Stocks Fall, Report: US Freezing Some Visa Processing, More
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News when you want it with Bloomberg News Now. I'm Karen Moscow and Wall Street traders taking some risk off the table at the open with stocks falling and bonds rising amid the latest economic data and earnings from big banks. Oil is climbing, gold hitting some fresh highs as traders await the U.S. response to the turmoil in Iran.
Why are Wall Street traders taking risks off the table today?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average now little changed. The S&P 500 down 0.4%. The Nasdaq is down 0.6%. 10-year Treasury yield at 4.15%. Some other headlines we're watching this morning. The State Department will stop processing visas for people from dozens of countries. That's according to Fox News Digital. It marks one of the Trump administration's most extreme moves yet in its immigration crackdown. A department memo says the U.S. is freezing visa processing indefinitely for 75 countries, according to Fox. Citizens from some of the included countries such as Afghanistan, Iran and Russia already have little chance of getting a visa, but the move will be a shock for people coming from other nations on the list, including Brazil.
The Fed has plenty of economic data to digest today. U.S. retail sales rose in November by the most since July, fueled by a rebound in auto purchases and resilient holiday shopping. The value of retail purchases not adjusted for inflation increased 0.6% after a downwardly revised 0.1% drop in October. Meanwhile, U.S. wholesale inflation picked up slightly in November from a month earlier on a jump in energy costs, even as prices for services were unchanged. The producer price index rose to tenths percent after climbing a tenth percent in the prior month. Both reports were delayed due to the government shutdown. Bloomberg's Michael McKee says he does not see anything in these reports that might change the Fed's mind about interest rates in the short term.
The January meeting, they've already said they're probably not going to be cutting. And I would assume that this kind of data seals that. And then they'll have two, three more reports on all of these things before the next meeting in March. So they'll have a much cleaner read by the time we get to the end of the first quarter.
And that's Bloomberg's Michael McKee. Well, we did get a mixed bag of bank earnings this morning. Bank of America's traders posted their best fourth quarter ever as the company reaped the benefits of volatile markets and net interest income-topped analyst estimates. Herman Shan is a senior U.S. banks analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.
Trading revenues looks like it beats by a touch. So that's great to see. And then on the provision that was down for bad debt.
What recent changes are being made to U.S. visa processing?
So it looks like credit quality is holding up really strong for them as well. And lending is fairly flat relative to analyst estimates.
And that's Herman Chan with Bloomberg Intelligence. Citigroup posted an 84% surge in financial advisory fees in the fourth quarter, capping a year in which the firm's revenue from handling mergers rose by more than half to a record. Wells Fargo missed analysts' profit estimates as severance costs drove up expenses. President Trump is reiterating his assertion that the U.S. needs Greenland for national security, head of a high-stakes diplomatic meeting in Washington. Bloomberg's Laura Duszynski has the latest.
Trump weighed in, really, with kind of raising the stakes even more. He's specifically talking about needing Greenland for the Golden Dome. This is his defense proposal that he introduced essentially a year ago when he first came into office, saying that he wants to harden the U.S. 's defense's from the outside world. And so it's creating what we believe is going to essentially be some sort of missile shield similar to Israel's Iron Dome.
And President Trump made the comments in a morning post on Truth Social. Meanwhile, Bloomberg's Laura Duszynski says today's meeting comes hours after Greenland's prime minister said he'd rather stay with Denmark. President Trump is urging Iranians to keep protesting as the death toll rises from weeks of demonstrations.
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