Plus, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the U.S. and China are negotiating the “last details” of the phase one trade deal, Berkshire Hathaway bet big on Restoration Hardware last quarter, and JCPenney shares are soaring.
All three major indexes logged fresh record highs this morning. The Dow added 103 points, or 0.4%, while the S&P 500 gained 0.4% and the Nasdaq climbed 0.6%.
White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said late yesterday that negotiations between the U.S. and China were in the final stages, though a phase one trade deal is “not done yet.” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business Network this morning that “the devil is always in the details and we’re down to the last details now.” “You don’t really have the deal on anything, until you have the deal on everything. So it’s not surprising that at the very last minute pieces are bouncing around. But I think the main thing is what the president said at the rally last night: China wants to make a deal. We think we’d like to make a deal if it’s the right deal – this will get made in all likelihood,” Ross said, adding that the phase one deal is “relatively limited in its scope. And what’s really being debated is how much limitation will there be on the scope of phase one relative to phase two or maybe phase three.”
But while the two countries may be nearing a limited phase one deal, Ray Dalio warns that the trade war could turn into a capital war. “There is a trade war, there is a technology war, there is a geopolitical war, and there could be capital wars. And how that’s approached is going to determine what our futures are like,” Dalio said at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations gala in New York yesterday. “How that is approached is going to determine our futures. i hope that it is done with metal understanding… a win-win relationship rather than a lose-lose relationship.”
The next round of public hearings in the ongoing impeachment inquiry are happening today. The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, has testified this morning that her ouster from her post on fabricated accusations promoted by President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has thrown American policy into disarray and given “shady interests the world over” a lesson on how to remove an American envoy who doesn’t give them what they want. “It was not surprising, that when our anti-corruption efforts got in the way of a desire for profit or power, Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old, corrupt rules sought to remove me,” Yovanovitch said. “What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them and, working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. Ambassador.” Yovanovitch also said that Trump’s tweets attaching her during her testimony were “intimidating,” and said that what Trump said about her on his July 25 call with Ukraine’s president “sounded like a threat.” Later today, David Holmes, a staff member at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, will testify in a closed door session about this week’s revelation that Trump asked envoy Gordon Sondland on July 26 about the status of “investigations” he sought for Ukraine.
Restoration Hardware shares are up 6.5% this morning after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealed a new stake of 1.2 million shares it acquired in the third quarter. Berkshire’s new stake in the high-end furniture retailer is worth $206.3 million as of September 30, making it the company’s fourth-largest shareholder. The conglomerate’s 13-F filing also revealed a new stake in Occidental Petroleum and showed that Berkshire decreased its stake in Wells Fargo by 7.7% to about 378 million shares and trimmed its Phillips 66 stake by 6.7% to 5.2 million shares, while also maintaining its positions in Bank of America, Delta Air Lines, Bank of New York Mellon, and Coca-Cola.
And JCPenney shares are up nearly 8% today after the retailer reported a narrower-than-expected loss in its fiscal third quarter. The department store retailer reported a loss of $0.30 per share in the quarter on, compared to estimates of a loss of $0.55 per share, on revenue of $2.38 billion. Same store sales dropped just 6.6% compared to analysts’ expectations for a drop of 7.7%. “The past quarter was an exciting and energizing time at JCPenney as we made significant progress on our efforts to return JCPenney to sustainable, profitable growth,” said CEO Jill Soltau in a statement. Soltau has been spearheading a series of new things in stores—like adding yoga studies and holding styling classes—in an effort to appeal to younger customers, and the company is also working with resale clothing company thredUp.
Stocks We’re Watching
Opera Ltd. (NASDAQ: OPRA): Shares of this internet browser maker jumped as much as 25% yesterday after the company reported its Q3 earnings results. Opera reported revenue for the quarter of $93.7 million, up 119% year-over-year and beating the average analyst estimate by $16.1 million. “Our third quarter revenue growth was driven by strong results in both advertising and search revenues and more than a tripling of micro lending revenue versus the second quarter, driven by rapid scaling in India and continued success in Kenya,” said Opera CFO Frode Jacobsen.