hello and welcome back to the note back
in New York this weekend just in time
for a landmark it looks as though Google
has taken over from Apple as the world's
largest company by market cap this is
however that those two companies stood
at the end of trading today in terms of
their market then google announced their
earnings which are considerably better
than expected so were their revenues and
judging by after-hours trading their
share prices up some five percent that
would be more than enough to take them
ahead of Apple now that's an exciting
developments but in general earnings
haven't been better than expected here
in the US and in general stock markets
today haven't been exciting at all the
yes he was almost exactly flat for the
day that followed continued gains in
Japan on the back of the Bank of Japan
the shocking decision to go to negative
interest rates on Friday but falls in
european stocks now a lot of that could
be due to is M surveys which we always
get to the beginning of the month
looking at manufacturing gagement if we
take a look at this next chart you can
see here in the US the manufacturing is
M continues to signal contraction yes
Manufacturing accounts for a much
smaller jump of the economy that used to
do but as you can see going back to
nineteen eighty-eight really this survey
really does seem to map very well on to
the ebbs and flows of the economy itself
you can see why this is contributing to
growing nervousness about whether the US
economy really is as strong as many
people have assumed now that leads into
one final big issue which is going to
begin to bulk larger which is that over
the next few hours we will have the Iowa
caucuses and the process for deciding
who the next u.s. president is going to
be will finally move into action now if
we take a look at the Iowa electronic
markets has no direct connection to the
Iowa caucuses this is an electronic
futures market run by the University of
area where which allows people to bets
on who they think is going to be
President you can see it's been much
less volatile enix I
eating then then the campaign has been
so far and there is a general sense that
the Democrats are more likely to prevail
about a two and three shot at this point
that really says little more than that
the electoral map at this moment tends
to favor the Democrats if there's no
other particular reason to vote
otherwise you attend to think that the
Democrats are more likely to win the
presidency well I doubt very much that
this level of calmness about the about
the presidential process can last much
longer the chances are that we're going
to see more volatility there and that
will be reflected in markets