Extending its losses from yesterday, following the untimely sacking of a fiscally responsible finance minister, South Africa is in freefall - Rang crashed above 16 (record lows), stocks have crashed, and bond yields exploded:
China's Yuan hit a fresh 4 year low...
EM Stocks are plunging...
And of course US High Yield Bonds...
'As goes oil, so goes the US equity market' appears to bethe new mantra. Just as yesterday's pump-and-dump tracked oil, so in the pre-market, WTI Crude plunged back to fresh 7-year lows after IEA warned that the oil glut will worsen, with prices lower for longer as demand remains subdued through at least 2017. This in turn sent US equities tumbling with Dow futures down 200 points (down 330 from Thursday highs).
Spot the difference...
It's official: two of America oldest publicly traded companies will combine, with Dow and DuPoint merging as equals in a combined company that will have a $130 billion market cap and will be named DowDuPont. And while shareholders already benefited from the deal with shares of both consitutents rising by 10% in the days preceding the official announcement, the biggest loser are once again the employees: the combined company announced that as part of the $700 million in restructuring efforts, 10% of the combined company's employees will be laid off.
Here are the details:
It was a relatively calm overnight session in which European stocks wobbled modestly, Japan was up, China was down following the Yuan's weakest fixing since 2011 as the PBOC continues to aggressively devalue since the SDR inclusion (stoking concerns capital outflows are once again surging), EM stocks stocks were weak and the dollar was unchanged ahead of today's retail sales data and next week's Fed meeting, and then suddenly everything snapped.