This Week On the Economic Calendar: Manufacturing, Foreign T-Bond Buyers, Housing Starts
Not too busy of an economic calendar this week but there will be a few significant reads out of the United States. Manufacturing data comes out of the New York Fed today, and foreign buyers of T-bonds on Tuesday which should help gauge the health of foreign demand for US government debt in the wake of the trade war. Housing starts on Wednesday will help tell us how tight the housing market is.
More in the headlines today is US President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which could lead to anything, given the personalities of the two men. The official line will undoubtedly be that it was a tremendous summit, really really great, absolutely fantastic. Here’s to hoping.
Related Tickers: (NYSEARCA:ERUS) (BATS:ITB)
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Lybia Shrinks Oil Output Again Post Kidnappings
The situation in Lybia continues to deteriorate. Workers at the Sharara oil field were kidnapped by armed abductors according to Lybia’s National Oil Corp. In response to the kidnappings, Lybia has shut production for about half the field for safety reasons, amounting to about 160,000 barrels per day. Lybia has Africa’s largest crude reserves, but production there has been down ever since Muammar Qaddafi was ousted and killed by US-backed revolutionaries during the Obama Administration.
Related Tickers: (NYSEARCA:USO) (NYSEARCA:XLE)
May Says My Way or Bremain Way
British Prime Minister Theresa May warned Britons over the weekend that either Brexit will happen on her terms, which are basically stay in the European Union in almost everything but name only, or no Brexit at all. It is unclear if this is even possible since Article 50 to exit the EU was already triggered and is set go into effect in March 2019. Does “no Brexit” mean hard Brexit, or literally no Brexit? Can the May administration cancel Article 50 now, or is this just rhetoric? Businesses in the United Kingdom don’t seem to be so clear on this either, and UK stocks (NYSEARCA:EWU) are unsure of where to go on the news, mostly unchanged for the day. Meanwhile, President Trump advised may to sue the EU on Brexit terms, advice that May rejected.
Racial Slur Psychosis Deepens As Papa Johns Evicts Founder from Premises
After using a racial slur and describing racist violence in a role-playing call on public relations crises for the purpose of condemning racism, Papa John’s (NASDAQ:PZZA) founder John Schnatter has now been evicted from the company’s headquarters in Kentucky, expunged from marketing materials, and asked to stop doing interviews on behalf of the pizza chain for the media. Schnatter owns 30% of Papa John’s stock, which could make things interesting if he decides to sell
Amazon Wants to Compete with Cisco on Data Center Switches
It’s a $14 billion global market and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is plotting on how to get a piece of it. The name of the game is data network switches, which would be built in to Amazon Web Services, so not only would the data network switches catch revenue in their own right, but they would be directing clientele towards AWS at the same time. Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), Arista (NYSE:ANET), and Juniper (NYSE:JNPR) are down on the news of Amazon encroaching on their territory.