Tuesday Morning Market Round-Up

Every Tuesday there are a lot of updates and announcements that tend to affect the markets either positively or negatively. Today is no different with a number of reports and news making the markets react.

The CEO of AT&T has announced that they are getting ready for their court battle for their merger bid for Time Warner. He spoke these words and directed them to the antitrust officers following the decision made by the Justice Department to sue them in order to block the bid for $85.4 billion for Time Warner Inc.

He is adamant that CNN is not for sale but that he is willing to negotiate in order to get the approval of the federal government. He touched upon the President Donald Trump’s obvious dislike for CNN and claimed that since he came to office there has been a marked and extreme change in how antitrust laws have been applied.

The Justice Department says that they have concerns that are typically mainstream but many analysts say that the especially hard line of resistance they are taking comes across as unusual.

The Chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen has announced that she will be resigning from her position and from the board of governors when her nominated successor, Jerome Powell comes into the position to take over this coming February.

After she leaves her position, there will be substantial power placed into the hands of President Trump when it comes to shaping the future look of the central bank’s board as there will be a total of four seats vacant from the seven seats that are on the board. It has been speculated that the President will appoint someone for the vice-chair position in advance of Yellen’s departure.

The mess that is Brexit continues to stagnate as no solution looks to be in sight. Unless there is a breakthrough that is unexpected when it comes to next month’s leader’s summit made up of officials from the European Union, it looks like Britain will be unable to stop banks plans to remove their staff from the region and relocate them to other parts of Europe.

The British Prime Minister Theresa May did make an offer of additional finance in order to keep the talks moving forward, it is obvious that money is not the key issue here. One of the big questions that do not appear to have a solution is that of the Irish border, which will prove to be an extremely contentious topic.

Overnight markets saw the MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose by 0.9% and the Topix Index in Japan rose 0.7% during what was a rally throughout most of the region. It was a day that saw Tencent Holdings from Chino bypass Facebook Inc. in terms of market value and is now the 5th biggest company in the world.

Finally, the central bank in Turkey has decided to push lenders towards using a liquidity window that is more expensive as it continues to tighten its policies, but this did not prevent their lira from hitting a record low. As tensions with the United States continue and the President intervening with monetary policy, this looks set to continue to be a turbulent period for the nation.