A daily morning look at the financial stories you need to know to start the day

BREAKING

-It is now confirmed that an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo has crashed. It went off radar just 10 miles from Egyptian airspace. 66 passengers were on board. What caused the crash and whether it was terrorism are still not known.

STOCKS/ECONOMY

-Futures are down after the markers finished flat in reaction to the Fed minutes. A hawkish tone in those minutes wiped out a decent rally.

-Gold is taking a 1.5% step down and is at a three-week low.

Walmart just posted earnings and revenues that beat Wall Street expectations.

OIL/ENERGY

-The surging dollar is pushing crude prices down almost 2% to the $47/barrel level. Nat gas is back below $2.

-Gasoline prices surged more than two cents overnight to $2.26/gallon, national average.

DEALS/NO DEALS

-Bayer is making an unsolicited bid to buy seed maker Monsanto. The offer should be a lot more than Monsanto's roughly $42 billion market cap.

ELECTION

-For the first time since they both became presumptive nominees, Donald Trump has beaten Hillary Clinton in a national poll. He leads her 45% to 42% in the latest FOX News poll.

-Amazon's Jeff Bezos is pushing back on Donald Trump's claims that Amazon is a monopoly getting special regulatory treatment.

FACEBOOK MEETING

-It really sounds like everything went Facebook's way in its meeting with some conservative pundits yesterday. Everyone seems to be saying the meeting was constructive and no one called for new regulations.

DEFENSE

-The White House says it will veto the defense bill just passed by the House. But it has to go to the Senate first.

-The Pentagon says Chinese Air Force jets conducted a "dangerous intercept" of a US military jet over the South China Sea Tuesday.

GROWING AMERICA

-The populations of the nation's biggest cities continue to grow, and at a faster pace than 2000-2010.

-Real estate prices in the Bay Area have hit a new record high.

MOVING AMERICA

-A key deadline in the California high speed train project has been pushed back by four years.

-Tesla will offer $2 billion in new stock to cover the costs related to the roll out of the new Model 3. But Goldman Sachs had estimated it would only need to sell $1 billion worth. The added number of shares on the market is pushing Tesla way down in the pre-market.