“I’m always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money. Don’t focus on making money, focus on protecting what you have” – Paul Tudor Jones.

1. Japan’s Economy Relapses Into Recession — Japan’s economy slid back into recession in the third quarter, marking the latest setback for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his “Abenomics” policies. With consumer spending still soft and businesses cutting back on investment, gross domestic product shrank at an annualized rate of 0.8%, putting policymakers under pressure to deploy more stimulus measures. The GDP figure follows a revised 0.7% contraction in April-June, which was the first decline in three quarters.
2. S&P 500 Shows Q3 Earnings With Negative Growth — with more than 90% of companies having already reported results, S&P 500 earnings are on track to close their first season of negative growth since 2009. Thomson Reuters data suggests this will occur again in Q4, predicting a bigger 2.4% contraction and setting up for a bona fide ‘earnings recession’ (two consecutive periods of declines).
3. U.S. Investigative Panel Plans Hearing on Drug Pricing — a U.S. House of Representatives investigative panel plans to hold a 2016 hearing on skyrocketing drug costs, a move that comes at a time when Valeant Pharmaceuticals (NYSE:VRX) is facing increased scrutiny into its pricing practices. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging launched a probe into drug pricing at Valeant and Turing, signaling growing bipartisan agreement over the need to review prescription medicine costs across the nation.
4. Fed Closer to Dec Rate Hike — minutes from the central bank’s Oct 28 policy meeting showed “most participants” think Dec’s meeting “could well be” the time to increase benchmark rates for the first time in nearly a decade. A strong jobs report and comments from Fed officials since Oct’s meeting have pointed to a Dec rate hike.
5. U.S. Sets Tax Inversion Curbs — the Treasury released new measures to limit US companies ‘ use of overseas takeovers to shift their tax domocile overseas, cutting their exposure to high US tax rates. Some of the rules are retroactive to Sept ’14.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:

Tags: Dec Rate Hike

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2015 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Weekly Summary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.