Tom a swing back to rates and what were looking at. Youre aware the United States has a jobs report tomorrow. We call it super friday. Francine only the most important piece of Economic Data probably in the world apart from china if we see a slowdown. A little bit of news from retail sales. The e. C. B. Is meeting march 10. Increasing some 2 . Put that against the weaker than expected inflation and some pretty dire Economic Service data from the u. K. Tom the german yields, we will get to that and a data check as well. North korea has shown what it thinks about the new United Nations sanctions. Hours after the Security Council approved more sanctions to punish the country for a nuclear test and a robert launch, north korea was at it again. It test fired short range projectiles into the ocean. Investigators are examining debris they suspect came from that missing malaysian jetliner found in mozambique. A person familiar with the investigation says it appears to be part of a tail from a
Lets put it in perspective, betty, even if we finish around these levels, we are coming up at 6. 7 losses last week, the biggest in four years. Somee are seeing fluttering of gains across the european markets. Emember the dax fell all those fell he most since august. The dax, as i said, the fifth worst performing stock. Erformance in the world as i speak, betty, the dax turns lower. And the volatility index, it since 37 , the most april. It is not as good as it was earlier, but little changed. Quite a difference to what happened last week. Betty its interesting how your narrative changed in the last halfhour. Mark im blaming you. Betty and i am blaming you, mark. Ok, we had the South African rand, the president , jacob zuma, coming out, really complaining the market should not have move reacted to his move. When he got rid of two finance ministers in the space of two days. 2. 3 . T that, up it is at a record low. Mcquarrie bank says a combination of stocks and margin calls caused mass
Cap off the best quarter since 2004. We have a labor market improving. Gasoline prices which remain low. The number coming in at 93. This is university of michigans confidence reading. 95. 4 is where it was in february. The average from january through march was the highest we have seen ends the Third Quarter of 2004. If you look at the various components within confidence you want to look at the Inflation Expectations in particular. It looks like Inflation Expectations over the next year remaining at 3 , which is what economists had predicted. We will continue to look through these numbers. Overall, not seeing as much of a drop in the confidence number as had been anticipated. Matt thanks very much. Breaking the march news, the Consumer Confidence number they are at 93. Number there at 93. The top business stories of the morning. Big news out of washington. The most powerful democrat in washington will retire. Harry reid will not seek reelection. He has been the democratic leader for
1. 855. We begin with facebook with the social media giant honing a Developers Conference this hour. The stock right now is currently down 1. 9 but it is nonetheless, still sitting around alltime highs. Julia borstein is live at the big event in san francisco. Julia. Thats right, mandy. Mark zuckerberg is about to take the stage. He will be addressing the 2,500 developers who are gathered here in san francisco, and there are two main topics that he is expected to make big news on. Messenger is facebooks standalone messeninging app, and he announced he will be turning it into a platform. That means that developers will be able to build other apps on top of the platform very similar to what weve seen with the line app, which is a popular messaging app in asia. That means people will be able to buy things, buy movie tickets, and do various things including read content, watch videos without actually leaving the messenger app. Big news there as well as an Ad Technology as facebook looks to
U.S. average gas prices could cross $4 per gallon by next year according to a forecast by GasBuddy which also did not rule out prices hitting $5 per gallon by summer.