16Jun2017 Market Close: Wall Street Ended Little Changed, Amazon.com Buys Grocer Whole Foods, WTI Crude Stable In The High 44 Handle And The US Dollar Slips To The Low 97’s

Amazon’s Whole Foods deal rocks Wall St.; energy stocks rise

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street ended little changed on Friday although Amazon.com’s $13.7 billion deal to buy upscale grocer Whole Foods roiled the retail sector and rocked shares of an array of companies including Wal-Mart and Target.

Amazon moves into real-world stores with $13.7 billion Whole Foods deal

(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it would buy grocer Whole Foods Market Inc for $13.7 billion in a move that gives the online retailer a physical network of stores to distribute fresh food and other goods to millennials and wealthy consumers.

Yellen says Fed to give banks more details on stress tests

NEW YORK and WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve will give banks more details on how it conducts annual stress tests, including the qualitative part of the tests, when it publishes the results later this month, Chair Janet Yellen said Friday in a letter to Congress.

Takata would stop making air-bag inflators under new plan: sources

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Takata Corp , facing bankruptcy over the biggest recall in automotive history, would stop making air-bag inflators after completing a global recall, under a restructuring plan under consideration by its steering committee, sources told Reuters on Friday.

GM to open manufacturing facility in Arlington, add new jobs

(Reuters) – U.S. automaker General Motors Co said on Friday it plans to open a manufacturing facility for its suppliers at its Arlington assembly plant in Texas, adding more than 850 new jobs.

McDonald’s ends Olympics sponsorship deal early

NEW YORK/BERLIN (Reuters) – McDonald’s Corp ended its 41-year-old sponsorship of the Olympic Games three years early, the International Olympic Committee said on Friday, reflecting the U.S. fast-food giant’s focus on its core business as well as rising Olympics sponsorship costs and declining TV ratings.

Greece, markets welcome loan deal as Spain and Germany raise obstacles

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Greece welcomed on Friday a deal on new bailout loans as a decisive step to exiting its debt crisis and markets took heart by lowering Greek borrowing costs, even though Spanish and German officials raised last-minute objections.

Fiat Chrysler CEO says 2018 targets unaffected by diesel troubles

VENICE, Italy (Reuters) – Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) does not expect its diesel problems in the United States to have an impact on its short-term business targets to 2018, Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said on Friday.

ESPN announces executive reorganization

(Reuters) – Walt Disney Co’s ESPN has reorganized its top executives, promoting Connor Schell to oversee all of its content creation across digital, TV and print, ESPN President John Skipper said on Friday.

‘Bricks & Slaughter’ – Amazon Deal Slams Stocks As Yield Curve Crashes

As a reminder, US economic data has not disappointed this much since August 2011… This is the 13th straight week of disappointment for US economic data, and this week is the 2nd worst weekly economic disappoitment since June 2011.

The week saw Tech stocks hurt the most (this is the biggest two-week drop for S&P Tech Sector since Brexit) leaving the S&P scrmabled barely into the green, Trannies best, but Nasdaq and Small Caps the biggest losers…

(NOTE the panic bid into the close as quad witch closed out…)

VIX was crushed into the close as quad-witch caught up with the market. in a desperate attempt to close S&P green… even USDJPY was dragged in to play too

Retailers were the worst hit on the week as Am …

LVMH CEO Warns “Economic Crisis Is Unavoidable”

While hopeful about the future for France following Macron’s election victory and “optimistic” about the longer-term future, luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault warned that business is in a “very strange period” due to low and negative interest rates and “companies like LVMH are paid to borrow money, which is dangerous.”

A financial crisis could be just around the corner, according to the chief executive of LVMH, who has described the global economic outlook as “scary”.

“For the economic climate, the present situation is…mid-term scary,” Bernard Arnault told CNBC Thursday.

“I don’t think we will be able to globally avoid a crisis when I see the interest rates so low, when I see the amounts of money flowing into the world, when I see the stock prices which are much too high, I think a bubble is building and this bubble, one day, will explode.”

Additionally Arnault spoke to Bloomberg TV interview on sidelines of Vivatech fair in Paris.

DOJ: No Reason For Rosenstein Recusal; “Nothing Has Changed”

What exactly is going on at the Department of Justice today? That is the question that everyone should be asking themselves right about now.

Just a couple of hours ago, ABC warmed the hearts of disaffected Hillary voters all around the country when they reported, courtesy of anonymous sources of course, that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had “privately acknowledged to colleagues that he may have to recuse himself from” overseeing Special Counsel Mueller’s Russia probe (see our note: “Rosenstein Says He May Need To Recuse Himself In Russia Probe: ABC”).

This latest “bombshell” report drove an all new round of hysteria in Washington D.C. as people began to immediately speculate as to what new ‘development’ could have prompted Rosenstein’s sudden change of heart on his own independence…clearly Trump must have threatened him, right?

Alas, it seems that it might have all just been more ‘fake news’ courtesy of more anonymous sources as the DOJ is now reporting that precisely “nothing has changed.” Per the Washington Post, here is the statement released by DOJ spokesman Ian Prior:

“As the deputy attorney general has said numerous times, if there comes a point when he needs to recuse, he will. However, nothing has changed.”

Pat Buchanan Remembers “A Long History of Leftist Hatred”

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, who aspired to end his life as a mass murderer of Republican Congressmen, was a Donald Trump hater and a Bernie Sanders backer.

Like many before him, Hodgkinson was a malevolent man of the hating and hard left.

His planned atrocity failed because two Capitol Hill cops were at that Alexandria baseball field, providing security for House Whip Steve Scalise. Had those cops not been there, a massacre would have ensued with many more dead than the gunman.

Recall. There were no armed citizens at that Tucson grocery in 2011, when six were murdered and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was gravely wounded along with a dozen others. The nutcase doing the shooting was only wrestled to the ground when he dropped a clip trying to reload.

The Alexandria attack brings back memories of long ago.

A day before my 12th birthday, when I was in Children’s Hospital with a broken leg, my parents brought me the news that Puerto Rican terrorists had just attempted to assassinate Harry Truman at Blair House. A heroic cop, Leslie Coffelt, died stopping them.

In my second year in high school, blocks from the Capitol, Puerto Rican nationalists entered the visitor’s gallery of the House and began firing semiautomatic pistols. Five Congressmen were wounded.

Democratic politics has often proven a dangerous calling.

Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and JFK — one in every 10 of all our presidents — were assassinated.

Attending a service for a South Carolina Congressman in the Capitol in 1835, President Jackson survived twin misfires of two pistols. Old Hickory used his cane to attack his assailant, who was collar …

Amazon’s Margin-Crusher Invades the Grocery Store

Amazon.com’s purchase of Whole Foods is a rounding error for the giant online retailer. For the struggling grocery industry, it is the biggest shift in a century.

Grab the 30% Off Coupon on Kroger

It is clearance season in the stock market’s grocery aisle, but investors should take another look at Kroger before leaving it on the shelf.

Who Might Eat Up Nestlé’s Baby Ruth and Butterfinger?

Ulf Mark Schneider’s first strategic move as chief executive of Nestlé is sweet but small. It supports heady expectations for now—but before long investors may need something meatier.

Grocery stocks tank as ‘Amazon effect’ strikes fear in investors

Shares of grocery and retail stores took an unexpected hit Friday morning as investors reeled from the news that Amazon announced that it was acquiring Whole Foods Market Inc.

How Whole Foods helps Amazon fend off Wal-Mart

Some analysts think Amazon’s deal to acquire Whole Foods is a reaction to the online ramp-up underway at Wal-Mart.

Amazon ‘will be a top 5 grocer in the U.S.’ with Whole Foods acquisition

Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods will affect not just grocers, but all of retail, experts say.