“Michael Marcus taught me one other thing that is absolutely critical: You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it. Michael taught me about making your best judgment, being wrong, making your next best judgment, being wrong, making your third best judgment, and then doubling your money.” – Bruce Kovner

1. Renzi Quits as Italy Referendum Defeat Deepens Europe’s Turmoil — with virtually all the ballots counted, 59.6% of Italians voted to block the Prime Minister’s constitutional reform plans in a closely-watched referendum. Among the biggest winners of the referendum is the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement, which has called for a nonbinding plebiscite on Italy’s euro membership and might favor printing a parallel currency. The nation has already seen 63 governments in just 70 years.
2. AT&T Starts 5G Business Customer Trial — AT&T (NYSE:T) has started testing the technology inside of one of Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) offices in Austin, TX. The company is particularly interested in how the new network will stand up to streaming 4K video, but will also test a wide variety of uses, including VPN, VoIP, “unified communications applications” and good old internet access. However, AT&T stated that 5G and its multi-gigabit cellular speeds probably won’t hit the market until 2020.
3. China’s Forex Reserves Fell to New Lows — another blow to China’s foreign exchange reserves fell for a fifth straight month in November, tumbling $69.06B to $3.052T – the lowest since March 2011. Authorities struggled to shore up the sliding yuan in the face of a relentlessly rising dollar. Adding to pressure on the currency, President-elect Trump has vowed to label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office and threatened to impose huge tariffs on Chinese goods.
4. Moody’s Affirms Italy’s Rating at ‘Baa2’, Revises Outlook To Negative — Moody’s Investors Service affirmed Italy at Baa2 but revised down the outlook on the country’s rating to negative from stable after Italian voters rejected a referendum on constitutional changes over the weekend. Moody’s cited “the slow and halting progress on economic and fiscal reform in Italy, the prospects for which have diminished further following the ‘no’ vote in Sunday’s constitutional referendum” as the main driver behind its decision. The ratings agency also expressed concerns that Italy may be exposed to “unforeseen shocks” for an extended period due to its tepid growth outlook and the recent deterioration in its fiscal position.
5. U.K. Parliament Backs Timetable To Trigger Article 50 (process of leaving the EU) — British MPs have voted in favor of government plans to trigger Article 50 by March 31, 2017, meaning Britain will formally initiate the process of leaving the EU before that date. However, both the government and opposition said the motion didn’t affect a case at the Supreme Court over whether the government has the authority to start negotiations without legislation in parliament.
6. Microsoft Chip Pact with Qualcomm Expands Efforts in Mobile — Microsoft is working with Qualcomm to spawn a new breed of tablets and notebooks that promise to diversify the software giant’s tech base and give the chip maker access to new markets. The partnership will result in an update of Windows 10 (NASDAQ:MSFT) that runs on a chip in Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ:QCOM) widely used Snapdragon line of processors, the first Windows 10-Snapdragon pairing.
7. S&P 500 Index Overbought — chart below shows the S&P500 weekly is overbought. Pullback in the index is expected.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com: