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November 30, 2015 | | Advertisement
 Stocks finished off the last day of November lower after a choppy trading session, although they managed to salvage small gains for the month. Gold, however, fell 6.7%, and had its worst monthly loss since 2013. First, the scoreboard: - Dow: 17,719.92, -78.57, (-0.44%)
- S&P 500: 2,080.41 -9.70 (-0.46%)
- Nasdaq: 5,108.67, -18.86, (-0.37%)
And now, the top stories on Monday: - China's yuan is now officially a global reserve currency. The International Monetary Fund made it official today, and placed the yuan alongside the dollar, yen, euro, and pound in the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket. This could benefit the yuan, as big money managers move their holdings to the currency. It could also boost the local economy's confidence, in a year that has been marred by two stock market crashes and a struggling economy.
- Morgan Stanley may trim a quarter of its fixed-income trading staff within the next two weeks, according to Bloomberg. The investment bank's bond-trading revenues fell 42% year-on-year in the third quarter, and CEO James Gorman described it as the worst three months for fixed income, currencies, and commodities since he took the helm in 2010.
- Retail stocks slid, after early surveys showed that Black Friday shopping was not spectacular. Urban Outfitters (-4%), Under Armour (-3.7%), and Macy's (-2%) were among the biggest losers. Early data from analytics firm RetailNext showed that overall sales fell 1.5% on Black Friday, while average shopper spending dropped 1.4%. ShopperTrak estimated a decrease from last year to a total of $12.1 billion.
- But Cyber Monday looked much better. Adobe Digital Index said sales were up 14% year-on-year, at $490 million between midnight and 10 a.m. today, according to Reuters. The websites of Target, PayPal, Walmart, and Victoria Secret experienced outages or slow checkout times at various times today. The National Retail Federation had noted that most Black Friday shopping was online, and so the surge in Cyber Monday sales may lend itself as an anecdote of that behavioral change.
- The Midwest gave us a bright red light for the economy. The Chicago purchasing manager's index plunged into contractionary territory in November. MNI's indicator of manufacturing and business activity fell to 48.7 from 56.2 prior, missing the forecast for 54. A drop in new orders, to the lowest level since March, pushed the headline down. And, as a leading indicator, the decline in orders does not bode well for future employment. Deutsche Bank's Joe LaVorgna noted to clients before the report a strong correlation (a 0.86 coefficient) between the Chicago PMI and the national ISM. "Barring a significant bounce back in December, the decline in November suggests that activity during the final quarter of the year may well decelerate," MNI said.
- Things were better down in Texas, where the Dallas Fed manufacturing index was reported at -4.9 for November (-10 expected, -12.7 prior). Business executives said factory activity improved for a second straight month, while the employment index surged double-digits to 11.6, the highest in 15 months.
- In other economic data, pending home sales rose 0.2%, missing the forecast for 1%. As a forward-looking indicator, pending home sales point to another small drop in existing home sales next month, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics' Ian Shepherdson.
DON'T MISS: MORGAN STANLEY: This is not how the bull market ends » | 
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Donald Trump holds chaotic Trump Tower press conference with black pastors by Colin Campbell on Nov 30, 2015, 4:37 PM Advertisement
 Real-estate magnate Donald Trump ended up holding a Monday press conference with black pastors after all. After abruptly canceling the event the day before, the Republican presidential front-runner suddenly appeared for a chaotic press conference at Trump Tower following his closed-door meeting with the group. Trump at times dipped into the background of his cadre of supporters as they answered a flurry of media questions. "I thought it was an amazing meeting. I met some fantastic people, some of whom I've known," Trump declared at one point. "You know it lasted for more than two and a half hours. We came up with lots of good ideas and lots of future ideas. But I thought it was an amazing meeting." There were some tensions going into the meeting. Trump suggested Monday morning that some of the 100 black pastors that his campaign said were to endorse him after their pow wow had rescinded their support amid pressure from Black Lives Matter activists. But some of the pastors appeared to clearly oppose Trump's candidacy. One person going into the meeting reportedly said he wanted to address Trump's "racism" with the candidate. Trump's supporters gathered for the impromptu press conference were clearly a more enthusiastic bunch. Some highlights from the event can be found below. A pastor decried the 'liberal media' smearing Trump's reputation: Trump warned presidential rival and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to be 'careful': Trump declared that the meeting was 'amazing': SEE ALSO: Donald Trump had a wild interview with Chris Cuomo, who pleaded with him to stop trashing a CNN reporter
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November 30, 2015 | | Advertisement
 It was about 1997 when my dad first gave me the "Is that a want or a need?" talk. I was a kindergartner who really wanted chocolate milk at the Soda Shop, a local diner in my hometown of Davidson, North Carolina. The speech went over my 6-year-old head, but the conclusion of the message stuck — never ask for chocolate milk at a restaurant. Order water, because it's free. I learned that afternoon that chocolate milk qualifies as a want and water as a need. As I got older, I started to figure out how other things fall under these two categories. I learned that the new pair of Sambas I'd been eyeing counted as a want but tennis shoes counted as a need since I traveled for tennis tournaments every weekend. At first I was guided by my dad and his definitions of wants and needs, but eventually I formulated my own definitions. I noticed that the chocolate-milk column grew exponentially quicker than the water column — luckily for childhood me, I knew not to dare touch the want column. Sure, it was helpful to develop this frugal lifestyle centered around "need buying" as a high schooler and college student, but my dad's lesson has become more valuable than ever upon entering the real world, where to stay afloat with minimal income in an expensive city like New York you have to distinguish between needs and wants. What this distinction does is it makes you a diligent and conscious spender, a habit that takes time to form — a habit that a personal-finance book or class can define but never truly teach. That 1997 chocolate-milk lesson looms over every purchase I make. I first determine whether I'm buying a want or a need, and, if it's a want, I weigh the pros and cons before mindlessly spending. Of course there's always a time and place for a chocolate milk — the occasional splurge keeps you sane — but for the most part, I'll be the one with the glass of water. SEE ALSO: I spent only cash for 2 weeks — and I can't believe how much money I saved | 
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An MBA isn't as important as you might think for building a career on Wall Street by Portia Crowe and Andy Kiersz on Nov 30, 2015, 4:31 PM Advertisement
 You might think that holding a Masters of Business Administration, or MBA, is essential to building a career on Wall Street. You would be wrong. It turns out that MBA degrees are very common at the upper levels within investment banks — but they don't dominate. And at the entry level, the most common degree is in fact a Bachelor of Science. That is, of course, because people typically go to business school after completing an analyst program or attaining an associate-level position. To better understand which degrees are most popular on Wall Street, we spoke to Emolument, a salary benchmarking website that collects self-reported pay data. They gathered data on 840 finance professionals in New York at the analyst, associate, vice president, and director level. Here is what they found. SEE ALSO: The 11 best colleges for a job on Wall Street The most popular degree among analysts on Wall Street is a Bachelor of Science. 
The B.S. ranks most popular among associates, too. 
MBAs are the most common degree at the VP level, although only slightly more common that Bachelors of Arts and Bachelors of Science. 
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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