It’s a particularly quiet morning on Planet Finance as we push through the final hump of earnings season, with no single story really driving the conversation around trading desks.

Lingering in the back of the mind: Are we due for correction? With the most recent rally in US and European equities seeming to be taking a breather, some pundits are wondering whether we’re not looking at a wave of profit-taking. Piper Sandler's Craig Johnson takes it a step further, Business Insider reports, suggesting we could see a 10% correction as early as next month.

Why? Because the rally is too narrowly-driven by tech stocks while issuers in other industries have seen their shares lag. “Now is a time where this market is certainly vulnerable to see at least a 10% correction,” BI quotes Johnson as having told CNBC.

Asian markets have followed Wall Street down this morning: The Kospi and Nikkei are solidly in the red, while shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai are trading sideways. We’re looking at a weak opening in Europe, and over on Wall Street, stock futures fell as traders “weighed the latest earnings results and looked ahead to the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation gauge,” which is due out this morning, CNBC writes.

Among the small handful of stories worth knowing about:

BTC broke above the USD 60k mark yesterday for the first time since November 2021 and has already climbed by over 40% since the start of this year, fuelling hopes that the cryptocurrency is gaining appeal among investors in traditional assets, Bloomberg noted.

Also on Planet Crypto: Coinbase said last night that it had restored services for all usersafter a glitch caused some users to see their account balance was exactly … zero.

MEANWHILE- A group of publishers (including Business Insider parent Axel Springer) have served Google with a EUR 2.1 bn lawsuit “alleging that they had suffered losses due to the company's practices in digital advertising,” Reuters reports.

TASI

12,611.42

+0.1% (YTD: +5.4%)

MSCI Tadawul 30

1,622.75

-0.3% (YTD: +4.7%)

USD : SAR (SAMA)

3.75 Sell

3.75 Buy

Interest rates

6% repo

5.5% reverse repo

EGX30

28,876.46

-1.1% (YTD: +16%)

ADX

9,283.30

-0.1% (YTD: -3.1%)

DFM

4,290.38

+0.4% (YTD: +5.7%)

S&P 500

5,069.76

-0.2% (YTD: +6.3%)

FTSE 100

7,624.98

-0.8% (YTD: -1.4%)

Euro Stoxx 50

4,883.77

-0.04% (YTD: +8%)

Brent crude

USD 83.40

-0.3%

Natural gas (Nymex)

USD 1.89

+4.3%

Gold

USD 2,042.70

-0.1%

BTC

USD 61,730.48

+8.4% (YTD: +163.4%)

THE CLOSING BELL-

The TASI rose 0.1% yesterday on turnover of SAR 8.4 bn. The index is up 5.4% YTD.

In the green: Avalon Pharma (+29.8%), SFICO (+9.9%) and HB (+8.3%).

In the red: Amiantit (-3.2%), Bupa Arabia (-2.3%) and Al Babtain (-1.9%).

CORPORATE ACTIONS-

Saudia Dairy and Foodstuff’s BoD has decided to distribute a SAR SAR 192 mn dividend of SAR 6 per share for the six months ending 30 September 2023, it said in a disclosure to Tadawul.

Tags: