Asia

With the Dow Jones flirting around 20,000 for the better part of the past two weeks, one prominent commentator remained skeptical: Dennis Gartman was "marginally net short." Well, no more.

Asian stocks rose, led by Hong Kong, while European shares and U.S. equity-index futures are little changed. Euro, yen climb as the dollar posted an unexpected loss following some serious fireworks out of China, which intervened in funding market to crush offshore Yuan shorts.

Top news stories include Macy’s and Kohl’s cutting their outlook after weak holiday season, Deutsche Bank exploring lending money to PE firms buying distressed loans, Apple planning to invest $1b in SoftBank’s new technology fund.

Following another day of upbeat economic data, with growing signs that inflation on both sides of the Atlantic is accelerating, investors rediscovered their faith in the Trumpflation rally, pushing global stocks and US equity futures higher, fuelling a second day of 2017 equity gains ahead of today's release of the Fed's December minutes.

Submitted by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

What lies ahead for the economy this year? Will the economy finally collapse as predicted by many or will the early positive signs in stock markets around the world continue and the global economy will flourish?

Another quarter, another disappointing delivery announcement from Tesla, which moments ago reported that for the fourth quarter and full year, had delivered 22,200 and 76,230 vehicles, well short of Wall Street estimates of 25,000 for the quarter and shy of the full year goal of 80,000. To mitigate the disappointment, Tesla explained that its "Q4 delivery count should be viewed as slightly conservative, as we only count a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct." Which, of course, is how all other carmakers define their deliveries as well.