Week of Nov 17 2017 Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
Monday, November 20th, 2017“Only fools and liars buy at exact bottoms and sell at exact tops!” — unknown
1. S&P & ISDA Declare Venezuela in Default — S&P has downgraded Venezuela’s foreign currency sovereign credit rating to “selective default” after it failed to make $200M in payments on its global bonds. The decision capped off a day in which the government promised to keep paying its debts, but offered no firm proposals, at a conference in Caracas. Furthermore, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has ruled that Venezuela and its state oil company PDVSA have defaulted on their debts. The decision will trigger credit-default swaps, with the details of how they will be settled to be determined by the committee on Nov. 20.
2. FDA Approves First Digital Pill — The FDA has approved the first digital pill – made by Otsuka Pharmaceutical (OTCPK:OTSKY) and Proteus Digital Health (Private:PRDI) – that is embedded with a sensor and can tell doctors whether, and when, patients take their medicine. While a patient can block transmissions via a smartphone app, the technology is still likely to prompt questions about privacy.
3. Norway, World’s Biggest Wealth Fund Wants Out of Oil and Gas — Norway finance ministry said it will study the proposal and decide what to do in “fall of 2018” that would entail the fund, which controls about 1.5 percent of global stocks, dumping as much as $40 billion of shares in international giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Norway relies on oil and gas for a fifth of economic output, would be less vulnerable to declining crude prices without investments in the industry .
4. House Passes GOP Tax Reform Bill — the House of Representatives has passed a bill that would result in the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax system in 31 years. It would reduce the number of individual brackets, increase the child tax credit, abolish the estate tax by 2025, chop the corporate tax rate to 20% and make other tweaks aiming to make businesses more competitive. But there are warning signs as the focus in Washington turns to the Senate’s companion bill.
5. AAII Bullish Sentiment Crashes — AAII bullish sentiment from this week crashed from 45.1% down to 29.35%. That’s the largest one-week decline since April 2013!
Meanwhile, Bearish sentiment didn’t see quite as big a move as bullish sentiment, but it did spike by 12 percentage points, and that’s the largest one-week increase since February 2016.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com: