round of talks scheduled for later this month in Montreal. Market participants agree that a dissolution of Nafta would hit the Mexican economy the hardest. One dollar last bought C$1.2569, up from C$1.2464 late Tuesday. The buck meanwhile bought 19.3485 pesos, up from 19.2404.

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Shares of MoviePass majority owner Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc. rose as much as 39% from Tuesday’s close during trading hours on Wednesday. Helios & Matheson Chief Executive Ted Fanrsworth said he and MoviePass Chief Executive Mitch Lowe have been exploring the possibilities of blockchain technology for more than a year, according to a report by Yahoo Finance. Farnsworth said they have been in discussions with lawyers about the possibility of an initial coin offering. He’s been wary of the Security and Exchange Commission’s regulations, as well as whether blockchain is just “the flavor of the day.” MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe told Yahoo Finance that using a crypto currency in the day-to-day business of the company is an appealing prospect. Shares of Helios & Matheson have gained nearly $168% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 index is up more than 21% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up close to 28%.

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Treasury buying picked up, pushing yields slightly lower, Wednesday afternoon following an auction of 10-year Treasury notes that drew healthier demand than had been expected. An unconfirmed report earlier in the session indicated that China may be considering halting or slowing Treasury purchases, which had cast a pall on the market, driving prices lower and yields higher, as investors appeared to shun U.S. assets. However, market participants described appetite for the 10-year notes as solid. “In the context of a wild and messy few days in interest rates, the 10 year note auction was good,” wrote Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer for the Bleakley Advisory Group. The so-called bid-to-cover ratio for the auction stood at 2.69, the highest since 2016. Bid-to-cover ratios are a gauge of appetite for the debt sale, the number represents the proportion of bids received to bids accepted. Treasury auctions can be a litmus test of the state of the bond market. In recent trade, the 10-year Treasury note yield was up at 2.569%, versus 2.542% on late Tuesday. The 2-year note yield was slightly higher at 1.973%, from 1.968%. The 30-year bond yield was at 2.910%, from 2.883%.

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Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Jensen Huang disputed a report that software updates disclosed Wednesday morning showed that the company’s graphics-processing units are susceptible to the Spectre vulnerability that has roiled other chip companies. In a presentation to media members at CES in Las Vegas, Huang said that those interpretations of its Wednesday morning blog post update were “incorrectly reported.” “Our GPUs are immune, they are not affected by these security issues,” Huang said, explaining that Nvidia had to release software updates to fix the CPU vulnerability, just like other software makers including Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. . Nvidia stock started off Wednesday’s session with a decline, but steadily climbed through the morning session and was showing a slight gain for the session by mid-day. Nvidia shares have gained more than 109% in the past year, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average has increased 27.7%.

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Shares of Intuitive Surgical Inc. surged 6.5% toward a record high in midday trade Wednesday, enough to pace the S&P 500’s gainers, after the robotic-assisted surgery technologies company provided upbeat sales guidance. The company, which has a market capitalization of $47.5 billion, said it expects to report fourth-quarter revenue $892 million, which is up 18% from a year ago, and well above the FactSet consensus of about $849 million, as preliminary instrument and accessory revenue rose 18% to $457 million to beat expectations of $441 million. The stock has soared 92% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 has rallied 21%.

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Ford Motor Co. is being sued by truck owners alleging the car maker has rigged at least 500,000 heavy-duty, diesel-fueled trucks to beat emissions tests, according to a Bloomberg report on Wednesday. Ford’s F-250 and F-350 Super Duty pickups, sold between 2011 and 2017 and cost more than their gasoline-fueled equivalents, are producing emissions as much as 50 times the legal limit, Bloomberg said, citing the complaint. Shares of Ford fell 0.3% on Wednesday, compared with losses of around 0.2% for the S&P 500 index.

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Congressman Darrell Issa plans to retire after 2018, giving Democrats a good chance to win a seat that covers a large coastal area just north of San Diego. Issa barely held onto his seat in the prior election and the odds of sizable Democratic gains in this year’s national races appears to be growing. Issa voted against the recent Republican tax bill on worries that it might hit some of his wealthier constituents hard. Issa himself is one of the richest members of Congress.

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