today's breakfast is the most disgusting breakfast i have prepared, so i thought i'd better warn the squeemish
i've prepared a Vampires' breakfast, so i sacrificed a virgin for them cause it's the only thing that will please them, i've decided to put the image lower, so you can still read the post without seeing it if you are easily offended.
so again, if you DONT want to see a virgin sacrifice, please dont scroll down to the breakfast
Dow 26378 plus 371
S@p500 2938 plus 54
NASDAQ 8039plus 176
FTSE 7285plus 87
DAX 11895plus 195
GOLD1503minus 3.75
SPI Futures plus 23
U.S. stock benchmarks on Thursday finished at or near the best levels of the session — helping the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes turn positive for the week — as jitters over a potential trade and currency clash between Beijing and Washington gave way to greed for beaten-down assets.
Setting the stage for the market’s bullish advance was China’s onshore currency fix, with the government setting the yuan at the weakest level since 2008 but slightly higher than feared, helping to stabilize a market that has swooned over global economic growth fears. How did benchmarks perform?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.43% rose 371.12 points, or 1.4% to 26,378.19, the S&P 500 index SPX, +1.88% climbed 54.11 points, or 1.9%, to close at 2,938.72, led by a gain in the energy sector XLE, +2.87%, up 2.9% and information technology XLK, +2.45%, rising 2.4%. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +2.24% climbed 176.33 points to finish at 8,039.16, a rise of 2.2%.
The gains represented the best day for the three main indexes since June 4.
For the week, the Nasdaq is on track for a weekly gain of 0.4% and the S&P 500 is set to end the week 0.2% higher. The Dow is down 0.4% so far this week. All three benchmarks tumbled by around 3% on Monday. What’s driving the market?
Markets are still focusing on the currency fix in China as a Sino-American tariff dispute has shifted into a potential currency clash between the world’s largest economies. However fears of the worst outcome were at least temporarily quelled on Thursday after the People’s Bank of China set the onshore yuan’sUSDCNY, -0.2125% reference rate at 7.0039 against one U.S. dollar.
Although that is the weakest point for the currency against the dollar since April 21, 2008, it is higher than the market had feared. The PBOC allows the yuan to fluctuate up to 2% higher or lower than that level.
A weakening of the yuan below 7 on Monday, widely viewed as a line in the sand for the market and Beijing, sent global markets tumbling amid fears it was the first step in a currency war. Yuan weakness has been viewed by some as a tactic by China to combat the yearlong clash over trade between the U.S. and China.
Despite Wednesday’s bounce back for equities many investors are still uneasy over the possibility of a test of the week’s lows. “Yesterday’s roller coaster provides further evidence that volatility is very much back in markets, and while the near-term trends in both equities and Treasury yields have begun to stabilize slightly, trends remain sharply lower and it wouldn’t take much to turn both trends back to the downside for a retest of recent lows,” wrote Mark Newton, technical analyst at Newton Advisors in a Thursday research note.
William A. Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird concurred with that sentiment, in a Thursday research note. “Sentiment surveys show a big build in investor pessimism, though longer-term studies still show more complacency than fear. Low bond yields and stock market nervousness are supporting strength in gold,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese exports climbed 3.3% in July from a year earlier, better than expectations of a 1.0% decline, according to FactSet, and comes after a 1.0% drop a month ago.
Volatility in currencies in the past few days also spurred a sharp decline in yields on government debt but the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, +2.13%rose 3.5 basis points to 1.710%, compared with a 3 p.m. Eastern Time level at 1.675% on Wednesday, marking its lowest yield since Oct. 3, 2016, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Separately, a report on the number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits in early August fell back near post 2008 recession lows, signaling the labor market remains strong. Initial jobless claims, a rough way to measure layoffs, dropped by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 209,000 in the seven days Aug. 3, the government said Thursday.
Meanwhile, data on wholesale inventories in the U.S. were unchanged in June, the government said Thursday. Sales slipped 0.3% in the month. The ratio of inventories to sales was also unchanged at 1.36, representing the number of months it would take to sell all the inventory on hand. One year ago, the inventory-to-sales ratio was much lower at 1.26.
what we can expect, SPI futures currently plus 23 but i recon we end up going higher today, but i am stupid,
and now for Breakfast,
dont say you havent been warned
VIRGIN SACRIFICE
Well,
Mum reckons that even if someone was dumb enough to put up with his 30 seconds, it's so small that they would still be a virgin after it
and if he cant touch the sides, it doesnt count for him either
