Monday, January 4, 2016

Economic Journal - Monday, 1/4/2016

(As of 8:30 am PST)

2016 has opened with a thud as all of the major indices are taking a dive to start off the New Year. As of 8am PST, both the Dow and the S&P500 are down over 2.5%. Today’s pummeling feels eerily similar to the madness we saw last summer when China took global investors for a ride through one of the worst quarterly performances in years. Overnight, China’s Shanghai Composite fell nearly 7% amid news of weak manufacturing data. The slide was so severe that a new circuit-breaker system put in place in December halted trading for the rest of the day in an attempt to slow the equity market selloff. The news also brought European stocks down as well. Oil, the culprit for most of December was actually moving upward at the beginning of the day following news of Middle Eastern tensions. As the trading day continues, oil has dropped lower and is trading below $37 per barrel. There has been a flight to safe haven investments this morning. Treasury prices are up sending yields tumbling while gold is also providing safe haven support today with the precious metal up nearly 1.5%. As the weather here in PDX gets back to normal in the next couple of days, we’ll have to wait and see if the markets follow the same trend.

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