The Mexican peso briefly spiked more than 1 percent against the U. S. dollar on Thursday after Mexico’s central bank took steps to buttress its slumping currency.
Juan Garcia, director of national operations for the bank, told Reuters it began selling dollars, but did not specify how many dollars the bank was selling. The peso hit an all-time low versus the dollar on Wednesday, amid uncertainty over President-elect Donald Trump’s trade policies.
Mexico’s currency has taken a beating since Trump shocked the world by winning the U. S. presidential election. Trump called for an overhaul of the North American Free Trade Agreement and has repeatedly said he will construct a wall along the U. S.-Mexico border. Since Nov. 8, the peso has shed more than 16 percent against the dollar.
Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, said he expects the peso’s weakness against the dollar to persist, but added that Wednesday’s sell-off was « a bit exaggerated.  »
« If the intervention can push the peso below 21 (to the dollar), we could see some consolidation, » Chandler said. « If the peso can break below 20.70, it would be even more convincing.  »
The peso traded around 21.30 to the dollar, up 0.8 percent, as of 9:54 a.m. ET.

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One of my jobs as a financial planner is to identify and mitigate financial risks through insurance. For example, the sudden death of a family member could derail your family’s goals, making it a serious risk to your family’s financial well-being. This risk can be mitigated through life insurance.
Although it’s important to have insurance to protect against different risks, there is a cost — not just in dollars — to being over-insured. So let’s discuss a few rules of thumb to prevent this from happening.
I watch a good amount of NBC’s « Dateline, » and it seems as if once a month there is a story about someone who was murdered with the goal of obtaining their life insurance proceeds. Although it is important to have life insurance to provide your family with a source of income in the event of your death, being over-insured can provide an incentive for you to be dead.
And there are so many life insurance riders. While I can’t cover each one in detail, I can safely say that riders wouldn’t exist if the life insurance company didn’t make money off of them. Know which riders meet your unique needs, and steer clear of riders that are too complex or sound too good to be true (because they usually are).
When you insure your house, you are insuring the replacement cost, or the cost it would take to replace your house. Having your house insured for the true replacement cost of your home rather than the value of your home can reduce your premiums.
For example, if the average expected cost of a private nursing-home room is $215 per day, purchase $175 per day of coverage, not $215 per day.
Be sure to take into account other factors that are unique to each person, such as no longer having travel expenses. This will result in significant reduction of premiums because changing the daily benefit up or down on long-term care insurance policies changes the premium by the exact same percentage.
For the most part, the cost of being over-insured is the increased cost of premiums and riders that you pay for but don’t need. By eliminating these unnecessary costs, you can potentially save hundreds or thousands of dollars per year and reallocate those savings toward other, more exciting spending goals.

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(CBS) Chairman George McCaskey has made it abundantly clear — his family will remain in ownership of its Bears.
“Nothing has changed,” McCaskey said on the Mully & Hanley Show on Thursday. “I’ve said it the same way every time. We have no intention of selling. My brother, Pat, says it very well. We intend to hold onto the Bears until the second coming. My brother, Mike, when he was president of the Bears, said it very well. We want to discourage people from even making inquiries. We have no intention.
“There is no price. We have no intention.”
McCaskey spoke to 670 The Score a day after he, coach John Fox and general manager Ryan Pace met with the media at Halas Hall and recapped a 3-13 season, the Bears’ worst under a 16-game schedule.
McCaskey has been in his position of chairman since 2011. His grandfather, George Halas, founded the Bears organization in 1920.
The Bears have endured recent struggles, including one of the worst three-year stretches in franchise history. Fox and Pace are 9-23 in their current positions since taking over in January 2015.
Given that it’s a family team struggling, McCaskey knows well the hardest part of his role.
“The most difficult part of my job is, after a loss, looking Virginia McCaskey in the eye,” he said. “That’s tough.”

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With a healthy rally taking U. S. markets into 2017, it’s smart to be bullish on the new year’s opportunities, despite the potential for a pullback, technical analyst Katie Stockton told CNBC on Thursday.
« I don’t see how you can’t be bullish in this environment. We’ve seen a lot of breakouts, we’ve seen a lot of momentum behind the market. The leading sectors have been the more offensive sectors at the marketplace, » Stockton told  » Squawk Box.  »
« All of those things stack up nicely for Q1, » said Stockton, chief technical strategist at BTIG, referring to the first quarter of 2017.
Stockton said a pullback could be in sight as the markets feel overbought on the short term, but that didn’t mar her bullishness for the start of the year.
« [If] we see something change, we’re going to change with it, » Stockton said. « But as it stands, I think it’s right to be bullish, it’s right to be looking for opportunities to add exposure and really just trying to get to get those sector calls right.  »
One surprising sector emerging as a popular pick in the new year is health care, Stockton said, despite heated discussions in Congress over the future of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
« Already we’re seeing some rotation into health care. I think that’s kind of interesting. It’s a bit more defensive in its properties at times, but health care does have a big footprint in the S&P 500, » Stockton said.

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Think you know your credit score? Think again.
The number you see — whether you paid for your score or not — is probably not what a lender gets.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced an enforcement action Tuesday against credit bureaus Equifax and TransUnion, and their subsidiaries. The CFPB said the companies deceived consumers about the value of the scores sold.
« In their advertising, TransUnion and Equifax falsely represented that the credit scores they marketed and provided to consumers were the same scores lenders typically use to make credit decisions, » according to the announcement. « In fact, the scores sold by TransUnion and Equifax were not typically used by lenders to make those decisions.  »
As part of the action, the companies will pay more than $17.6 million in restitution to customers, and another $5.5 million in penalties to the CFPB. The bureaus must also « clearly inform consumers about the nature of the scores they are selling, » according to the release from the CFPB.
Officials at Equifax did not respond to requests for comment. In an emailed statement, a spokesman for TransUnion said the company believes its marketing has been clear, but is committed to improving its customer experience.
Experts say the CFPB action highlights something consumers may not understand about credit scores: There’s no one magic three-digit number that lenders use to assess borrowers’ creditworthiness and set rates.
The scores you’ll see can vary widely from source to source — and are likely to be altogether different than the number the lender pulls when you submit your application for a mortgage or credit card, said credit expert Gerri Detweiler, author of « Finance Your Own Business.  » (On a given day, Detweiler’s score has varied by more than 40 points across sources, she said.)
Some of the reasons your score varies:
Variation doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to your score(s), however. There are plenty of free ways to take a look, including third-party sites and as a perk from your credit-card issuer.
« Every credit score that’s being given away or sold to consumers has value, » Ulzheimer said. « They are all directionally accurate, meaning if you have a poor credit report you’re going to have a poor credit score regardless of the score brand. And, if you have great credit reports you’re going to have great credit scores regardless of the score brand.  »
The key takeaway is the information provided with your score indicating why the number is what it is, Susswein said. That tells you what actions you might take to improve your creditworthiness.

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The local stock barometer surged to the 7,200 mark on Thursday, tracking upbeat trading in the US and regional markets and buoyed by renewed foreign buying of local equities.
The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index racked up 178.49 points or 2.54 percent to close at 7,209.44, boosted by investors’ positioning for the year ahead alongside favorable developments on the domestic fiscal front.
Joseph Roxas, president of Eagle Equities Inc., said the first quarter of any year was typically strong as fund managers take investing position. Another thing that boosted investor interest, Roxas said, was that Pres. Rodrigo Dutete did not sanction an increase in Social Security System (SSS) pension.
“It shows he will listen to economic managers and shows he is aware of repercussions (of populist moves). Even though this was a campaign promise, this shows that he will take advice from economic managers,” Roxas said.
“The realization is what was a campaign promise won’t necessarily become real when he sits in office and sees actual situation,” he added.
An increase in SSS pension payout without corresponding increase in contribution is seen to shorten the actuarial life of the state-owned pension fund.
At the local market, foreign investors were in a net foreign buying for the fifth straight session. Net inflows for the day amounted to P728 million.
All counters gained significantly, led by the holding firm counter which rose by 3.06 percent. The financial, mining/oil and property counters also surged by over 2 percent.
Value turnover for the day amounted to P10.28 billion.
There were 146 advancers that edged out 55 decliners while 32 stocks were unchanged.
The PSEi was led higher by Security Bank, which surged by 8.91 percent and was the most actively stock for the day.
Investors also picked up shares of Ayala Corp. and Jollibee, which both advanced by over 3 percent while Ayala Land, BDO Unibank, Metrobank, JG Summit and BPI gained over 2 percent.
Aboitiz Power, URC, PLDT and Megaworld all rose by over 1 percent while SM Prime, Metro Pacific and Meralco also gained.

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