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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized President Donald Trump’s role in fomenting the mob that stormed the Capitol building on Jan 6. “The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.” The Senate will soon begin outgoing President Trump’s second impeachment trial and McConnell, who will become the minority leader once Democrats take control of the chamber, has not yet publicly said how he will vote, but has increased his criticism of Trump after years of being wary of doing so.
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Earnings season started last week with results from
JPMorgan and other big banks. Or did it? For many investors, it doesn’t really begin until
Netflix, the first of the big tech stocks, reports after Tuesday’s close.
Tech looms over the market. The FAANG stocks plus
Microsoft have a combined market cap of more than $7 trillion, or roughly 22% of the total value of the
And big tech has been stuck. The FAANG+M stocks have risen an average of just 1.4% over the past three months, trailing the 8% gain of the market. Banks and energy stocks have risen more than 40% over that period.
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Medical workers carry cold storage boxes containing injection material during a Phase 3 trial of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. Angel Garcia/Bloomberg
The stock market hasn’t been this spooked since Halloween.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 283.71 points, or 0.9%, this past week, to 30,814.26, while the
Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.5%, to 12,998.50. The S&P 500 fell 1.5%, to 3768.25, its largest decline since the week ended Oct. 30, though back then it dropped 5.6%. Still, it was the
S&P 500’s first weekly drop of more than 1% since then, a sign that investors, unflappable until now, really were taken aback by what they saw.
W.R. Grace (GRA)
40 North Management revealed a 14.9% interest in W.R. Grace, equal to 9,865,008 shares of the maker of specialty chemicals. On Nov. 9, 40 North offered to take W.R. Grace private for $60.00 cash per share. That offer was rejected by W.R. Grace’s board, and prompted 40 North to raise its bid to $65.00 per.
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Welcome to the Roaring ’20s. When the world finally bids good riddance to Covid-19, courtesy of a bevy of novel vaccines, expect Americans to emerge from their lairs with a joie de vivre not seen since the 1920s. That’s marvelous news for the economy, which could use some cheer after a punishing year, and for the many companies that will help keep the good times rolling.
Just don’t expect the party on Main Street to spread to Wall Street, which had a rollicking celebration of its own this past year. As a consequence, stock.