United States

IHS Markit today released their annual study on the average age of light vehicles registered in the U.S..  As expected, the average fleet age continues to tick up and currently stands at 11.6 years.  While this may be great news for consumers, higher quality and longer useful lives can have a detrimental impact on annual auto sales.

“Quality of new vehicles continues to be a key driver of the rising average vehicle age over time,” Mark Seng, global automotive aftermarket practice director at IHS Markit, said in a statement.

 

The day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday, is when the holiday shopping season in the United States traditionally begins and is the day when retailers (at least in the past) finally turned a profit, going from “being in the red” to “in the black.” However, in recent years, this trend has seen turned upside down, with sales on Black Friday slipping, as retailers offer pre-Thanksgiving deals ever earlier than in recent years to capture heavily discounted market share (think OPEC) and draw shoppers as "Black Friday" no longer marks the spending peak at brick-and-mortar chains.

In a quiet overnight session in which Japan was closed, European shares are mixed as financials and auto weigh, Asian stocks rise led by materials while S&P futures little changed against a backdrop of the continuing commodity rally with oil holding near $48 a barrel, up fractionally on the session. Against a basket of currencies, the dollar index was up slightly at 101.12, very close to a 14-year peak. The dollar also kept most of its recent hefty gains on the yen at 111.05 though it has met resistance around 111.35 in the last couple of sessions

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The EU fired a major global trade war tit-for-tat retaliation today against US banks and the UK in a single action.

Brussels will raise costs for foreign lenders while simultaneously taking a pot shot at London.

Please consider EU to Retaliate Against US Bank Capital Rules.

Authored by Alastair Crooke, via Raul Ilargi Meijer's Automatic Earth blog,

We are plainly at a pivotal moment. President-Elect Trump wants to make dramatic changes in his nation’s course. His battle cry of wanting to make “America Great Again” evokes – and almost certainly is intended to evoke – the epic American economic expansions of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.