Good morning. It is 59 degrees and overcast at 7:30 a.m. here in Upstate NY. Rain is predicted. I must say I was taken back by the morning's headline on CNN with the threat to the world virus - MERS-CoV. I'm turning 60 this year and I must say the world is in tough shape. Maybe it is better than when I was a kid but even then it was all about the threat of a nuclear war that would wipe out everything. I guess the wipe out everything meme is always there in human civilization, now it's a virus along with global warming plus there's still plenty of nuclear weapons to go around. Children no longer have to "duck and cover", the ridiculous and useless remedy for a nuclear explosion practiced by my generation of kids in schools. Now these poor kids have to be concerned about school shootings and a level of violence that is off the chart. No doubt there is an even worse level, I just don't want to go there mentally, but this virus has my attention.
At 7:40 a.m ET futures are significantly down and the price of oil per barrel is down. The market is poised to open lower.
After a ripping day of gains on Tuesday fueled by an inflating housing market plus increased consumer sentiment ( my favorite metric) the market was fired up. Not today, that housing/sentiment stuff is so Tuesday. Today China has been nipped in the bud as the IMF predicts lowered growth for the world's manufacturing center. I say good, as I'm convinced that an economic system that wants continuous growth is anathema to a liveable planet, I say let it be. If China never manufactured one more damn thing, that's fine.
CNN:
Stocks: Bumpy ride ahead
Overseas, the International Monetary Fund cut the growth forecast for China, the world's No. 2 economy.
The S&P/Case-Shiller Index showed Tuesday that housing prices rose 10.2% during the first quarter, the biggest increase since 2007.
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