Nasdaq up 0. 11 . Theres something important we need to know right here and right now. We have to think about, do activist investors help create wealth or do they destroy it are they a force for good for you or force for bad these are the questions we need to grapple with given that just this morning Procter Gamble narrowly defeated an attempt by nelson peltz to get a board seat putting an end to a bitter proxy fight that weve all been involved with and talked about here now, look. This is very much case by case thing. There are some scorch earth activists who specialize in creating ill will. Nothing else i think those days are largely behind us. At least when it comes to smart activists who know what theyre doing. Let me lay out some individual examples to show you what i mean about this Important Group of investors and what they mean for your pocketbook. Lets start with Procter Gamble, the gigantic Consumer Products company make no mistake, this is a Great American enterprise. Procte
Particularly hard. At t points out their phone start, the turn is lower they are going to get their numbers. And everybody is trying to move to some of these issues i would say it was more media, but it is all the same, i guess. Telecom and media are the same now. Tmt. Thank you tmt. New network . No. Lets take a look at what happened overnight in asia you saw the japanese stocks this week have been sitting at new records just about every day that continues once again today with the nikkei up another 200 points this is now putting the nikkei at its highest close since september of 1996. 21,155 hang seng slightly higher. So was the shanghai composite yesterday. And in some of the morning trading we are already seeing, in europe youre going to see as we wait things are up for the most part. Looks like the ftse is down by. 20 right now. But these are modest advances from the other markets take a look at what is happening with crude oil prices. Yesterday crude oil settled down by 1. 4 . It
Weaker looking at europe this morning, the early trading taking place, at least at this hour things are flat there the dax is slightly higher, the cac and ftse are slightly lower. Spain up by a tenth of a percentage point crude oil prices were up yesterday to a twoweek high, up at 51. 87 this morning those gains continue with wti for november delivery up by 21 cents to 52. 08. Wow dow component United Health is reporting. Stock has been on a tear for years, right in fact, the stock getting close to a new high, 1 186 billion market cap, almost 1 187 billion market cap reporting 266 a share. Thats tencents above expectation. For the year, they see 2017 adjusted net at 10. Medical loss rates, they call it Something Different now. They call it medical care ratio, 81. 4 thats like the inverse of profit margin. Revenue, 50. 32 billion you cant necessarily compare apples to apples, i like the earnings per share or the earnings increase. 26 . 26 earnings increase. That is what do you do with t
Is doing today. The good news its not down much. The bad news is its not up much either. A narrow range for stocks. Still, as melissa noted, amazon as well as apple keeps surging ahead. They are both trading at record levels. Believe it or not consumer stocks are your best sector today. If you own marriott, under armor mour or wynn resorts. Tyler . Brian, thankful. Welcome. Im Tyler Mathisen. Volatility not so much. All but dried up this year. Lets get straight to bob pisani at the new york stock exchange. The fear gauge hasnt been this low in a quarter century, bob. Reporter lets take a look at it, tyler. Why is it this low . Its not that surprising. Theres a couple of things happening with the vix. Tamm p tampening down volatility. We have advances that are making markets, more hedging methodologies, more ways to buy protection out there that is tamping down the volatility. Keeping rates low and essentially encouraging people to buy equities. And we have the fact that risk is lower,
The two are to talk about business ties and latest threats posed by north korea and, yes, china. You can see hes pulling up right now. The Prime Minister of vietnam about to get out of the car. President trump waiting r that moment. But as we do wait for that Prime Minister to come out, here is the statement the white house is saying it will refer all questions about russias probe to trumps outside attorney. That is the news at the moment. Now, why . Because we have the news too that we do have james comey, the former fbi chief who was fired by President Trump saying he will testify publicly, specifically before the Senate Intelligence committee. He says President Trump asked him to back off of the flynn probe. These will be comeys first comments since the fbi director. On top of it, we do have the Federal Reserve making news too that it sees signs of a tightening job market, even more so in many parts of the country. And the beige book, which leads to more speculation that a june rate