The KUIK Morning Market Report for Wednesday, May 24:
Markets are up.
Index
Direction
Change
Units
Index
Time
Change
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Up
15
points
20,953
7:12 AM
S&P500
Up
0.1%
percent
2,400
1.34
Nasdaq Composite
Up
0.1%
percent
6,144
5.53
30 Year Treasury
Down
(1)
Basis Points
2.94
Annual Yield
The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee will release the minutes of its May 3 meeting today at 11 am Pacific Time. The statement it released after that meeting was more hawkish than expected. The Fed dismissed the slowdown in first-quarter GDP growth as “transitory,” noting that despite the slower consumer spending “fundamentals underpinning the continued growth of consumption remain solid.” The minutes should remove doubts about the Fed’s plans for another interest rate hike at its policy meeting in the middle of June.
Moody’s Investors Service cut China’s sovereign credit rating to A1 from Aa3, while changing its outlook to stable from negative citing expectations that the country’s financial strength will deteriorate in the coming years as debt keeps rising and the economy slows. In March of last year, it cut China’s outlook to negative from stable and it last cut its credit rating in November 1989, after the crackdown on mass protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Moody’s now rates China’s credit alongside that of Japan, Saudi Arabia and Israel. The news triggered an early selloff in Chinese stocks, with shares in the Shanghai composite falling more than 1% before recovering.
Serving the West Side first, I am Bill Roller of BR Capital for 1360 KUIK.
