markets. up and down. but right now if you look at what we ve seen happen over the last month it has been impressive somebody this week was talking about 1938 in a different context. i can t remember what it was not political context in a fed or some type of economic context yeah. yeah. so that s quite awhile may wasn t so great. may was terrible. that set you up for june all three major indices are having their best month since january of this year triple digit gains as we head into the g20 meeting this weekend with so many people watching what will happen between china and the united states look at what happened overnight in the asian markets you will see the nikkei was down by 0.3%. same thing with the hang seng. shanghai was weaker. down by 0.6% then this morning in europe, where there is some active trading taking place right now, green arrows across the board at this moment. biggest gainer is the dax, which is up by 0.4%. everybody is up by 0.2% or more.
percentage point dax is slightly weaker, relatively flat as is the cac. crude oil prices, crude oil yesterday was flat ended up by two cents this morning another 44 cents $55.35 so wti above $50 a barrel. back to the markets in a moment first the latest developments on hurricane maria. the hurricane making landfall on the island of dominica as a category 5 storm it is now weakened slightly within the past few hours to a category 4 that s the good news forecasters warn that maria could reach strength as it nears the virgin islands, puerto rico also in maria s cross hairs. you know, when these hurricanes come, they come. this come in waves we are also following developing stories out of southern california overnight a magnitude 3.6 earthquake shook parts of los angeles it happened at 11:20 p.m. local time dren residents as far away as costa mesa felt the rumble joseph, why never heard of costa mesa i called it so ed ied it cos, i m mesa. i m a mess-a in the morning. l
brent crude up to 55.48. okay. breaking global market news some early news this morning. the uk supreme court ruling against the british government in a key brexit decision. the vote means the prime minister, theresa may, must get parliament s approval in order to trigger brexit. look at the pound moving on a result of this. you re seeing it falling there over a half percent this morning. a couple other big stories to tell you about, yahoo! reporting better than expected results on the top and bottom line. the company saying the sale of its core internet business to verizon should be completed in the second quarter which helped ease investor concerns that the deal might collapse. the $4.8 billion transaction was supposed to close in the first quarter. we talked about it yesterday along with that news that the government was looking at yahoo! and the fact it had not disclosed that breach earlier. barclays turning cautious on apple. downgrading the iphonemaker. the analyst is
that came off a 14% drop in july exports from a year ago. part of that story is the strong yen. the dollar weakening across the board after yesterday s release of the minutes show that policymakers were divided on a near term interest rate hikes which has led most participates to think, we re not going to see anything any time soon. i ve been ranting. she s privy to all my ranting. i ve decided i got a new view. i want to get a job at the fed. all they need to do is either just spend all the time, what do you think, should we raise, i don t know, what do you think. i m worried, i m worried. i don t think we should. i think we should. for years they do that. and they don t have to do anything else. twidle their thumbs. now i decide they re one big composite of hamlet. hamlet is like, i really should do something. to be or not to be something. maybe i do, maybe i don t. if i do this would happen, if i don t, and they go through all this hand ringing and we know how ha
but we re holding down the fort. japan s nikkei reopening after yesterday s public holiday and it plunged. 4.8%. it closed at its lowest level since october 2014. the index is down in seven of the last eight sessions. that is coming as the yen has been rising against the dollar and it comes after yesterday s big sell-off in the u.s. this year s lowses have erased nearly $1.8 trillion in value for investors just on that index. the s&p is down 10.5% since the first trading day of 2016. but u.s. equity futures are rebounding this morning. part of that is because of firmer oil market. take a look at what crude is doing. it is bouncing back today following late afternoon comments by an opec energy minister from the united arab emirates that sparked hopes of a coordinated production cut. and though we ve heard this story before and haven t gotten anything out of it, the markets are interpreting that as a positive. wti he crude currently up nearly 4%. 27.21. brent is sitting above $