Stock market news: Opening bell, October 8, 2018

Supporters
of Jair Bolsonaro, far-right lawmaker and presidential candidate
of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), react, in Brasilia,
Brazil.
Reuters/Adriano
Machado

Here is what you need to know.

Chinese stocks get slammed as traders return to
work. China’s Shanghai Composite plunged 3.72%
as traders returned to work following the week-long National Day
holiday.  

The
Bank of China makes a move to bolster
growth. Monday’s sell-off came after China’s
central bank announced it was cutting its reserve requirement
ratio for some lenders by one percentage point, releasing
1.2 trillion yuan ($175 billion) into its financial system.

The first round of Brazil’s presidential election is in the
books. Far-right Congressman Jair Bolsonaro
took 46.3% of the vote and will face off against leftist
Fernando Haddad, who won 29%, in the second round on October 28,
Reuters says.

Saudi Arabia still has plans for an Aramco
IPO. 
“I believe late 2020, early 2021,”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Bloomberg. “The
investor will decide the price on the day. I believe it will be
above $2 trillion. Because it will be huge.”

Iran’s oil exports drop further. Oil shipments
out of Iran fell to 1.1 million barrels per day in September —
down from at least 2.5 million barrels per day in April — as a
result of President Donald Trump’s sanctions against the
republic, Reuters says, citing Refinitiv Eikon
data.

Paul Romer and William Nordhaus win the 2018 Nobel Prize in
economics. Romer was awarded for his work on the
integration of technology into forecasting, while Nordhaus
received the prize for looking at climate change in economic
modeling.

Tech stocks have an ominous resemblance to the dotcom-bubble
era. Strategists at Morgan Stanley Wealth
Management compared the last five years of this bull market to
the dotcom bubble and observed a number of striking
similarities. 

The world’s biggest stock bear predicts ‘immediate and severe
consequences’ for the record-setting
market. John Hussman, the outspoken
investor and former professor who has been predicting a stock
crash, says the Federal Reserve is largely to blame for a toxic
situation in markets and predicts an imminent crash will wipe out
$20 trillion worth of stock-market value. 

Apple says it found no signs of hacking. In a letter
to Congress, George Stathakopoulos, Apple’s vice president
for information security, said there was no evidence chips
inside servers sold by Super Micro Computer allowed for backdoor
transmissions to China, Reuters reports.

The US Treasury market is closed. The bond
market is closed in observance of Columbus Day.