[applause] good afternoon, everyone. As we settle in i often pick a word for the day. A kind of how i govern myself often times and my frame of mind. But today im going to take an image of the day if you look at your screen, one of our commissioners shared with me this image and i think it sets the tone and stage and underscores the importance of why we are here. This is a chinese book for kindergartners and even if you dont speak chinese, circled r. Two letters, ai. Kindergarten textbook. The senator talked about us getting ready from grade school to graduate school. Now we are talking about kindergarten or even pre k. If we are going to keep ahead and stay number one when it comes to ai so i just want to start with this image because again it really for me underscores the urgency of why this commission was formed and why its so important as we are here today. We have a broa had a broad mandh concrete steps the government should take to build and maintain a Machine Learning work force
Certain tariffs. Not just a trade deal, but actually removing some of the economi existing tariffs earnings continue to lead us higher just a bit. We have names like kroger and tapestry, the old coach beating expectations joining us for the entire hour is a man you know well, steven weiss from Short Hills Capital partners steven, good to see you down here at the New York Stock Exchange good to see you brian good to see us both heres the thing, earnings, trade, maybe just general positive market sentiment. One of those three or maybe something else, that has been the primary driver for what has been a nice little run we are up nine of the past eleven sessions on the s p 500 i think there are multiple drivers to the market. Trade being the most important and the most dominant. You can see the correlation. For those who say that trade is all in the market, thats clearly not true because when you get positive news coming out, the market ticks up when you get negative news, it goes down. So
Yesterday, a headline said china planning to surprise trump and negotiators with a last minute plan for phase one to remove september tariffs this has never been talked about. Delaying future tariffs was the most we were going to agree on trump was getting traction because of the bite. This has never been on the table. China will get it done then i read it today it said these are now part of the negotiation. The way it was cast is that it was almost like an appeasement or throwing in the hand. Is it negotiations or are we backing down the deal is likely to get done each side wants to say we got what we wanted now, if that happens, the markets will be like that. Thats the big question, does the market care if it comes without any teeth. Do they just want a truce and no more ramped up sort. For phase one, do they want to give up what they were working to force them out of the table. I think what the market is really looking foreGoing Forward is if you are going to continue conversations.
Barbara duran from bd8 capital markets. Thank you for joining us today weve got a lot of forces at play again another kind of side waist market, but some Risk Appetite if you look at whats moving higher today i agree with that i think that the action has been very constructive. And i think whats going on is youve seen the earnings expectations come down you had just a little sample last week, but majority of Companies Beat earnings and the most important thing, i think, was jpmorgan and American Express talking about the strength of the consumer in loans and spending and thats really the underpinning to the economy. And so we also know the fed, they have a meeting coming up. Im not expecting them to cut rates, but they have made it clear they stand ready and i think that forms an underpinning for the market. And not to mention china we have a little truce there i think we were all expecting some more down babeat commentar from what weve heard so far but so far, its been okay maybe rest
After the bell tesla is not only stock revving up Group One Auto soaring to record highs. After its Earnings Report, the ceo will be here to break down whats driving profits later, the wework water cooler tensions are high for employees with thousands of layoffs. Many might be heading for the exits with empty pockets weve got the details on that as power lunch starts right now welcome. A mixed bag we got for markets thanks to earnings the dow is in the red. The nasdaq is the only one that is higher right now by just about half a percent lets look at what is driving. The dow held by back 3m. Vice president mike pence with some harsh words for china and for some of the companies doing business there kelly, it was a highly anticipated speech after being twice delayed due to development o s on trade it was hawkish speech. The u. S. Maintains an adversarial view of china and its economy and actions oversaes ev even though washington wants to keep engaging. America is reachi ining out hand t