Market Morning: Trump Backtracks on Russia, Flying Taxis, Walmart and Chill?

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Market Morning: Trump Backtracks on Russia, Flying Taxis, Walmart and Chill?

Trump Doesn’t Not See Why Not Russia Wouldn’t Not Interfere, Didn’t Not Mean To Say That

Top news today concerns a double negative tongue twister that confused US President Donald Trump yesterday during his joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin. With seemingly the entire political spectrum, except for Republic Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, condemning the president for supposedly capitulating to Putin when asked if the Russians interfered in the US elections in 2016, Trump said, “I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia,” but he actually meant to say, “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” The intelligence community is still quite perturbed by this, though it will be quite interesting to see if and how Trump will recover from this one.

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BMW’s Rolls Royce Makes Flying Taxi

Rolls Royce, a subsidiary of BMW (OTCMKTS:BMWYY) has announced that it is working on a flying taxi. The plane-car can carry five passengers, travel 500 miles on one charge, and can fly up to 250mph. It can take off and land vertically, so there will be no need for runways. Even though the car is technically electric, its electric engine self-charges through gas turbines, which just means it runs on gas, ultimately. It should be ready sometime in the middle of next decade, assuming Vladimir Putin doesn’t interfere in the process. We have no reason not to assume that Russia wouldn’t not interfere, though.

Fed Chair Powell and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Say Privatize Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac

Fannie Mae (OTCMKTS:FNMA), the grandma-ish nickname given to the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (OTCMKTS:FMCC) may soon come out of government conservatorship and be able to function as normal businesses in the sense that profits and losses may actually start to matter. “I think it is really important for the longer run that we get the housing finance system off the federal government’s balance sheet,” Powell said during congressional testimony yesterday. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin agrees. Both stocks were unsure of how to react, with Fannie Mae up and Freddie Mac down on the day.

Walmart and Chill? Could be Coming to a Saturday Night Near You

Walmart (NYSE:WMT) wants to challenge Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) in the streaming video subscription service market. Sources indicate that the retail giant isn’t sure it actually wants to do this yet, but if so, it is eyeing a price point of below $8 a month, and also isn’t sure of whether it will develop one in-house or if it will acquire one externally.

Gold At One-Year Lows, Possibly on Sanguine Powell Comments on Economy

Fed Chair Jay Powell’s bullish report on the US economy yesterday during his testimony to congress may be behind gold’s (NYSEARCA:GLD) fall into the $1,220 an ounce range. Commodities across the board took hits yesterday and the dollar index edged up close to $95. 52-week highs on the dollar index are at $95.25. Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC-USD) surged about $600 in one hour yesterday, no big deal, from about $6,800 to now $7,435. All in a day’s cryptocurrency trading. The rest of the crypto complex also surged, adding a total of about $21 billion in market cap in the space of 60 minutes. Somebody really wanted a lot of digital currencies very immediately yesterday.