Stock Markets Today: Facebook outage ends; oil at 7-year high;
Good morning. Facebook apps are restored, oil trades at a seven-year high and there’s another Chinese developer in crisis. Here’s what’s moving markets.
Face-Back
Facebook’s core social network, its photo app Instagram and its WhatsApp messaging service are back up and running this morning after one of the longest and broadest technical failures in recent memory. The outage immobilized a set of services that more than 2.7 billion people rely on daily. Facebook blamed a problem with its network configuration, adding that it found no evidence that user data was compromised.
Another One
Another Chinese developer has fallen into crisis. Fantasia Holdings Group failed to repay a maturing bond, adding to the strains of the nation’s heavily leveraged property firms following industry giant China Evergrande’s debt woes. Evergrande is headed toward what could be one of the nation’s biggest restructurings and fueling concern about wider market contagion. Shares in Evergrande were suspended ahead of a “major transaction.”
Seven-Year High
Oil prices are trading at a seven-year high after OPEC+ agreed Monday to maintain its schedule of gradual monthly production increases. Ministers ratified the 400,000 barrel-a-day supply hike scheduled for November after speculation going into the talks that they could opt for a larger supply increase. After a relatively quite summer, oil is now joining natural gas, coal and a host of other vital commodities in a potent rally that threatens to upend the world’s recovery from the pandemic.
`Meteor’
President Joe Biden warned that the U.S. government is at risk of breaching the legal limit on its debt in two weeks, blaming Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell for what he described as a “meteor” headed for the economy. Biden demanded that Republicans stop blocking Democratic efforts to suspend the debt ceiling, while Republicans demand Democrats use an “involved” legislative procedure to boost the limit without any Republican votes.
Coming Up…
European stocks futures are pointing higher despite a drop in Asian shares. British sandwich retailer Greggs gives a trading update, while in the U.S. Pepsico is the biggest firm reporting. Tokyo hosts the TCFD Summit to discuss climate-related financial disclosures, with Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda among the speakers. The Nobel Prize in Physics is announced, while Windows 11 goes on sale, at last.
What We’ve Been Reading
This is what’s caught our eye over the past 24 hours.
And finally, here’s what Cormac is interested in this morning
One of the key foundation stones of the global equity rally is crumbling, just when it is needed most. Earnings expectations are rapidly retreating, with analysts marking down their estimates for the world’s stocks as third-quarter reports are being prepared. Citigroup’s Global Earnings Revision Index –…
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