Monday Evening -- June 6, 2016

Hot Market

142 new highs, including:

• Allete
• Altria
• Becton Dickinson
• CenterPoint Energy
• MDU
• Medtronic
• ONEOK
• Raytheon
• Ritchie Bros Auctioneers
• TransCanada -- the Keystone folks
• UnitedHeath Group -- the folks bailing out of ObamaCare

Only ten (10) companies hitting 52-week lows.

Dow: 18,132 -- about the all-time high; today, the Dow closed up 113 points at 17,920. 

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Salman's Plan Is Approved (Apparently)

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

Saudi Arabia unveiled plans to more than triple its nonoil revenue by 2020 while cutting state handouts, in a broad bid to reshape the kingdom’s economy amid falling energy prices.

The initiative, called the National Transformation Program, offers details on how the ruling monarchy plans to achieve long-term economic change in an era of cheap oil.
The overall target is ambitious: Riyadh expects nonoil revenue to more than triple by 2020 to 530 billion Saudi riyals ($141.33 billion).

Developing sectors like mining and tourism and increasing the exports of commodities other than oil are part of the plan. The plan, for instance, sees an increase in tourism investment to 171.5 billion riyals from 145 billion riyals in that span.

But so are more painful measures, such as the reduction of subsidies on water and electricity, which the government said could provide savings of as much as 200 billion riyals by 2020.

The government said it expects the nation’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product to widen to 30% by 2020 from 7% today.

As part of the plan, Saudi Arabia aims to boost its credit rating to Aa2 by 2020, after several rating agencies downgraded the kingdom in recent months.

Tourism, huh? Iranians need not apply.

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Daimler Benz Announces Truck Layoffs

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

Daimler AG will lay off more than 1,200 workers at three plants in the U.S. and one in Mexico, the second such cut this year in response to falling demand for commercial trucks.

Similar to a previous round of cuts announced in February, the bulk of the jobs eliminated will be in North Carolina, with 600 workers slated to be laid off by July 1 at its Mount Holly plant and 200 workers in Gastonia by June 24. The cuts amount to about 41% and 15%, respectively, at the North Carolina plants.

In February, Daimler eliminated another 700 jobs at the Mount Holly plant, which builds medium-duty trucks.

Another 170 workers, or nearly 24% of workers in Portland, Ore., are slated to be laid off along with 270 workers, or nearly 11% of its Santiago, Mexico, workforce.

Freightliner, Daimler’s U.S. truck subsidiary, is the market leader in sales of heavy-duty commercial trucks in North America.