The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has just made history by being the first country to grant citizenship to a robot. Here’s a video of the humanoid android expressing delight and gratitude when she learns that she is the first of her kind to be recognized by ours.
Many on social media were quick to point out the various restrictions being a female citizen of the KSA entails, such as requiring the permission of a male guardian in order to do things like open a bank account, get a passport, or even to leave the house by herself.
What a funny world we live in.
Market Overview
Another exciting day in the stock market with some excellent profits being reported by many @BigTech companies. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all had great news to share.
My second favorite social network @twitter, just had its best trading day in more than a year. Analysts were expecting to see them report 7 cents earnings per share and instead, they came up with 10 cents. In addition, they’ve been growing their user base, possibly thanks to Donald Trump or Taylor Swift, or maybe both.
Either way, even though the shares jumped 18% yesterday, they’re still well below their IPO price and only a fraction of what they were at the all time high of $74.69.
Also, pay close attention to Bitcoin over the weekend as it is very close to the all time highs.
Perfect Stimulation
Exactly as expected, the European Central Bank indeed announced a 50% reduction in their monthly stimulus package. Starting January, they will only be pumping €30 Billion into the economy and that will last at least until September “or as long as needed.”
Now, the normal market reaction should have been for the Euro to go up on less supply and the stocks to go down on less support. But in fact, the opposite happened. I suppose even though the amount is less, there’s still plenty of money flowing into the system. Investors may also be happy that the chances of the economy being flooded with too much cash are now slightly lower.
Going by the market’s reaction, it does in fact seem that this announcement is exactly what the markets were looking for.
In fact, the impact is still being felt at the moment. For example, the EURUSD feel about 100 pips during Draghi’s speech (blue circle) but by this morning it is actually testing significant support at 1.1610…
The stock markets in Europe are also stretching new highs on the opening this morning. Here are some long term graphs for the DAX and the CAC…
The Main Event…
…for today is likely to be the US Advance GDP growth figures coming out at 8:30 AM in Washington DC.
The previous quarter brought Donald Trump a picture perfect 3.1% growth. Today’s numbers are expected to be slightly lower due to Irma & Harvey. Analysts are predicting 2.6% but those predictions may also be skewed as it is difficult to gauge the impact of those type of natural disasters.
We can expect to see some excitement on the US Dollar, which has been rising steadily since the September lows and just yesterday saw a significant jump off the back of Draghi’s small yet perfectly adequate package.
Many thanks to everyone who is reading the updates. I understand that my words are now frequently quoted in the media and various articles. I don’t always see where my words are going so please feel free to reply back by Email or tag me on social media when you see something.
Have an amazing weekend!
