{"id":61711,"date":"2018-02-02T20:31:34","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T20:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bnreport.com\/what-you-need-to-know-before-the-open-19\/"},"modified":"2018-02-02T20:31:34","modified_gmt":"2018-02-02T20:31:34","slug":"what-you-need-to-know-before-the-open-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bnreport.com\/en\/what-you-need-to-know-before-the-open-19\/","title":{"rendered":"What you need to know before the open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today's top story: <\/strong>Apple, Amazon and Alphabet in the race to $1 trillion market cap<\/a><\/p>\n

Today's leader: <\/strong>The housing crisis isn't caused by empty flats<\/a><\/p>\n

The competition between America's tech behemoths is heating up this week as Apple<\/a>, Alphabet<\/a> and Amazon<\/a> all released earnings.<\/p>\n

Apple extended its lead in the race to reach a $1 trillion market capitalisation, beating revenue and earnings expectations and reaching a valuation of $875bn. Meanwhile, Alphabet's valuation slowed to $795bn. Amazon is now hot on its heels, building its market cap by six per cent to $710bn after it smashed analysts' estimates.<\/p>\n

In the Asia-Pacific region, the Nikkei 225 was down by 0.9 per cent to 23,274 at time of writing, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was up by 0.17 per cent at 32,699. The Shanghai Composite index was up 0.3 per cent to 3,458. In Australia, the ASX 200 was 0.51 per cent higher at 6,121.<\/p>\n

At the open, the FTSE 100 is tipped to fall 0.04 per cent to 7,487, the Dax is Germany is forecast to drop 0.4 per cent to 12,952 and the Cac in France is expected to fall 0.04 per cent to 5,453.<\/p>\n

Corporate news<\/h2>\n