10 Things You Need To Know Before The Opening Bell
Feb 11, 2014, 17:37 IST
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- It's Janet Yellen Day - the first of two instances of testimony she will offer on Capitol hill about the state of monetary policy. Things kick off at 8:30 a.m. Market reaction to the testimony is expected to be muted. "Unlike Mario Draghi at the ECB or Haruhiko Kuroda at the BoJ or Mark Carney at the BoE, we suspect the first impression Yellen will strive to convey is continuity rather than decisive innovation," Credit Suisse's Neil Soss says. Click here to read the full preview from BI's Matt Boesler »
- Coincidentally, the BLS will release one of Janet Yellen's "favorite" economic indicators at 10 a.m.: JOLTS, or job openings and labor turnover stats. The number of job openings were up 5.6% year-over-year compared to November 2012 and this was the first time job openings had been above 4 million since 2008. Quits increased in November and were up about 13% year-over-year. These are voluntary separations, so this is a positive indicator.
- We also get NFIB small business confidence, retail sales, and, at 10 a.m., wholesale inventories, which are expected to have continued their same rate of increase, at 0.5%.
- Barclays released Q4 and full year earnings, and the news was quite ugly: an 86% profit drop for the quarter, and an announcement that it was cutting 12,000 jobs, including more than 800 directors or managing directors. Yet, it also announced it was increasing bonuses 10%. The FT's Antony Jenkins commented: "...if retail banking in the UK was weak - and a mess in Europe - and its wealth division is in a permanent state of restructuring (aka "strategy refresh"), it was the investment bank (accounting for a third of group revenues) that burdened the quarterly results with its swing to a £330m pre-tax loss. It's pretty embarrassing for a self-proclaimed universal bank when its credit card division is almost the only unit in good shape - oh, and the corporate bank."
- Bitcoin prices have retraced some 15% of the past few day's losses stemming from MtGox's announcement that it was halting withdrawals. The average USD Bitcoin price is now about $700. Many in the Bitcoin community are displeased that MtGox suggested its problems were due to a known flaw in Bitcoin's protocol, and even if it is able to sort its problems out, it now seems to have become a pariah in the Bitcoin community.
- Markets across the globe were broadly higher, led by Hong Kong's Hang Seng, which was up 1.78%.
- OECD unemployment fell 10 ppts to 7.6% in November, after having been stuck at 7.9%, driven by falling rates among young people and men.
- Kazakhstan devalued its currency 17%, the latest country to succumb to rate pressure on emerging markets. The tenge fell more than 100 points against the dollar.
- Virgin Atlantic has begun a six-week trial program of outfitting flight attendants with Google Glass to provide more personalized service to elite passengers. "Dave Bulman, Virgin Atlantic's director of IT, argues that wearable technology can bring back some of the glory to the passenger experience, which is acutely in need of innovation," Skift's Dennis Schaal writes.
- Sprint, CVS, and Trip Advisor release earnings today.