Cautious to neutral on the favorable riskreward. Cutting china to neutral. A quick word on taiwan, lower, but coming from that fourday s when it comes to semiconductors, and focus given to tech giants, strong earnings overnight. News aroundy, some this stock, shares snapping a thatay drop as we heard samsung is in talks with the Chinese Government to expand its mou may be and a signed this year. Rishaad thanks, sophie. Sophie kamaruddin there. First word news headlines, h aidi is in sydney for us. President trump witness the swearing in of Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state. Sawier, 5643 vote lawmakers split along party lines. Republicans supported the president s view that his background gives him the connection and skills needed to promote u. S. Interests abroad. A steadfast reminder to me as forter the responsibilities secretary of state, that as i served as president , i serve their interest and always represent the interests of all American People at all times. A spokesman fo
Will the sector drive the Global Equity rally through the european open . Plus, 1 billion in cost cuts. Rbs said to be eliminating jobs and close branches. Will it be enough to push it to profitability . Matt we are less than a halfhour away from the european open. Take a look at european futures. After the u. S. S p rose to an alltime high once again and asian stocks were up overnight, we see european futures pointing to a higher open. I should point out that none of the major indexes in europe is out on alltime high. The ftse hit its alltime high in the beginning of january. A lot of the other indexes are waiting until are a year away from their alltime highs. They were in 2015. Take a look at bunds. I have the open. This is a tj twoday chart of bunds. This is the friday trade. Opening with yields coming down somewhat, 0. 328 . I should point out that we are still at very low levels, if you look historically, and takeaway inflation. I have got a chart that shows andspread between the
Good morning, a very warm welcome to Worldwide Exchange on cnbc. Im will fred frost along with Courtney Reagan whos in for sara. Lets get straight to the Global Action for record highs. All three of the major indices plus the russell as well. We had about 0. 4 of gains for the s p. The nasdaq a little behind that. The dow a little ahead of that. And a record in today share price not market cap high for apple, but the rally was really clearly led by financials. We had the bank of america up around 3 . The broader financials index up 1. 25. The spark was janet yellen being a little more hawkish than expected and that pushed yields higher which benefitted banks. Futures expected to open higher once again to new records. The dow higher by shy of 50 points. The tenyear treasury note, as i said, that move in yields that fed chair janet yellen sparked did help the bank stocks in particular. We crossed 2. 5 as march seemed to be back on the table with some of the comments, albeit investors rea
109. 6. It has also seen the Current Conditions index at 118. 4 in february. Reuters consensus was also for a lower number, at 116. 7. So well and truly beating on a number of different lines today. In terms of the expectations index, 104 seen in february versus 103 in a reuters poll. So it is showing us conditions are coming through strong according to sentiment in the economy of germany. Euro this morning has been trading weaker. We are down about a third of a percent. Lets take you through some of the European Market action. The ftse climbing 0. 2 . Above 12,000 on the german stock market. The dax has been trading higher, the highest point since april 2015. So very firm start for german stocks. Italian stocks are fading. This morning, shares have hit a 14 month high, earnings driving some big reactions in europe. Shares in Lloyds Banking Group Getting a boost after profit hit a tenyear high in 2016. Lloyds reported pretax profit of 4. 2 billion pounds, about three times what it repo
Good wednesday morning. Welcome to squawk alley. Jon fortt, sara eisen and me at post 9. Markets once again chasing some record highs, eight straight gains now for the dow, which, of course, hit a record intraday high earlier this morning. Thats a 13 jump for the industrials since the election. Joining us this morning, paul christopher, head of Global Market strategy at wells fargo investment institute. Paul, its good to have you today. Thank you. As the debate goes on about how much of this is fundamentals versus political expectations. You think its the economy at work here, dont you . Yeah, we do. We have a lot of clients, though, investors who think that, well, gee, if this is really all just about policy, then this rally is riding on thin air. We dont think thats necessarily the case. The economy started to improve long before the elections, just started getting noticed on november 9th. We got the s p now above the average yearend strategist target of 2,364, or just about there, b