Stock market news: Opening bell, October 22, 2018

Guatemalan
Health Minister workers fumigate on a bridge that stretches over
the Suchiate River connecting Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun
Uman, Guatemala.
AP/Oliver de
Ros

Here is what you need to know. 

Trump has no intention of backing down from his trade
war. President Donald Trump wants “Chinese
leaders to suffer more pain from his tariffs, Axios reports,
citing three unnamed sources with knowledge of his private
conversations. 

Foreign investors are fleeing Saudi Arabia’s stock
market. Foreigners unloaded $1.1 billion of
Saudi stocks this past week as news of journalist Jamal
Khashoggi’s suspected murder reached a fever pitch, Reuters
reports. 

China announces new tax cuts. The cuts, which
go into effect beginning on January 1, 2019, allow for six new
types of deductions that could save taxpayers tens of thousands
of yuan a year, the South China Morning Post says.  

China’s “plunge-protection team” goes all
in. The Shanghai Composite soared 4.09% Monday
— just one trading session after Chinese policymakers rolled out
a wave of measures to support stocks and household
spending. 

Mnuchin isn’t worried about contagion from China’s slow
down. “I am not concerned about that
destabilizing our markets,” Mnuchin told Reuters in regards to
China’s slowing economy, adding, “Broadly, right now, I don’t see
a contagion risk.”

A secret weapon that has kept stocks afloat the past decade is
vanishing. The “Fed put,” which has kept the
stock market chugging higher over the past decade, is becoming
less effective, and if it ends up vanishing it could send stocks
plummeting, according to Vincent Deluard, a macro strategist
at INTL FCStone.

Tim Cook wants Bloomberg to retract its spy chip
story. “There is no truth in their story about
Apple,” Cook told BuzzFeed in regards to Bloomberg’s story
claiming Chinese spies implanted tiny chips in some of Super
Micro Computer’s server motherboards that ended up being sold to
the tech giant. “They need to do that right thing and retract
it.”

Richard Parsons resigns as interim chairman of
CBS. Parsons, who replaced chairman Les Moonves
following multiple sexual misconduct allegations against him, has
resigned as interim chairman due to illness. He is being replaced
by Strauss Zelnick, the CEO and chairman of Take-Two
Interactive Software.

The Boring Company’s first tunnel is coming
soon. The Boring Company, which aims to lower
the cost of building high-speed transit tunnels, will
open its first tunnel on December 10, according to a tweet from
CEO Elon Musk. It will reportedly run under Hawthorne in the Los
Angeles area.

Earnings
reporting is light. Halliburton and Hasbro
report ahead of the opening bell while TD Ameritrade releases its
quarterly results after markets close.