Real Estate Daily News Buzz is designed to give news snippets to readers that our (yet to be award winning) editors thought you could use to start your day. They come from various business perspectives, real estate, government, the Fed, local news, and the stock markets to save you time. Here you will find the headlines and what the news buzz for the day will be.
The Dow Jones Industrial average slipped 10 points, or 0.1%, to 16,086.41 on Friday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index ended down one point, or 0.1%, to 1,805.81. The NASDAQ composite rose 15 points, or 0.4%, to end at 4,059.89. Benchmark U.S. crude for January delivery rose 42 cents to close at $92.72 a barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
S&P 500 GAINS FOR 8TH STRAIGHT WEEK
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market fizzled Friday at the end of a holiday-shortened trading day, but still logged its longest streak of weekly gains in a decade. Investors watched for early trends in holiday sales as the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, got underway. Retailers were one of two industry groups in the S&P 500 to rise. Stocks overall have surged this year as the economy maintains a slow but steady recovery and corporations keep earnings growing. Demand for stocks also has been bolstered by Federal Reserve policies that have held down interest rates, making bonds less attractive investments than stocks.
MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS NOW EXPORTING ORE
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican drug cartels looking to diversify their businesses long ago moved into oil theft, pirated goods, extortion and kidnapping, consuming an ever larger swath of the country’s economy. This month, federal officials confirmed the cartels have even entered the country’s lucrative mining industry, exporting iron ore to Chinese mills. Such large-scale illegal mining operations were long thought to be wild rumour, but federal officials confirmed they had known about the cartels’ involvement in mining since 2010, and that the Nov. 4 military takeover of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico’s second-largest port, was aimed at cutting off the cartels’ export trade. That news served as a wake-up call to Mexicans that drug traffickers have penetrated the country’s economy at unheard-of levels, becoming true Mafia-style organizations.
EUROZONE INFLATION RISE EASES PRESSURE ON ECB
LONDON — Welcomed news on inflation and unemployment came Friday that will ease pressure on the European Central Bank to act again next week to shore up the 17-country Eurozone economy. But they do little to ease longer-term worries over the recovery. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said unemployment was down for the first time since early 2011 and that inflation edged higher in November, dampening fears that the Eurozone is about to face a debilitating period of falling prices, also known as deflation.
JAPAN SEES GAINS IN PRICES, INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT
TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s economy is gaining momentum, data for October showed, with consumer prices excluding food and energy rising 0.3% from a year earlier, the biggest gain since 1998. However, household spending remained tepid, as incomes slipped from the same month a year before. The slew of indicators released Friday suggests that the ultra-loose monetary policy and stimulus strategy of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is helping end a long bout of deflation for the world’s No. 3 economy.
INDIAN GROWTH EDGES UP, STILL WEAK AT 4.8%
MUMBAI, India (AP) — India says its economic growth has risen to 4.8% in the Q3 ending September. It is an improvement over the previous quarter’s dismal figure but still far below what it needs to pull millions out of poverty. Asia’s third-largest economy had averaged a healthy 8% expansion for the last decade but recently has been faltering. The previous quarter’s growth of 4.4% was the lowest in 10 years. India’s government estimates it needs 8% growth to provide jobs for the 13 million people entering the workforce each year out of a population of 1.2 billion. Friday’s figures for the July-September quarter were dragged down by a weak manufacturing expansion of just 1.0%.
SOUTH KORIEA TO START TALKS ON JOINING US-LED TRADE PACT
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea said Friday it will start negotiations to join a U.S.-led trade pact covering a dozen Pacific and Asian nations. The finance ministry said in a statement that officials will explore the possibility of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership through the preliminary negotiations. The move is a first step and doesn’t commit South Korea to becoming part of the agreement but the trade ministry has been talking up its benefits for the economy. Export-reliant South Korea has free trade deals with the U.S. and European Union. It is negotiating a free trade deal with China, which is not part of the U.S.-led pact. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not in effect yet but the U.S. and other countries hope for an agreement by the end of this year. Apart from reducing trade barriers, the pact also requires its members to meet environmental, labor and intellectual property protection standards.
HIGHLIGHTS OF HEALTHCARE.GOV
WASHINGTON - Highlights of the Obama administration’s update Sunday on the status of HealthCare.gov, the website that people in 36 states were supposed to use beginning on Oct. 1 to sign up for new health insurance coverage. After much work on the troubled site, the government claimed in a new report:
System: Site supports 50,000 concurrent users; users spend an average of 20 minutes to 30 minutes on the site; based on usage trends, the site will support more than 800,000 consumer visits per day.
Site capacity: “Stable at its intended level.”
Performance: Activity levels show the site is “working for consumers.”
Response time: Average system response time is lower than a second.
Error rate: Consistently below 1 per cent, down from 6 per cent earlier this fall.
System stability: Hardware upgrades and software fixes to keep the website up and running more than 90 per cent of the time.
Rapid response team: 24/7 monitoring and operations centre and team in place to watch system performance and to respond to glitches and unplanned downtimes.
Software fixes: More than 400 bug fixes and software improvements have been made.
Hardware upgrades: Improvements increased some capabilities fivefold.
US STEEL PLANT TO BE SOLD FOR $1.55 BILLION
German steel company ThyssenKrupp has agreed to sell its U.S. steel plant business to two competitors for $1.55 billion. Following extended speculation over the deal, ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. said Friday that they will jointly acquire the ThyssenKrupp Steel USA. The steel processing plant in based in Calvert, Alabama. The deal adds U.S.-based finishing facilities for the two companies, which are headquartered in Luxembourg and Japan, respectively. It also is expected to benefit the buyers by expanding their energy and auto industry businesses. ThyssenKrupp was looking for a buyer after a fall in steel prices led to losses for the company and large write-downs for the reduced value of the plant.
QUEBEC GOVERNMENT - $4.3 MILLION OVER 3 YEARS TO WINE INDUSTRY
MONTREAL – Premier Pauline Marois’ government is giving Quebec vintners $4.3 million over the next three years to help boost the province’s wine industry. “Our wine industry is still young and it needs to hit new levels to reach its full potential,” Marois told a news conference Friday. Some of the money will go to improving a program to allow vintners to obtain a reserved designation. There will also be more money — up to $300,000 from $125,000 — for wine producers to boost their output. ”For customers to choose Quebec wines, there needs to be a large quantity of bottles on the shelves at all times,” said Sylvain Simard, head of the Quebec Liquor Corp.’s board of directors. ”There’s no secret there.” Currently, Quebec-produced wine accounts for 0.5% of the shelf space at liquor outlets. ”Just last year, the sale of Quebec wine increased by 40% at the government owned, Quebec Liquor Corp.,” said Simard. He said that in the long term some wines currently available may be withdrawn in favor of Quebec wines.