Morning Market Report

Domestic equities shook off the news from much of the rest of the world and ended the day up yesterday. The gains were modest, between a quarter and a half a percent, but that's much better than the near across the board losses the rest of the world suffered. This morning the three indices were bouncing from being up marginally to being down marginally until about ten minutes ago. Now, all three indices are up about one half a percent. The August producer price index just came out and it's up 1.7%. That was mostly up on the rise of gasoline. Taking away the price of gasoline and the "core" number was up .2%.

Meanwhile, there's rumors that Treasury will sell some if not all ofof its Citigroup stake as early as October. In the least surprising story, China has already retaliated for the tariffs put on their tires with tariffs of their own.

It took China's Commerce Ministry less than 48 hours over the weekend to start retaliating for what they previously warned was a risky proposal before the US government to slap punitive "safeguard" tariffs on imports of Chinese tires.

At the end of the business day on Friday, Sept. 12, the Obama Administration announced it will go ahead with the tariffs, adding 35% to the duty on Chinese tires starting September 26.

United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk said September 11: "When China came in to the WTO, the U.S. negotiated the ability to impose remedies in situations just like this one. This Administration is doing what is necessary to enforce trade agreements on behalf of American workers and manufacturers. Enforcing trade laws is key to maintaining an open and free trading system."

Meanwhile, bond rates have been turning higher. The ten year is currently at 3.44%. That continues a multi day trend in which it's rate has grown slightly day after day. The yield spread between the two and ten year currently stands at 2.53% which is the largest in weeks. Oil is trading just below $70 a barrel, currently it's at $69.54.

Markets around the world were up nearly across the board. The Hang Seng in China was down .31%, the NIKKEI in Japan was up .15%, and the Straits Time Index in Singapore was down .05%. Still, most of the indices in the Far East were up. Meanwhile, in Europe all major indices were up. The FTSE was up .78%, the DAX in Germany was up .5%, and the Spanish Index was up 1.11%.

The Dollar looks to be stronger against most of the majore currencies. It's up .31% against the Euro, up .86% against the British Pound and up .71% against the Japanese Yen.