Monday
COVID-19 cases topped 33 million around the globe with 1 million reportedly dead. Europe began seeing a surge in new infections.
The NY times claimed they have access President Trump’s tax returns, showing he only paid $750 in tax in 2016 and 2017. They also claimed he paid no taxes in the past 10 years and that his golf businesses have made huge losses year after year. President Trump responded by dismissing the reports as fake news.
Uber won its legal appeal and has been deemed “fit and proper” to operate in London and has renewed its licence.
HSBC had its biggest surge since 2009, up 10%, after its largest shareholder Ping An increased its stake from 7.95% to 8.0%
Positive Data from China showed strong industrial profits that have grown for its fourth straight month in a row in August, which caused a rally in global markets and took the focus away from a resurgence in COVID-19 cases and hinted that the global economic slump may not be as bad as feared.
Tuesday
House Speaker Pelosi saying a stimulus bill is still possible and quarter-end rebalancing, which favoured the financial and energy sectors.
The first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden took place, where topics of Trump and Biden’s records, Supreme Court, Coronavirus pandemic, Race protests and violence in cities, Election integrity, Economy. A poll by CNN showed that 60% of viewers thought Biden performed better and 28% thought Trump performed better.
U.S. stocks fell on Tuesday amid renewed concern over the coronavirus outbreak in New York City. New York City’s daily positive rate of coronavirus tests is back above 3% for the first time in months.
Shares of airline companies led the declines: JetBlue (-4.4%), American (-4%), and United (-4%). But, U.S. stock futures traded higher on Tuesday night as traders digested positive data regarding a potential coronavirus treatment from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
A recent study conducted by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta showed that Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine creates a strong immune response in older people as it does in younger adults. This is a positive sign as many vaccines have proven to be less effective in the elderly.
Wednesday
Caesars Entertainment, the Las Vegas casino owner, has struck a £2.9bn deal to take over UK betting firm William Hill.
Disney announced they are cutting 28,000 jobs due to the exacerbated effects of COVID-19,
Royal Dutch Shell also announced they will cut up to 9,000 jobs which represented just over 10% of their workforce.
In U.S. economic data, released on Wednesday morning, Automatic Data Processing said 749,000 private-sector jobs had been created in September, ahead of estimates for a gain of 650,000, and the strongest reading in three months. Last month, the ADP data showed that 480,000 jobs were created in August.
The ADP report comes ahead of the more closely followed nonfarm-payrolls report set to be released on Friday, with 800,000 jobs estimated for September and the unemployment rate slipping to 8.2% from 8.4%.
A reading of Chicago-area manufacturing activity in September was also stronger than expected, with a reading of 62.4. And GDP losses for the second quarter were revised down to -31.4%, from -31.7%.
The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it is extending the restrictions on big bank dividends and buybacks through the fourth quarter. Banks dipped in extended trading following the central bank’s announcement.
Thursday
Boieng secured a $298 million contract with the U.S airforce
On Wednesday 7th October Poolcorp (NASDAQ:POOL) is being moved over to the S&P 500 replacing replace E-Trade Financial (NASDAQ:ETFC).
Initial jobless claims dropped 36,000 from 873,000 to 837,000, beating the general expectation of 850,000. Continuing claims of 11.76M are down from 12.75M, and lower than 12.25M consensus.
However, Challangers September Job cut report showed that job cuts neared 118,800, from 115,760 in August.
PMI manafacturing reports showed strongest improvement in operating conditions since January 2019. Faster expansion in production and a solid rise in new orders helped the index rise higher.The seasonally adjusted IHS Markit final U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI™) posted 53.2 in September, broadly in line with 53.1 seen in August, but down slightly from the earlier ‘flash’ reading of 53.5. The solid improvement in the health of the goods-producing sector was the steepest since January 2019, and signalled a further recovery from April’s nadir.
Judge Carl Nichols has set a schedule to sort out the conflicting litigation and drama around TikTok, a proposed U.S. ban by the Trump administration, and the proposed sale on the table of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an investment group including Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT).
Friday
It was revealed on Friday that President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19 just hours after senior aide, Hope Hicks tested positive. The added uncertainty concerning the U.S election caused U.S futures and European equities to fall.
The ecommerce platform said on Thursday that, following a study of all of its nearly 1.4m Amazon and Whole Foods frontline workers in the US between March and mid-September, it had found 19,816 were positive or presumed positive.
In July and August, the US economy created on average 1.6m jobs per month, compared to the 661,000 in September — and America has now recovered just 11.4m of the 22.2m positions it shed between February and April.
Walmart (NYSE: WMT) has agreed to sell a mojority stake in UK supermarket chain Asda for £6.8bn ($8.7bn) to billionaire petrol station entrepreneurs the Issa brothers and British private equity firm TDR Capital. Walmart will retain a stake in the business.
Weekly Market close
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 27,682.81, up 1.17% for the week.
The S&P 500 closed at 3,348.42, up 0.44% for the week.
The Nasdaq Compostie closed at 11,075.02, down 0.07% for the week.
The FTSE 100 closed at 5,889.09, up 0.79% for the week.
Stoxx Europe 600 closed at 362.69, up 1.59% for the week.
Gold closed at $1,905.30 an ounce, up 1.22% for the week.
Oil (WTI) closed at $37.05 per barrell, down 8.74% for the week.
The Sweeney Club 