Plus, the Fed wraps up its last meeting before the presidential election today, U.S. consumer spending slowed in August, and Eli Lilly said its antibody treatment for the coronavirus appeared to reduce hospitalization rates in a trial.
Stocks were mixed to start Wednesday with the Dow gaining 89 points, or 0.3%. The S&P 500 added 0.2%, while the Nasdaq was flat.
The Federal Reserve is unlikely to take any new policy actions when it closes its last meeting before the presidential election today, though it is expected to indicate it will keep its doves policy in place for years to come while the economy and labor market recover in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The Fed will wrap up its meeting with a statement at 2:00 pm ET this afternoon, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will follow that up with a press conference at 2:30 pm ET, where he is expected to dodge any questions about politics, while also speaking out about the need for Congress to pass more fiscal stimulus. “They’re not moving interest rates through 2023, and that in itself is going to be viewed as a dovish recommitment,” said Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock. “The tend not to want to go and do anything significant in front of an election. I think they’ll reaffirm that they’re not going to move rates. I think there will be two big words. They’ll talk about ‘maximum’ employment, and I think the other one is inflation ‘sustainable’ above target.”
U.S. consumer spending slowed in August as extended unemployment benefits expired for millions of Americans. Core retail sales, which correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of gross domestic, fell 0.1% last month after a downwardly revised 0.9% increase in July, the Commerce Department said today. The category excludes automobiles, gasoline, building materials, and food services, and with those categories, overall retail sales increased 0.6% last month as higher gasoline prices supported receipts at service stations. “These are disappointing number, and they’re probably a hint of what’s to come in the wake of the ending of enhanced unemployment benefits,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “The key story here is that momentum has faded, but sales continue to rise.”
As coronavirus deaths near 200,000 in the U.S., senior administration officials said they are planning to transport a COVID-19 vaccine to U.S. distribution sites within 24 hours after the FDA approves a vaccine or grants an emergency authorization. The government will use medical supply company McKesson as its main distributor for the vaccine, said Paul Ostrowski, who is overseeing logistics for the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program. “We will move [the vaccine] as fast as possible within a day or so,” Ostrowski said. On the treatment front, Eli Lilly said today that it’s antibody-based drug—LY-CoV555—appears to have reduced the rate of hospitalization for coronavirus patients recently diagnosed with mild-to-moderate symptoms. “These interim data from the BLAZE-1 trial suggest that LY-CoV555, an antibody specifically directed against SARS-CoV-2, has a direct antiviral effect and may reduce COVID-related hospitalizations,” said Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, Lilly’s chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories. “The results reinforce our conviction that neutralizing antibodies can help in the fight against COVID-19.”
Sweeping failures by Boeing engineers, deception by the company, and significant errors in government oversight led to the two fatal crashes of the 737 Max, according to a new 245-report from the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. “The Max crashes were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake or mismanaged event,” the report said. “They were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management and grossly insufficient oversight by the” Federal Aviation Administration. The damning report is the result of five investigative hearings, a review of about 600,000 pages of documents, interviews with top Boeing and FAA officials, and information provided by whistle-blowers, and makes the case for broad changes in the FAA’s oversight of the aircraft industry. “We have learned many hard lessons as a company from the accidents of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Flight 302, and from the mistakes we have made,” Boeing said in a statement. “As this report recognizes, we have made fundamental changes to our company as a result, and continue to look for ways to improve. Change is always hard and requires daily commitment, but we as a company are dedicated to doing the work.”
And FedEx is up nearly 6% this morning after the delivery firm reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly profit as price hikes, lower fuel costs, and efficiency gains countered the negative impacts associated with a pandemic-fueled surge in e-commerce shipments. FedEx posted earnings per share of $4.87 from $19 billion in sales for its fiscal first quarter of 2021, compared to analysts’ expectations for earnings per share of $2.70 on $17.5 billion in sales. “Our earnings growth underscores the importance of our business initiatives and investments over the last several years, and, in many ways, the world has accelerated to meet our strategies,” said FedEx CEO Frederick Smith in a statement.
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ClearSign Technologies (NASDAQ: CLIR): ClearSign shares got a boost today after the industrial combustion and sensing technologies provider posted its second quarter earnings results. “ClearSign has been able to cross some very significant milestones these past few months,” said Jim Deller, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of ClearSign. “In June we were able to announce the multi-unit purchase order from ExxonMobil, a project that we had been working towards for three years. On the heels of that, a few weeks ago, we announced the completion of the collaboration agreement for our process burner technology with what we believe can only be described as the perfect global partner, Zeeco. This agreement with Zeeco completes another significant milestone in our commercialization strategy and the tangible development of our process burner business that we laid out mid-2019. We are very optimistic as we move into the burner testing process for ExxonMobil at our new partner’s test facility, and look forward to completing this phase of the project, at which time we expect to be able to confirm to our customers, new partner and the market at large that ClearSign burners are proven to be ready for wide scale industrial deployment. Additionally, going forward, we are looking forward to the installation of our first burner pilot sensors, getting performance feedback from customers and moving towards the formal launch of the initial ClearSign Eye™ product.”