The pipe bomb scares which you have no doubt read about this week continued yesterday, with Joe Biden and Robert De Niro the latest intended recipients. As it stands, every person who has been sent a pipe bomb has been publicly attacked by Trump, but then the president has attacked so many people since he took office that there isn’t necessarily a correlation. Trump has condemned the attempted bombings, but then went on to attack the mainstream media.
The dollar had a fine day against the pound and made some gains against the euro too. Durable goods orders for September came in above expectations by rising 0.8% month-over-month when a 1% drop had been forecast. Initial jobless claims up to 20 October 2018 increased by 5,000 to 215,000. A figure of 214,000 had been expected.
Today we have the GDP growth rate for the third quarter of 2018. Last quarter, the economy grew by a whopping 4.2% and, while that trend is not expected to continue, a figure of 3.3% is predicted – which would still be extremely positive. We will also the University of Michigan’s final consumer sentiment reading for October.
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