The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index dropped to 56 from 60 based on declines in sales, expectations and buyer traffic.  “We are hearing from builders that consumer demand exists, but that customers are hesitating to make a purchase because of rising home costs,” NAHB Chairman Randy Noel, said in a statement.“However, recent declines in mortgage interest rates should help move the market forward in early 2019.”

Goldman is already under investigation in the U.S., and now Malaysian authorities claim that Goldman misled investors when the bank knew sales from a 1MDB (a state investment fund) bond offering it arranged would be misappropriated. “Their fraud goes to the heart of our capital markets,” Malaysian Attorney General Tommy Thomas said in a statement.“If no criminal proceedings are instituted against the accused, their undermining of our financial system and market integrity will go unpunished.” The government is seeking fines for the $2.7 billion of allegedly misused funds and the $600 million in fees received by the bank.

companies announced a record $1 trillion in stock buybacks for the full year 2018. This year, a new lower corporate tax rate  coupled with a one-time tax benefit on repatriated earnings potentially helped companies to have more cash on hand – that could have been a major reason behind the spike in share repurchases by Corporate America.  According to TrimTabs Investment Research,  U.S. companies, led by Lowe's and AbbVie, paid out $34.4 billion in buybacks to shareholders last week, thereby counting towards the year's repurchase announcements above $1 trillion - for the first time ever.Buyback announcements have surged 64% so far this year, TrimTabs said (as reported by CNN).  

Alphabet’s Google will invest more than $1 billion towards setting up a new campus in New York City. On Monday, a blog post from the search engine giant said that it had reached lease agreements at 315 and 345 Hudson St. and signed a letter of intent at 550 Washington St. for the new 1.7 million-square-foot campus, to be named Google Hudson Square.Through the new offices, the company could potentially employ twice the number of people it currently does in New York City, over the next ten years. Earlier this year, Google opened new offices & data centers outside of its California headquarters, in locations such as Detroit, Boulder, Tennessee and Alabama.

On Monday, Embraer announced that it finalized the terms of a proposed deal to sell 80% of its commercial aviation business to Boeing Co. As of now, the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer's commercial aviation unit is valued at $5.26 billion - that’s higher than the $4.75 billion estimated when the deal was originally announced in July. The sale could fetch Embraer around $3 billion after accounting for closing costs. Embraer's board Monday put forth the proposed deal for approval from the Brazilian government. Additionally, Embrarer revealed plans of a joint venture with Boeing on promoting defense plane KC-390.

After the deal, ABB is expected to focus more on its automation business. ABB will have four divisions after the transaction: Electrification, Industrial Automation, Robotics & Discrete Automation, and Motion, which includes motors and drives."Our four newly shaped businesses, each a global leader, will be well aligned to the way our customers operate and focus stronger on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence," ABB Chief Executive Ulrich Spiesshofer said.

Goldman Sachs faces criminal charges from officials in Malaysia, over the investment banks’ role in the misappropriation of multi-billion dollars from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. Goldman had arranged and underwritten bond sales for 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) in 2012 and 2013.Two former Goldman Sachs employees, and two others connected to 1MDB, will face the criminal charges.  Goldman Sachs, however, said in in an emailed statement to TheStreet, "We believe these charges are misdirected, will vigorously defend them and look forward to the opportunity to present our case," while adding,  "the firm continues to cooperate with all authorities investigating these matters.

Facebook could be fined more than a billion dollars, following a European regulator’s probe into the recent breaches of the social networking site’s user privacy. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which oversees Facebook's compliance with European law, confirmed to CNN on Friday it launched a "statutory inquiry" into Facebook.By that estimate, Facebook could potentially have to cough up to $1.6 billion if found ‘guilty’ by the European regulators. On Friday, Facebook revealed that a bug on its social networking platform let third-party app developers access up to 6.8 million Facebook users' photos over a 12-day period.

Now Bernard Marr, noted author and futurist, has offered up his predictions in Forbes for where AI will go in 2019…and beyond. The era of machines doing physical and “thinking work” is uncharted territory.Marr cites “the world’s two AI superpowers” – the US and China’s –– ongoing trade skirmishes as something to watch in the new year.

This comes after the previous day’s sharp drop in its stock price. On Thursday, XPO shares lost -26% after short-seller Spruce Point Capital Management expressed concerns over the transportation & logistics operator’s “unreliable and dubious financials” , and also was apprehensive of the company’s large debt. But the decline was partly offset by Friday’s solid jump in XPO stock price.Deutsche Bank on Friday said it found Spruce Point’s report to contain “highly misleading statements and inaccuracies related to basic calculations” .

According to a Reuters report, Johnson& Johnson was aware of the presence of asbestos in its baby powder samples but failed to notify authorities. Citing documents and depositions, the report suggests that Johnson & Johnson’s raw talc and finished powder sometimes tested positive for traces of asbestos – an information known to the company’s executives and mine managers from 1971 to the early 2000s.A jury in Missouri had awarded $4.7 billion in July to 22 women who alleged that the products contained asbestos which caused them to develop ovarian cancer. According to its latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Johnson & Johnson faces over 9,000 cases related to its body powders with talc.

Transportation and logistics solutions provider, XPO Logistics Inc, caught many of its investors off guard after the surprising announcement of its 2019 outlook. Hearing the earnings warning and seeing the negative report from short-seller Spruce Point Capital, investors rushed for the exits as shares of the transportation company dropped nearly -9.6% on Wednesday and another -20.4% on Thursday. Amidst this chaos, XPO hit investors with another announcement that may have helped turn the tide.The Board of Directors of XPO Logistics authorized the company to repurchase up to $1 billion of its common stock, and shares of the company rebounded nearly +7.3% on Friday’s pre-trade. Carrying a nearly $4.7 billion debt burden, the company revealed that it intends to fund the repurchases program with existing cash, borrowing on XPO's revolving credit facility and/or other financing sources.

French luxury goods group, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), on Friday announced it has agreed to acquire Belmond Ltd., a London-based owner and operator of high-end hotels around the world. LVMH has agreed to pay $25 a share in cash for Belmond, a 40% premium over its’ Thursday closing price.The deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2019, valued Belmond’s equity at around $2.6 billion and the group, including debt, at $3.2 billion. The Paris-based luxury-goods company, LVMH, which owns fashion brands like Fendi and Louis Vuitton and champagne maker Dom Pérignon, emerged as a surprising winner in a highly competitive bidding process which was majorly dominated by the Middle Eastern and Asian government funds, big hotel brands and private-equity firms. Belmond, who owns, partly owns or manages 46 luxury hotels, restaurants, train and river cruise properties, posted $140 million in EBIDTA out of $572 million in revenue in the 12-month period ending on Sept 30, 2018

Shares of the American coffee company and coffeehouse chain, Starbucks Corporation, slumped more than 3% in the after-hours trade after the company revised its global same-store sales growth for the long-term. The company estimated an annual long-term global same-store sales growth of 3% - 4%, roughly in-line with analysts forecasts of 3% - 5% growth for this year. Starbucks also trimmed its outlook for long-term annual EPS growth to at least 10%, after it had lowered the forecast in November 2017 to 12% or greater from the previous forecast 15%-20% growth.However, the company kept its long-term consolidated revenue growth in-line with the previously set estimate of 7% - 9%. Despite the revision in the EPS estimate, the company reaffirmed its estimation of seeing an EPS of $2.61 - $2.66 compared to analysts consensus estimate of $2.65 on revenue growth of 5% - 7%.

The $17.5 million investment will give a boost to the Israeli-based company that sells technology to help financial firms handle business errors.  These errors may include data discrepancies between counter-parties on the financial terms of a trade or wrong information used to identify a client.Errors are normally handled manually, via numerous phone calls and emails between various firms, but AccessFintech's technology will help reduce the time and resources needed to resolve these issues by helping financial institutions communicate with each other.

Bloomberg is reporting that Morgan Stanley is shutting its Moscow equities and currency trading desks.The bank is planning to move some employees to London while others will be cut entirely. The report goes on to say that its presence in Moscow will be focused on corporate finance, capital markets, and mergers and acquisitions. “Morgan Stanley remains committed to Russia and will maintain our longstanding on-the-ground presence in Moscow and ensure that our clients in Russia continue to benefit from the capabilities of the firm, in particular as it relates to investment banking and global capital markets,” the bank said in a statement.

And with it, some exclusive features too. Google Shopping can be accessed through a new shopping tab within Google Search and using Google Lens, the latter being an image recognition app which allows users to photograph products to get more information about them.Google Shopping will list products from Amazon, Flipkart and other retailers instead of selling any itself (as reported by CNN, citing a company spokesperson). Google’s Merchant Center, where retailers can upload product details, will be available in Hindi (in addition to English) in India –the first nation to have an alternative language option on the particular webpage. "More than 40 million Indians are coming online every year, and search is an integral part of their online journey," Surojit Chatterjee, Google's vice president for product management, said in a statement.

Delta Airlines said last week that they expect to grow their bottom-line in 2019, thanks to increasing revenue and declining oil prices. Executives of the Atlanta-based carrier said that reducing oil prices is expected to help the entire aviation industry, as it’s generally the second-biggest expense after labor. The company expects its earnings per share to hover somewhere in-between $6 to $7, in line with analyst estimates, and about 20% higher than the estimated full-year profit analysts expect for this year.In terms of revenue, Delta expects it to grow at 4% to 6% along with a 3% growth in capacity, in line with analysts’ expectations. Delta also expects its revenue per available seat mile, a key industry gauge of how much money the airline is bringing in for every seat it flies a mile, to be up 3.5% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier.

Shares of the crisis-stricken manufacturer, General Electric, surged more than 8% after the JPMorgan analyst Steve Tusa finally raised his rating to Hold from Sell. Steve Tusa, who has had a sell rating on GE for more than two years now, finally upgraded the shares citing the “known unknowns” risks weighing on the balance sheet are better understood now. In a note to the clients, he said that GE can pull off a recovery without another major stumble.He further added that the threat of further deterioration in GE’s liabilities is at least partially discounted now, and there is a possibility that the company can execute its way through an elongated workout that limits near-term downside. The unexpectedly upbeat sentiment resulted in the shares of GE soaring up as much as 12% in New York, its biggest intraday gain in a month.

Trucking and logistics company XPO Logistics, saw its share fall by ~10% on Tuesday after it had issued an earnings warning of an 8-K filing with the SEC. According to this filing, XPO expects its performance to remain on track to generate approximately $625 million of free cash flow for 2018 while for 2019 it expects to generate approximately $650 million of free cash flow.But the company revised its EBIDTA growth rate and expects to grow its adjusted EBITDA only by 12%-15% on a y-o-y basis in 2019. Although it’s a double digit EBIDTA growth, but this is what led to the share tumble of 9.6%.