Wednesday, June 14th, 2017

Grabbing headlines this morning is a tragic shooting outside Washington, DC, where House Rep Steve Scalise (R-LA) was injured, along with congressional aides and two police officers. This event has superseded coverage on other market-centric events this morning, but we will attempt to push through regardless.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will be stepping down from his post temporarily as of yesterday, in what is called a leave of absence. This follows the VP of Business at Uber, Emil Michael, vacating his post a day earlier. Uber’s board of directors looks to have been part of both of these decisions. Maddy Johnson gives a good account of it here: Uber CEO Takes Leave of Absence.

Why is this significant? Because, as the IPO world heats up in 2017 after a year or two of pent-up demand for new publicly-traded companies, Uber looked to be one of the hottest contenders. Certainly it’s one of the biggest companies to not have yet gone public that is widely expected to, and so a shakeup in its top executive team may start a new chapter for this company, which would be good news for its current board — depending on further actions — as well as market participants looking to obtain a piece of the ride-sharing major.

Otherwise, all eyes are on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which will likely decide on raising interest rates to a 1-1.25% range this afternoon. As Zacks Exec VP Steve Reitmeister said earlier today — see his article here — the only thing that should concern the market today is if the Fed decides NOT to raise interest rates, which would indicate the committee’s consensus sees some trouble on the domestic economic horizon.

As of this hour, Congressman Scalise is reportedly in stable condition. Several other members of the U.S. House were also present at this morning’s event — a baseball practice in Alexandria, VA — but so far have all reported to be unharmed.

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor

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