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2021-12-08 17:25:52 Major outage hits Amazon Web Services affecting many U.S. and global businesses

Amazon’s cloud-service network suffered a major outage Tuesday, the company said, disrupting access to many popular sites. The service provides remote computing services to many governments, universities and companies, including The Associated Press.

Roughly five hours after numerous companies and other organizations began reporting issues with Amazon Web Services, the company said in a post on the AWS status page that it had “mitigated” the underlying problem responsible for the outage. Shortly thereafter, it reported that “many services have already recovered” but noted that others were still working toward full recovery.

Technologist and public data access activist Carl Malamud said the outage highlights just how badly the internet’s original design goal has been warped by Big Tech.

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2021-12-07 21:33:59 U.S. trade deficit sinks 18% in October as exports surge to record high

The U.S. trade deficit sank in October, but it’s probably a one-off. Deficits have been running near record highs during the pandemic.

The U.S. trade deficit sank almost 18% in October after the biggest surge in exports in 13 years and a slowdown in imports partly tied to congestion at domestic ports.

The trade gap shrank to $67.1 billion from a record $81.4 billion in the prior month, the government said Tuesday. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a $67 billion deficit.

U.S. exports climbed 8.1% to an all-time high of $223.6 billion. It’s the biggest monthly increase since 2008.

Imports edged up less than 1% to $290.7 billion, but that’s still a record high.

Although imports and exports are now both higher than before the pandemic, global trade is still being disrupted by new strains of the coronavirus. The resulting supply chain problems are likely to persist for a while.

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2021-12-07 18:18:19 A sales surge might make this industry your best stock market play for 2022

For many industries, year-over-year comparisons won’t look pretty in 2022. But there’s likely to be one glaring exception.

This has been quite a year for many industries, and not only because of sales rebounds after so many businesses were temporarily shut down during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

Unprecedented stimulus payments by the federal government to consumers have helped feed pent-up demand, and with component supply disruptions, the most obvious distortion has been seen on auto-dealer lots.

"The U.S. is coming off trough sales for this economic cycle” for new cars."

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2021-12-06 20:45:35 Bank deputy expects UK inflation ‘comfortably’ to exceed 5% by spring

The Bank of England’s monetary policy chief has said inflation is likely to soar “comfortably” above 5% next spring when the energy regulator Ofgem raises a price cap affecting millions of households.

Record high levels of vacancies are also likely to persist for longer than previously expected as the jobs market adjusts to changes in the economy brought on by the pandemic, said Ben Broadbent, the central bank’s deputy governor with responsibility for monetary policy.

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2021-12-04 21:01:51 The Nasdaq and the Dow are now trading in a way that was evident just before the internet bubble burst

The U.S. stock market is experiencing an unusual number of mixed trading sessions, in which one major index closes higher and another finishes lower. This is not a sign of a healthy market. That’s why the market’s big drop on the Friday after Thanksgiving was perhaps not as unexpected as it otherwise appeared.

Consider the divergences between the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.17% and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -1.92% over the four trading sessions before Thanksgiving. On each of those days, one of these indices closed up while the other closed down. On average over the four trading sessions, there was a one percentage point difference in their returns.

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2021-12-04 16:34:18 ECB Paper marks success factors for CBDCs, Digital Euro

A paper published by the European Central Bank (ECB) discusses various conditions for successful implementation of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) such as the eurozone’s own digital euro. The authors also point to different risks that such projects entail, like the danger of crowding out the private sector.

In order to create a successful CBDC, a monetary authority needs to establish the digital currency as a widespread means of payment and exchange that also has a sufficient store of value function, according to the paper released by the European Central Bank. At the same time, central banks need to ensure that currencies like the digital euro do not turn into a significant means of investment, crowd out private payment solutions, or undermine the banking sector’s intermediation role.

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2021-12-03 20:30:50 Insider buying says a Santa Claus rally is on the way — here are 10 stocks they favor

Stocks should proceed higher as more people figure this out, leading to a Santa Claus rally later this month.

Corporate insiders confirm this view. They’ve stepped up buying considerably in the market weakness. What’s more they’re buying all the right groups – travel, retail, energy and materials, among others. These are the cyclical areas that’ll do the best as worries about growth recede, and insiders know it. I don’t see any hunkering down in defensive names like consumer staples.

There are lots of stock bargains because there’s been so much damage, even if narrower indexes like the S&P 500 SPX, -1.07% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.39% have hung tough, propped up by a few large names.

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2021-12-01 22:09:46 Apple Stock Gained as Tech Tumbled Tuesday. Here’s Who Was Driving the Move.

Apple Stock Gained as Tech Tumbled Tuesday. Here’s Who Was Driving the Move. Apple shares had their widest outperformance versus the Nasdaq Composite index on non-earnings days in more than eight years. It theorizes that an increase in retail participation in the stock and related calls “may have helped to exacerbate” a flight-to-safety move that benefited Apple shares.

Traders and investors offered a few theories, including signs of strong demand and possibly diminishing supply constraints, on why Apple stock (ticker: AAPL) held up so well.

Fresh data suggest that Apple is seeing extremely strong demand in Asia for the iPhone 13 line. The smartphone sales in Asia rose 57% sequentially in October, with Apple unit sales up 820% from September to a record 10.8 million units, and 85% higher on a year-over-year basis.

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2021-12-01 20:00:28 BREAKING: Biden to enact strict COVID regulations on US air travel in response to Omicron variant

President Biden is weighing controversial protocols that would require all travelers, including US citizens, to self-quarantine for seven days even if they submit negative test results.

The Biden administration is set to announce some of the "strictest COVID regulations" on American citizens since the start of the pandemic during a press brief on Thursday, the Washington Post reports.

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2021-12-01 19:52:34 Stocks Bounce Back, Oil Up Sharply Ahead of OPEC Meeting - and What Else Is Happening in the Stock Market

U.S. Stocks were rebounding from a Tuesday rout, with markets watching key economic data as well. “Today, the mood in the market has improved.”

Tuesday, stocks spiraled after large Covid-19 vaccine and treatment producers said their remedies were likely to be less effective at immunizing against the new variant, Omicron. Plus, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed may soon consider upping the pace of its tapering, or the reduction of its bond buying program. The combination sent the S&P 500 to a level almost 3% below its all-time high, hit in November.

Now, investors are swooping up stocks that had been on sale, though the S&P 500 and the Dow remain below their highs. Alongside a rising stock market, investors are generally moving out of safer assets and into riskier ones.

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