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Hello. I'm Alex Frangos, here to get you started on Friday's market action. Stock index futures are heading lower.
RFK Jr.'s appointment as health and human services secretary reverberated across the Atlantic, hitting drug stocks in Europe, especially those with vaccine exposure. Some U.S. pharma shares fell again premarket after they dragged the S&P 500 down Thursday in response to the vaccine-skeptic getting the nod.
Follow our live coverage throughout the day for the latest news affecting markets.
Lower down in the newsletter, our James Mackintosh tells us why we should be wary of the vertiginous rise of bitcoin since Donald Trump's election.
Live Markets Snapshot Data refreshes every time you open this email. CONTENT FROM: Eaton Vance The BEAT: Top Investment Insights from Eaton Vance
Investors face unprecedented uncertainty in Q4 2024. The Fed has begun climbing down the rate peak. Inflation has cooled, but so have jobs. A tense US election may bring tax policy changes. We can't predict how markets react-but we can help investors act. Spanning bonds, equities, alternatives and transitional investments, we separate signal from noise. Get asset class outlooks in The BEAT.
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Stocks to Watch
GSK, AstraZeneca and Sanofi: Shares of major European pharma companies mirrored declines for U.S. vaccine-makers after Trump picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary. U.S. vaccine maker Moderna fell further in premarket trading early Friday.
Domino's Pizza: Shares jumped premarket after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway disclosed it had built a stake in the pizza chain.
Ulta Beauty: Berkshire said it had sold shares of the cosmetics chain. They fell more than 5% before the bell.
AST SpaceMobile: Shares lost altitude, falling more than 10% premarket, after the space-based cellular network developer said losses widened last quarter as it ramped up satellite launches. The company is both a rival and a partner to Musk's SpaceX.
Palantir: The tech company said it would move its listing to the Nasdaq from the New York Stock Exchange, and expects to be eligible for the Nasdaq-100 index. Shares rose ahead of the open.
Alibaba: Earnings from the U.S.-listed Chinese e-commerce company are due before the market opens.
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Is Trump Really So Great for Bitcoin?
By James Mackintosh
Bitcoin is now worth more than any U.S.-listed company other than the six biggest. Dogecoin, created as a joke and the first cryptocurrency to have a government department named after it, would make it to the top 200 stocks by value, larger than Johnson Controls International.
The election lit the rocket that crypto enthusiasts hope will take prices to the moon. They anticipate that President-elect Trump will follow through on his pledge to defenestrate the anti-crypto chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, ease regulations on crypto-company listings, exchanges, finance and mining, and create a national stash of bitcoin.
Easier regulations should in principle push up prices by making it easier to attract buyers. Because cryptocurrencies aren't backed by income or an economy, in the absence of any fundamentals they are driven entirely by supply and sentiment-driven demand. More buyers means a higher price.
Yet, dig deeper into the argument, and it is hard to see why bitcoin should benefit so much.
Keep reading . Charting the Markets
The Federal Reserve might not see much more inflation relief before it decides next month whether to keep cutting interest rates. Using this week's separately derived CPI and PPI data, economists are projecting that core PCE inflation rose back to 2.7% or 2.8% in October. The personal consumption expenditures price index is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation.
The Fed is cutting but mortgage rates aren't budging . The average rate on the standard 30-year fixed mortgage edged lower by just one basis point to 6.78%, a survey showed Thursday.
Shares of Hims & Hers slid after Amazon said it would offer cheap treatments for concerns like hair loss, skin care and erectile dysfunction, directly competing with the telehealth startup.
Must Reads
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said recent signs of economic health would allow the central bank to take its time in deciding how quickly to continue reducing interest rates, including by potentially slowing down the pace of cuts .
Boston Fed president Susan Collins said the central bank could eventually need to slow down the pace of rate cuts. She said it was too soon to say whether that should happen at the central bank's meeting next month.
The problems at Franklin Templeton's Western Asset Management keep growing . Clients have pulled about $55 billion from Wamco, as the division is known, since mid-August, representing about 15% of its assets.
More:
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Takes Slice of Domino's Pizza Disney's Flywheel Picks Up Some Speed Nissan Becomes Activist Investor's Next Japanese Target China's Economy Picks Up, but Still Needs More Help This Day in Markets On this day in 2016, Snap filed paperwork for its initial public offering. The Snapchat owner went on to sell shares with no voting rights , a major test of investor appetite for highflying tech stocks. Eight years later, the company's market cap is $18 billion, below the nearly $24 billion valuation hit in the IPO. Beyond the Newsroom
Buy Side from WSJ: Gifts to Buy for Your Favorite Techie
About Us
We want to be the first place you go to get ready for the opening bell every day. This newsletter was written by Alex Frangos ( [alex.frangos@wsj.com]) in London.
This article is a text version of a Wall Street Journal newsletter published earlier today.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 15, 2024 06:30 ET (11:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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