Stock market news: Opening bell, October 17, 2018

A
staff member operates SEED Solutions’ SEED-Noid R7 by
remote-control during its demonstration at World Robot Summit in
Tokyo, Japan.
Reuters/Kim
Kyung-Hoon

This is what traders are talking about.

Trump says the Fed is the ‘biggest threat’ to the
economy. “My biggest threat is the Fed, because
the Fed is raising rates too fast,” Trump told Fox Business host
Trish Reagan. “And it’s independent, so I don’t speak to them,
but I’m not happy with what he’s doing because it’s going too
fast. Because you looked at the last inflation numbers — they are
very low.”

S&P sounds the alarm on Chinese local
governments’ off-balance-sheet debt. The
credit-rating agency says the off balance of local governments in
China has ballooned to as much as 40 trillion yuan ($6 trillion)
in recent years and that it represents a “debt iceberg with
titanic credit risks.”

Theresa May heads to Brussels with a no-deal Brexit looking more
likely than ever before.  “Unfortunately the
report on the state of the negotiations that I got from Michel
Barnier today, as well as yesterday’s debate in the House of
Commons, gives me no grounds for optimism before tomorrow’s
European Council on Brexit,” European Council president Donald
Tusk said on Tuesday.

Canada has officially legalized marijuana for all
adults. Canada, on Wednesday, became the second
country in the world — after Uruguay — to legalize the drug.

Investors are doubling down on a trade that blew up in their
faces earlier this year. Traders are refusing
to throw in the towel on the short volatility trade, and Morgan
Stanley explains why they should be going long volatility
instead. 

Netflix
soars after crushing subscriber numbers. Shares
gained as much as 15% in after-hours trading Thursday after the
streaming giant said it added 6.96 million new
subscribers in the third quarter, easily beating the the roughly
5 million that analysts were expecting.

IBM misses on revenue. IBM’s third-quarter
revenue fell 2% versus a year ago to $18.8 billion, missing the
$19.1 billion that analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were
expecting. 

Stock markets
around the world are mostly higher. Australia’s
ASX (+1.45%) led the overnight gains and Britain’s FTSE (+0.22%)
is out front in Europe. The S&P 500 is set to open little
changed near 2,807.

Earnings
season rolls on. Abbott Industries and United
Continental report ahead of the opening bell while Alcoa, United
Rentals, and Steel Dynamics release their quarterly results after
markets close.

US economic data keeps coming. Housing starts and
building permits will both be released at 8:30 a.m. ET and
September’s FOMC minutes will cross the wires at 2 p.m. ET. The
US 10-year yield is up 1 basis point at 3.17%.