Week of Dec 7 2019 Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“Stocks take the stairs up and the elevator down.” – unknown
1. Trump Puts Tariffs on Brazil, Argentina, Citing Currencies — A barrage of trade actions was announced by the Trump administration, beginning with tariffs on steel and aluminum from Argentina and Brazil due to a “massive devaluation” of those countries’ currencies. The U.S. Trade Representative also said it would review hiking tariffs on EU products and adding new ones, because of what it called “lack of progress” in resolving a dispute over aircraft subsidies. After the markets closed, the USTR said it planned to slap punitive duties of up to 100% on $2.4B of French products – like Champagne, handbags and cheese – after concluding that a new French digital services tax (DST) would harm U.S. tech companies.
2. Black Friday Online Sales Hit Record $7.4B — online sales rose more than 19.6% to $7.4B on Black Friday, marking the day’s largest revenue grab ever, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions at 80 of the top 100 U.S. retailers. For Thanksgiving, it estimated web sales grew 14.5% to $4.2B, while Small Business Saturday and Super Sunday sales are projected to surpass $7.6B. Keep an eye today on the usual suspects like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Walmart (NYSE:WMT), Target (NYSE:TGT) and eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), as Cyber Monday spending is expected to hit a record $9.4B, an 18.9% jump from a year ago.
3. U.S. Weighing $2.4B of Tariffs in Response to France’s Digital Services Tax — the USTR also threatened that such tariffs could be enacted in the future against Austria, Italy and Turkey, all of which have digital-services taxes. It added that French officials “repeatedly referred to the French DST as the ‘GAFA tax,’ which stands for Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).” Before moving forward with the levies, the agency will hold public hearings on the proposed tariffs on Jan. 7 and will accept public comments through at least Jan. 14,.
4. Aramco Valued at $1.7 Trillion in World’s Biggest IPO — Aramco valued at $1.7 trillion in world’s biggest IPO. Saudi Aramco priced its initial public offering at the high end of the targeted range to give the oil giant a total value of $1.7 trillion. While it ranks as the world’s biggest-ever IPO, the share sale falls well short of the initial $2 trillion valuation targeted by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:
