STOCK NEWS

Twitter: There have been rumors abound with the potential acquisition of the micro-blogging website. Yesterday was a bad one for chances of a deal getting done because Apple, Google, and Disney have all stepped aside according to Recode. The remaining players are Salesforce and Microsoft. This is déjà vu for these two firms as they were last bidding for LinkedIn a few months ago. Given that Microsoft bought LinkedIn and hasn’t even gotten the deal done yet, it would be very risky to embark on another major purchase in the social media area. That being said, we will see how this plays out over the next few weeks.

Apple: Gartner is predicting a 3% reduction in the global device market in 2016. This would be the second consecutive decline. It would be a decrease from the 0.75% decline in 2015. Growth rate in 2017 is projected to be 0.86%. In 2016 mobile phone shipments are expected to decline 1.6%. Gartner is estimating lower volumes for Apple in 2016, but a return to growth in 2017 (3.5%) as a stronger replacement cycle starts.

Boeing: delivered 188 commercial aircrafts in Q3 which is down 5.5% from last year. This decrease is mostly because of the decline in 777 and 787 deliveries. 22 777s were delivered which was down from 27 last year. 36 787s were delivered which was down from 37 last year.

Chubb: Hurricane Matthew has sustained winds of 140 miles per hour making it a category 4 storm. CreditSights has stated that Progressive, Allstate, AIG, and Chubb have top-20 market share in hurricane-loss prone lines of business and are in the top-20 writers of homeowners insurance in Florida.

ECONOMIC NEWS

The big news will be tomorrow morning as the monthly non-farm payrolls report for September comes out. The expectations are for 169,000 jobs created. The market has always rallied on the day the report comes out, so I expect the same to happen, yet again. As far as the report goes, I’m expecting it to come in very close to estimates. This report will be highly politicized, so I expect the current administration to make sure it looks good for their party to help them with the election. My guess is for 190,000 jobs created.