What happened this week

As we await market open in this last week of August, several companies are making big moves in the premarket; 

Xpeng: US traded shares of the Chinese electric car maker are up nearly 5% after the company announced it will buy Didi’s smart electric car business worth$744 million. 

Also Chinese stocks Alibaba and JD.com are up in the premarket after Chinese authorities said it would reduce a tax on trading to boost the stock market.

3M: is up 5% in early trading after Bloomberg announced that they tentatively resolved over 300,000 lawsuits related to their faulty earplugs, the company will pay more than $5.5 billion in settlements.

Boston Scientific is up 5.5% after Sunday the company announced positive results for a treatment for patients with atrial fibrillation. 

The technology sector is in focus this morning, leading gains recovering from its poor performance up until now this year. Tesla is up 2.1% in premarket trading and chipmaker Nvidia is leading the charge after releasing a knock out earnings report. 

Last Friday Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke an encouraging tone at the annual central bank conference in Wyoming; he "pointed to some signs of continued economic growth and strong consumer spending, but indicated that the central bank would “proceed carefully” with additional hikes.” As of Monday morning, the markets seem to be pricing in a 20% chance that the Fed will again raise rates in their September meeting. 

Looking ahead to this week:

Mon Aug 28th:

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is visiting Shanghai and Beijing to discuss business relations between the U.S. and China; companies such as Intel have been competing for semiconductor dominance moving to make more chips domestically. 

Tues Aug 29th:

9am: S&P Case-Shiller home price index

10am: July Job Openings

Consumer Confidence

Wed Aug 30th:

8:30am: GDP Q2 revision

US Trade Balance in goods

Retail inventories

Thurs Aug 31st:

8:30am Initial Jobless Claims

Personal Spending

PCE Index

Fri Sept 1st:

8:30am: US nonfarm payrolls

US unemployment rate

10am: ISM manufacturing

Construction Spending