Morning Memo: Wednesday, August 14, 2013

"Morning Memo" begins below this "NOTE for  NEWCOMERS" to "Morning Memo"...... Each morning, we post a short bullet-point list of noteworthy events, data, etc that find their way into the assessment of global markets.  It's far from complete and is not meant to be an exhaustive reconciliation of all things that could possibly impact stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities!  Rather, it's best viewed as a cryptic memo of "highlights", noteworthy items that took place in Asia, European and US hours.....and color-coded 'Red' for seemingly negative impact on equity markets, 'Green' for positive.
This will also serve as a useful review mechanism, as scrolling through the series of "Morning Memo" posts over time ought to summarily highlight what generally drove price action.  
We hope you find this useful and informative....and as always, that you'll share feedback!!
6:30am, ET....

• Asia markets generally higher on heels of US market yesterday that rallied on good retail sales data, a late in the day announcement that Carl Icahn has taken a sizable position in Apple (and may push to see a share buyback at significantly higher levels), and ongoing hopes that Japan's Abe will push for a corporate tax rate cut.
• Hong Kong markets closed due to a storm.
• South Korean unemployment in line @ 3.2%.
• European Q2 GDP shows Eurozone has emerged from recession!  . GDP rose 0.3% in Q2 vs contracting the same in Q1!
• Germany and France GDP #s were better than expected.
• Egypt..gov't moves in against pro-Morsi protesters with many reported killed in the process. 
• India..inflation rises and Rupee continues to weaken despite efforts by the gov't to support the currency and fight inflation!  Wholesales prices rose 5.79% vs exp 5.0%.
• UK...minutes from BoE's last meeting showed 8 of 9 board members in favor of new 'forward guidance' policy that was launched last week by new governor Carney (linking monetary policy to unemployment rate of 7%.)  UK unemployment data came out today inline at 7.8%.some charts on the UK unemployment picture taken from the Financial Times' fastFT and sourced from the UK gov't's official statistics agency ...
  
• more later....Also, recommended reading in the FT, an article by John Authers re Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings (CAPE) ratios...  If you don't subscribe to the FT, please let me know and I'll send the article to you from the FT site.  Here's the tweet:

  Great discussion of Shiller p/es going on here: The CAPE of Less Hope | FT Long Short http://t.co/kKjM0pCdTe
  — John Authers (@johnauthers) August 14, 2013

   

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