Japan’s Economy Grows; Home Builder Confidence Up; New York Manufacturing Rises; Credit Card Defaults Stabilize in July; MSNBC Buys “Hyperlocal” News Aggregator; Reader’s Digest Files for Bankruptcy; Lowe’s Profit Falls 19%
Dollar plunges to 13-1/2 year trough vs yen, below 88… European, U.S. government debt touch fresh historic lows… Morgan Stanley’s, PNB Paribas’ losses lead stocks lower… Oil slips; OPEC’s record cut doesn’t offset demand slide
A market that is surprisingly surprising…the meanest reverters in the whole financial world. Robert Mugabe: Freddie’s new CEO?…expecting the sun to come back over the housing market. Americans and Brits caught in no-man’s-land…pouring petrol on an already blazing country…and more!
In energy news, oil traded lower for the day, continuing a string of recent declines since hitting an all-time high over $147 a barrel several weeks ago. Crude for September delivery fell another $2.54 to finish at $122.19 a barrel, its lowest price in 12 weeks. September reformulated gasoline also fell 6.1 cents, ending the day at $3.0132 a gallon.
The base metals all went on a tear on Wednesday. Copper was down from the pre-dawn hours to the first part of the New York morning, touching $3.74, but then rallied sharply to finish just below its intraday high at $3.8065/lb., up nearly 3 cents.
The base metals were all deeply in the red on Thursday. As soon as copper had closed above the psychologically-important $4 mark, it gave it right back, dropping precipitously through the pre-dawn hours and then trading flat to finish near its intraday low at $3.8945/lb., down 21 cents.
This terrifying news of rising inflation and rising bond yields had the curious effect of producing a sort of fight-or-flight reaction in the Mighty Manly Mogambo (MMM), in that I start involuntarily crying like a baby.
The news on the UK economy just keeps getting worse. Last week’s news was unremittingly glum – from falling house prices to income squeezes, most of us are quite a bit worse off than we were a year ago.