Tag: stock market

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday called a snap general election in a bid to consolidate power in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with North Korea, according to media reports. Abe said he’ll dissolve parliament on Thursday Sept. 28, but didn’t give a date for the election. There’s speculation that the vote will be held on Oct. 22, more than a year sooner than planned. The prime minister’s Liberal Democratic Party is likely to make a strong showing in the election, with 44% support versus 8% for the main opposition Democratic Party, according to a poll out on Sunday. Abe said the decision to call the election now was influenced by the tensions with North Korea, which lately has fired several missiles over Japanese territory. “We must not give into the threat of North Korea. I hope to gain the confidence of the people in the upcoming election and push forward strong diplomacy,” Abe said, according to CNN. The yen fell against the dollar, with the greenback buying ¥112.04, up from ¥111.99 late Friday in New York.

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A revised version of the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal Obamacare would benefit states of senators who are currently opposed to the bill, according to reports late Sunday. According to both Politico and the Washington Post, which have seen the revised text, the new bill projects federal funding increases for Arizona, Alaska, Kentucky and Maine, each of which would have seen less federal funding under the original plan. Those states are home to Sens. John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Susan Collins, respectively, who have all come out opposed to the bill. The revision will reportedly be unveiled Monday. It faces a Saturday deadline for passage, and the GOP can only afford two dissenting votes. On Sunday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also said he opposed the bill, and suggested Utah Sen. Mike Lee did as well.

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President Barack Obama gave Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg “a wake-up call” last November over Russia’s use of social media to meddle in the U.S. election, according to a Washington Post report Sunday. On Nov. 19, nine days after Zuckerberg called the idea that Facebook ads played a key role in the election “crazy,” Obama told Zuckerberg of the damage political disinformation had played, and warned his company needed to do more to address the threat. While Zuckerberg reportedly downplayed Facebook’s impact in his talk with Obama, last week Zuckerberg announced broad changes in how Facebook deals with political ads, and turned over 3,000 Russia-linked ads to congressional investigators. “I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,” Zuckerberg said in a video.

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The White House on Sunday announced new travel restrictions from visitors from eight countries, as President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban targeting six mostly Muslim countries gets reshaped into permanent policy. The new restrictions single out Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela were not part of the earlier travel ban. The White House said the new restrictions will take effect immediately for those without “bona fide” close relatives in the U.S., and Oct. 18 for those who do, as well as for citizens of Chad, North Korea and Venezuela. U.S. visa holders will not be affected. The countries affected have “‘inadequate’ identity-management protocols, information-sharing practices, and risk factors,” the White House said in a statement. The restrictions will be tailored for each country, and will remain in place until the Department of Homeland Security deems sufficient improvements have been made in those countries. When asked about the new travel ban Sunday, Trump told reporters: “The tougher, the better.”

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An appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley fizzled Sunday, and a university spokesman dubbed his visit “the most expensive photo opp in the university’s history,” according to the East Bay Times. Amid heightened security, Yiannopoulos showed up at Sproul Plaza for about 15 minutes before being whisked off in an SUV. Yiannopoulos briefly met with his supporters, who were vastly outnumbered by protesters and police. The university estimated security for the brief event cost $800,000, and used the resources of eight police departments. Yiannopoulos had originally been scheduled to speak as the university kicked off “Free Speech Week,” which its student-group sponsors canceled last week. Berkeley police had been bracing for potential violence between Yiannopoulos supporters and protesters, but there were no immediate reports of violence or property damage.

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Angela Merkel is set to win a fourth term in Germany’s general election on Sunday, where polls closed roughly half an hour ago at 6 p.m. Central European time. Meanwhile, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party is slated to come in third, with first projections showing them above 13% of the vote, according to the Wall Street Journal and local reports. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party is leading with around 33%–its worst result since the Federal Republic of Germany’s first election in 1949–followed by her main challenger Martin Schulz’s social democrats with roughly 20%. Both parties have registered steep losses compared with the last election, and the social democrats are unwilling to enter into another grand coalition to lead the country, local media reports. This means Merkel will likely have to form ties with the Greens and liberals, in the so-called Jamaica coalition.

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The Financial Stability Oversight Council said Friday it discussed the ongoing annual reevaluation of its designation of a nonbank financial company — in all likelihood, a reference to American International Group , as media reports suggested the group of regulators would ahead of the meeting. The FSOC didn’t say what, if anything, was decided. If the FSOC ruled that AIG was no longer a systemically important financial institution, the insurer would no longer be subject to federal oversight via the Federal Reserve. AIG was bailed out by the federal government during the financial crisis of 2008.

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Facebook Inc. will not execute a stock split that creates a non-voting class of shares after facing an investor lawsuit, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday afternoon. Zuckerberg wanted the stock split to ensure he remained in control of Facebook even while donating a massive amount of his stock to an LLC he and his wife Priscilla created to support philanthropic causes. In his announcement on Facebook, Zuckerberg said the increase in Facebook’s stock price allows him to avoid creating a non-voting class of stock. “Over the past year and a half, Facebook’s business has performed well and the value of our stock has grown to the point that I can fully fund our philanthropy and retain voting control of Facebook for 20 years or more,” Zuckerberg wrote. “As a result, I’ve asked our board to withdraw the proposal to reclassify our stock — and the board has agreed.” Facebook stock has increased 48.2% in 2017, pushing its market capitalization to near $500 billion, while the S&P 500 index has gained 11.7% in that time. Zuckerberg was set to testify next week in a Delaware court where investors were fighting the split, but that session was suddenly canceled Friday, amid rumors of a settlement between Facebook and investors.

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U.S. stocks ended with slight moves on Friday, as the market’s recent upward momentum remained intact, although geopolitical uncertainty limited buying appetite with major indexes near records. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 10 points, or less than 0.1%, to 22,349. The S&P 500 rose 1.5 point to 2,502. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 4 points, or 0.1%, to 6,427. North Korea returned to the forefront after the country’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho said late Thursday at a United Nations meeting that his country might consider a nuclear bomb of “unprecedented scale” in the Pacific. While geopolitical tensions have been elevated, some analysts said the stock market has become desensitized to the threats the U.S. and North Korea. For the week, the Dow rose 0.4%, the S&P rose 0.1%, and the Nasdaq fell 0.3%. Among the day’s most active stocks, CarMax Inc. rose 7.8% after quarterly earnings and revenue beat Wall Street expectations.

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The beginning of third-quarter earnings reporting season is still a few weeks away, but a record number of companies have already provided revenue guidance that was above expectations, according to Senior Earnings Analyst John Butters at FactSet. FactSet has been tracking guidance since 2006. Overall, 54 companies have issued positive revenue guidance, which is more than double the five-year average of 25, and above the first-quarter 2011 record of 45, Butters said. Over half (30) of the positive revenue guidance comes for the information technology sector, followed by 11 from the consumer discretionary sector and eight from health care, FactSet data shows. Since the end of the second quarter, the SPDR Technology Select Sector ETF has climbed 7.0%, the SPDR Consumer Discretionary Select Sector ETF has eased 0.1%, the SPDR Health Care Select Sector ETF has tacked on 3.0% and the S&P 500 has gained 3.3%.

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