Dow edged up 11, advancers over decliners 2-1 & NAZ jumped 283. The MLP index added 1 to the 196s & the REIT index crawled up 1 to the 465s. Junk bond funds were mixed & Treasuries slid a little lower. Oil rose to the 87s & gold gained 9 to 1796 on US-Russian tensions.
AMJ (Alerian MLP index tracking fund)
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Treasury yields rose slightly, with investors looking ahead to the slew of jobs data releases due out throughout the week. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 2 basis points to 1.798% & the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond added 3 basis points to reach 2.112%. Yields move inversely to prices & 1 basis point is equal to 0.01%. There are no major economic data releases slated for today. Instead, investors will likely be focused on the key pieces of the employment data due to be published this week.
Treasury yields are slightly higher as investors look ahead to jobs data
Russia is willing to risk “real financial harm” & all-out war to achieve its political objectives in Ukraine, defense analysts have said. Moscow has denied that it plans to invade neighboring Ukraine, a former part of the Soviet Union, despite having assembled around 100K troops at the border. Russia is demanding that Ukraine never be permitted to become a member of the NATO military alliance & has said it wants the organization to roll back its presence in Eastern Europe. Last week, the US delivered a response to Moscow's demands that repeated previous refusals to concede. Diplomatic talks are expected to be held between the 2 countries at a UN Security Council meeting today. The British gov claimed earlier this month that it had evidence the Kremlin was seeking to install a pro-Russian leader Kyiv. In 2014, Russia invaded & annexed Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula in the south of Ukraine with an ethnic Russian majority.
Russia is willing to go to war and incur sanctions over Ukraine, analysts warn
The latest Covid-19 wave during the busy holiday travel season caught
the US flat-footed when it came to one key tool in its
pandemic-fighting arsenal: at-home rapid tests. “In the United
States, we haven’t had federal guidance on how to make testing a regular
part of your daily life or your daily week,” said Lindsey Dawson, a
policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “A
comparison is the U.K., where it’s recommended people over 11 test
twice a week. And in the U.S., if everybody over 11 tested twice a week,
we would need 2.3 billion tests per month, and we’re not there.” The
White House has made it clear that the tests — sold over-the-counter at
drugstores — are critical to keeping the economy running during the
current surge of the highly contagious omicron variant & any future
variants. Demand for at-home tests has soared as infection &
hospitalization rates soared to unforeseen levels in early 2022, leading
to supply constraints & accusations of price gouging. The fight
against Covid-19 appears far from over & those at-home rapid tests
look poised to play a crucial role in federal & state efforts to
mitigate another tough pandemic-era winter. The US vaccination
rate has stalled, leaving pockets of Americans vulnerable to severe
disease. Experts also point out that kids under 5 years of age still
don't have access to an approved vaccine. Federal regulators at the Food & Drug Administration have been
criticized for not authorizing at-home Covid tests quickly enough to
match demand. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control &
Prevention’s evolving testing guidance for the vaccinated also has confused test manufacturers, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
How the U.S. is trying to fix its at-home Covid testing problem
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