1. Tesla has reached an agreement with Shanghai government to set up a manufacturing facility in the city, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. The arrangement could enable the electric carmaker to slash production costs, but without a local partner likely will not negate China’s 25% import tax, the publication added. 2. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has said he was willing to bring a healthcare bill up to vote, but was waiting to see what President Donald Trump wants to do, after he sent mixed signals regarding the bipartisan effort, according to Reuters. Publicly traded companies in the space include Aetna (AET), Anthem (ANTM), Centene (CNC), Cigna (CI), Health Net (HNT), Humana (HUM), Molina Healthcare (MOH), UnitedHealth (UNH) and WellCare (WCG). 3. Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOG; GOOGL) deserve a lot of the credit for last week’s record stock market highs but their positive effect will now depend on how they respond to U.S. and European regulators, Tiernan Ray wrote in this week’s edition of Barron’s. European inquiries and those from the U.S.’s Federal Trade Commission have prompted speculation about the breakup of these companies, he adds. And it is not only antitrust issues that are in play, as many see the huge amounts of personal data that these companies are amassing as troubling, Ray contended. 4. Lionsgate’s (LGF.A) “Boo 2! A Madea Halloween” ended its debut weekend in first place, with $21.7M from 2,388 theaters. The movie tells how Madea, Aunt Bam, Viv and Hattie take a vacation to a campground with their family members, only to encounter monsters, goblins and boogeymen. The movie earned an A- CinemaScore and got 8% from Rotten Tomatoes. 5. Coach (COH), DowDuPont (DWDP), Caesars (CZR), Delta Air Lines (DAL), American Airlines (AAL), Lufthansa (DLAKY), Samsung (SSNLF), and Morgan Stanley (MS) saw positive mentions in Barron’s, while United Continental (UAL) was mentioned cautiously.
previous post