On the up and up: The Dow Jones continues to soar, crossing 26,000 today for the first time, The Wall Street Journal reports. The blue-chip index gained 206 points. Today’s historic rise builds on the Dow’s 25% gain last year and its seemingly unstoppable climb to start 2018. The rally began in late 2016 as a bet on infrastructure spending, deregulation and tax cuts, but spent 2017 rising on the back of strong corporate earnings growth. Read more.
Eroding trust: As the Trump administration continues to accuse major news organization of spreading “fake news,” a new Gallup-Knight Foundation survey of 19,000 U.S. adults finds that trust in the news media is at an all-time low. Even though 84% of those surveyed say the news media has a critical role to play in a democracy, 45% say there’s a great deal of political bias in news coverage, up from 25% in 1989. Republicans were more likely to view the media unfavorably than Democrats. The survey was conducted between Aug. 4 and Oct. 2. See the full results.
Taking a hit: Citigroup is reporting a $18.3 billion loss in the fourth quarter today as the financial conglomerate had to take more than $20 billion in accounting write-downs related to the new tax law. Citigroup’s loss, one of its biggest in its history, was mostly caused by accounting adjustments the bank had to make to bring it into compliance with the new tax law that was enacted last month. Excluding these one-time charges, which were expected by analysts, the bank earned a profit of $3.7 billion, or $1.28 a share. Read more.
