Weekly News Summary For May 31 to June 6, 2019

Friday, May 31: Global Stocks Fall as Trade Worries Hit Sentiment

Stock markets worldwide underwent a sharp selloff on Friday, weighed by US President Donald Trump’s 5% tariff threat on Mexico and weak Chinese factory activity data.

Most Asian equities were in the red at the close, while European shares hit 3-month lows and US futures showed a sharp drop at the open on Friday.

Monday, June 3: Alphabet Drops after Cloud Outage in Eastern US

Shares of Alphabet registered a loss of more than 3% after its Google unit experienced high levels of congestion in the eastern US, temporarily halting services in Google Cloud, G Suite, and YouTube.

Google later said the technical problem have been fixed, and that it would look into the outage to determine exact improvements needed in the company’s systems, to avoid or minimize such issues in the future.

Tuesday, June 4: US Factory Orders and Shipments Weaken in April

US factory orders plummeted in April for the second time in three months, and shipments declined to its lowest in two years, pointing to continued weakness in manufacturing activity that may knock the larger economy off balance.

The Commerce Department stated that factory good orders fell 0.8% duet to muted demand for transportation equipment, computers and electronic orders, as well as primary metals, while shipments shrunk 0.5% to hit its biggest drop since April 2017.

Wednesday, June 5: Australia’s GDP Weakens to a Decade Low

Australia’s economy weakened to a decade low last quarter, underscoring the need for a firm monetary and fiscal stimulus to prevent the country from facing recession,  after 28 consecutive years of growth.

Data released on Wednesday showed Australia’s gross domestic product rose by 0.4% in the three months ended March, although it missed expansion forecast of 0.5%, while the 1.8% annual expansion ended below the long-term average of 3.5%, and was the weakest since the global financial crisis.

Thursday, June 6: Fiat Chrysler Terminates Merger Offer for Renault

Fiat Chrysler has terminated its $35 billion merger proposal for French carmaker Renault with immediate effect, holding French politics responsible for the cancellation of what would have been an innovative deal to establish the world’s third-largest auto group.

A source familiar with the matter stated that Fiat Chrysler made the decision after France tried to postpone a decision on the agreement to gain the support of Renault’s Japanese partner Nissan Motor, who said it would abstain after French government officials called for its support of the merger.