Government Shutdown Threat Hits Markets

Markets were down noticeable this morning at the open and never recovered. The catalyst for the down market has been attributed to Trump’s threat last night in Phoenix to let the federal government shutdown if Congress does not fund his wall with Mexico.

Lawmakers are on break and will be returning to Washington in early September but the funding to run the government will die on October 1st. Both parties had expected to pass a temporary spending bill. This new threat from Mr. Trump now places the path forward in question.

The GOP is prepared to dig in over the $1.6 billion for the border wall, one of Trump’s top campaign promises.

August is a soft month for the markets and it appears it will live up to its reputation. We are looking for alerts but not knowing what Trump may say or tweet next makes it interesting. We will get a clear signal, it is just timing and we have to wait.

There was some interesting news today to include Alphabet (Google) and Walmart working together. The news surrounds the war for market share in the voice activated shopping arena. It appears that Alphabet and Walmart are teaming up to challenge Amazon's Alexa, which the company has been heavily pushing with promotions and discounts as well as new updated versions.