Business

In what appears to be a desperate, early-morning marketing push to avoid the embarrassment of his tax reform package meeting the same fate as his Obamacare repeal effort, Trump released the following tweet storm touting the "unprecedented $5.2 trillion" in stock market gains since his election and promised those gains would "grow by leaps and bounds" if "Congress gives us the massive tax cuts (and reform) I am asking for."

In its latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report (October) the oil cartel has increased its oil demand estimates for 2017, 2018 on strengthening world economy, and weaker outlook for supplies from its rivals.

In a much anticipated televized briefing, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy formally demanded the Catalan leader clarify whether independence has been declared, saying that is needed before he can decide what steps to take. The Spanish leader announced that the central government has moved to take the first step towards suspending home rule in Catalonia on Wednesday morning.

"Cabinet has agreed to notify the Catalan government [so that it may] confirm if it has declared independence", he said.

S&P500 futures point to a slightly lower open, as Asian stocks rise to trade near decade highs, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 closing at highest since 1996. European stocks are little changed, with Spanish shares gaining after Catalan President rows back from an immediate declaration of independence. MSCI's all-world stocks index briefly hit a fresh record high in opening European trading as a 1.5% jump in Spain's IBEX added to a 10-year high set by Asian shares overnight.

Robert Shiller isn’t the only Nobel Laureate who’s worried the US stock market is sleepwalking toward disaster.

In an interview with Bloomberg’s Jeanna Smialek, Thaler, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for his pioneering work in establishing that humans are “predictably irrational”, said that the stock market’s complacency in the face of the North Korean nuclear threat and political uncertainty at home is disconcerting.