Business

Amazon has done it again, and following a lukewarm second quarter and with Goldman warning not to get too excited going into earnings, Amazon is back to its short-crushing ways, reporting both revenues and EPS which blew away expectations.  In Q3, Amazon reported EPS of 52 cents, unchanged from a year ago (due to fudging the company's tax rate) and beating consensus estimates of 4 cents, on net sales of $43.7 billion, also well above the $42.19 billion consensus estimate, entirely due to the contribution of AWS.  It was also above the high end of the company's own range, which topped out at

In a stunning scoop published minutes before the close, WSJ reports CVS Health is in talks to buy Aetna, a defensive acquisition that may help the company fend off Amazon should the e-commerce giant follow through on flirtations with the pharmacy business.

Shortly before WSJ published its report, CVS and other pharmacy stocks tumbled to their lows of the day on reports Amazon has been quietly obtaining wholesale pharmacy licenses.

Hmmmm...Wall of worry indeed...

Chaotic flip-flopping headlines hit Spanish stocks today (and continued after the close)...

While Trannies had a big day, S&P and Nasdaq was very quiet...

Authord by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

Sometimes you have to love the naivety of the markets. At this week’s Communist Party Congress meeting in Beijing, the governor of the PBoC (People’s Bank of China) said the following;

After two mediocre, tailing auctions, moments ago the Treasury sold $28 billion in 7 year paper in this week's final bond issuance and it was the ugliest of all.

Stopping at a high yield of 2.28%, this was a tail of 0.8bps - the first since July - to the 2.272% When Issued and the highest yield for 7Y paper since January. The Internals were ugly, with the Bid to Cover of 2.391 the lowest since August 2016, and sharply below September's 2.704, as well as the 2.57 past six auction average.