Welcome to your morning markets update, delivered every weekday before the European open. Good morning. Impeachment is moving forward, Big Oil earnings reports kick into gear and the question of whether the U.K. can agree on having an election remains. Here's what's moving markets. Elections? U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson failed in his bid to get lawmakers to back an election on Dec. 12, a widely expected rejection and one that seemingly provoked anger towards 50-pence coins. As is so often the case with Brexit, each new development is the start of a new story and Tuesday will be yet another pivotal day. The government may now turn to a plan floated by two opposition parties to push for an election on Dec. 9 instead, though the indications are that disagreements almost across the board could even stop that from making its way through Parliament. All eyes on Westminster once again, as if anyone has dared looked away. Impeachment The U.S. House of Representatives is to take its first vote this week to support the ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, a move mostly designed to head off the main complaint of Republican lawmakers that the probe is illegitimate. Add it to the list of headaches the president is contending with, including new reports that he considered cutting grants for schools run by a foe of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan back in 2017, before Erdogan shifted much lower on his Christmas card list. Big Oil BP Plc gets the earnings season going today for Europe's oil majors, followed by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA later in the week, and will be preparing to manage investor expectations amid a slew of headwinds. Lower oil prices, sluggish global demand and shrinking margins in chemicals could all show up as the companies update through the week. Overall, the supermajors are set to report an average 42% drop in earnings. It probably doesn't help that crude prices took a dip into the session, hit by renewed signs of swelling stockpiles in the U.S. Cloud Costs Quarterly earnings at Alphabet Inc., the parent company of search giant Google, got a busy U.S. tech earnings week started, with Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. still to come. Alphabet took a hit from heavy spending on the group's cloud computing business as it continues to try to catch up with market leaders Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. More spending on sales and marketing is expected in the final quarter of the year as the group ramps up advertising and promotes its new Pixel smartphone as part of a growing devices business which it is reportedly looking to burnish through buying smart-watch maker Fitbit. Coming Up… U.S. stocks rose to a record on Monday but the rally stalled a little into the Asia session as investors weigh the trade picture, encouraging earnings and expectations the Federal Reserve will cut rates on Wednesday. European futures are pointing to a mixed open. The market will digest numbers from French telecoms group Orange SA and cosmetics giant L'Oreal SA. And note faux meat firm Beyond Meat Inc., which raised its sales forecast but may face a selloff in its shares today, the first day that early backers of the company are allowed to exit. What We've Been Reading This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours. And finally, here's what Cormac Mullen is interested in this morning With U.S. stocks at fresh record highs it may seem churlish to point to clouds on the horizon but a number of issues are looming in the distance that suggest risks ahead. For Barings' chief global strategist Christopher Smart, question marks over growth, profitability and debt all point to potential speed bumps for the equity rally, even though U.S. consumption remains strong and central banks are easing. Similarly, the fact that a round of federal spending that could boost growth remains hard to imagine and that business investment is unlikely to ramp up also creates risks to continued gains in stocks, he wrote in a recent report. For UBS strategists including Francois Trahan though, the biggest threat to the equity rally is a contraction in forward earnings growth. Every bear market of the past 50 years has seen a decline in forward earnings for the S&P 500, they wrote in a separate report. And the share of the benchmark gauge's members with negative earnings growth is on the increase, they noted. The UBS team suggest we can expect to see a negative print on S&P 500 forward earnings growth ``sometime in the coming months'' -- they are already contracting for mid-cap and small-cap companies. Cormac Mullen is a cross-asset reporter and editor for Bloomberg News in Tokyo. Like Bloomberg's Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more. |
Post a Comment