Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day
Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day
(Bloomberg) --
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.
- Nintendo has scored a huge smartphone hit with Mario Kart Tour.
- The ‘superblock’ revolution designed to make cities safer.
- Lego is building a new headquarters. Unfortunately, from concrete bricks.
- Behind the scenes of China’s multibillion-dollar movie studios.
- You can pay for gas with cigarettes in Venezuela.
- What’s left of magazine publisher Conde Nast?
- The Netflix experiment allowing you to watch movies at 1.5 times the speed.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net
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