26Apr2018 Midday Update: Wall Street Opens Higher, Trades Mostly Sideways, DOW Up Over 200 Points, Nasdaq Up 1.5%, US Dollar Index Trending Higher

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money

North and South American markets are higher today with shares in Brazil leading the region. The Bovespa is up 0.99% while U.S.’s S&P 500 is up 0.92% and Mexico’s IPC is up 0.53%.

Wall Street jumps as tech roars back, yields retreat

(Reuters) – Facebook’s 9.2 percent jump after blockbuster results and gains in chipmakers powered technology stocks on Thursday, with easing U.S. bond yields helping the sentiment on Wall Street.

U.S. business spending on equipment cooling; labor market strong

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New orders for key U.S.-made capital goods fell in March, weighed down by the biggest decline in demand for machinery in nearly two years, and a drop in shipments cemented expectations that business spending on equipment slowed in the first quarter.

ConocoPhillips profit tops estimates on rising oil prices, cost cuts

HOUSTON (Reuters) – ConocoPhillips , the world’s largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company, posted a bigger-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday, helped by rising crude prices and cost cuts.

Airbus heads for dogfight with UTC over CSeries costs

PARIS/MONTREAL (Reuters) – Airbus is preparing to cross swords with United Technologies over the price of components and services for the Bombardier CSeries in a bid to make it easier to market the jet it agreed to bail out last year, people close to the matter said.

Deutsche Bank fired 300 U.S.-based investment bankers on Wednesday: source

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Deutsche Bank fired 300 U.S.-based investment bankers on Wednesday as part of a broader overhaul of the global unit, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.

EU strikes deal forcing Netflix, Amazon to fund European content

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – EU lawmakers and member states on Thursday struck a preliminary deal that will allow countries to force online streaming services including Netflix and Amazon’s video service to help fund European films and TV shows.

Results soothe nerves over scandal-hit Facebook

(Reuters) – Shares of Facebook Inc rose as much as 8.5 percent on Thursday morning after another blockbuster set of quarterly results calmed stock investors’ nerves about the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.

New York Times names company veteran Roland Caputo as CFO

(Reuters) – The New York Times Co on Thursday named Roland Caputo as its next chief financial officer, tapping a company veteran to succeed James Follo whose retirement was announced in October.

Time Warner revenue beats on strong growth in Turner

(Reuters) – Time Warner Inc , which is being bought by AT&T Inc , reported a better-than-expected quarterly revenue on Thursday as the airing of the college basketball games helped Turner attract advertisers.

Senate Panel Passes Bill To Protect Robert Mueller From Firing

While the bill still has little hope of making it past the Senate since Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he won’t bring it up for a vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee has passed a bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump.

A draft released Wednesday night by Chairman Charles Grassley – who has broken with other Republican leaders in supporting the bill – omitted language that would require Mueller to notify congressional leaders “if there is any change made to the specific nature or scope” of the investigation. With the changes, Democrats on the committee joined Grassley and a handful of other Republicans in a 14-to-7 vote to advance the bill, according to the Washington Post.

The removal of the language was a concession to Democrats, who had worried that including the language would essentially create an opportunity for Republicans allied with the president to tip him off about any new developments in the probe.

Given the opposition, some members of the Judiciary Committee had p …

When Investor Psychology Turns Dark, All News Is Bad News

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

Big companies report blow-out earnings. Home prices soar. North Korea promises to end its nuke program, possibly averting another Asian war.

And stocks fall.

Does this mean the news no longer matters? That’s exactly what it means. But it never did matter. In a world this complex, big things both good and bad are always happening. So the events themselves are less important than our interpretation of them. In other words investor psychology is everything. And that has suddenly turned dark.

Grumpy Investors Can’t Find Anything to Look Forward To

(New York Times) – The stock market is forward-looking. That’s a problem when there’s not much to look forward to.

Stocks sank for the fourth-straight day on Tuesday, as investors looked past a series of outwardly positive earnings reports and fixated on threats to the nine-year-old bull market.

Foremost among them is the Federal Reserve. Super-low interest rates from the central bank have fueled the rally, pushing up the prices of stocks and bonds since the Great Recession.

But that was then. Now, the Fed is slowly withdrawing some of its support. It is shrinking its portfolio of government bonds and lifting interest rates. As a result, a yearslong tailwind for the stock market is disappearing.

The new environment is evident in interest rates on government bonds, closely watched by many investors. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note touched 3 percent in trading early Tuesday. That benchmark interest rate — which influences the price of borrowing for both consumer loans and corporate bonds — has …

The Purge Begins: Deutsche Bank Fires 400 US Bankers

As part of its latest disastrous earnings, which saw trading revenues tumble by 17% as new CEO Christian Sewing took over, we reported that Deutsche Bank announced a sweeping restructuring plan, abandoning its long-running ambitions to be a top global securities firm, scaling back U.S. rates sales and trading, reducing the corporate finance business in the U.S. and Asia, and reviewing its global equities business with a view toward cutting it back, the bank said in a statement. The measures will lead to a “significant reduction” in the 97,130-person workforce this year, Deutsche Bank said. We translated it more simply: massive layoffs.

Predictably, the German bank wasted no time, and according to Reuters and Bloomberg, the purge began overnight when Deutsche fired 300 U.S.-based investment bankers on Wednesday with another 100 pink slips expected over the next 24 hours.

In total, the biggest German bank plans to cut more than 1,000 jobs, or over 10%, of total US jobs in its initial restructuring phase. According to Bloomberg, the US hosts about 10,300 Deutsche Bank employees, or about a tenth of the firm’s global workforce.

In his earnings call comments, CEO Sewing stopped short of disclosing how many of the bank’s 97,103 jobs would be let go…

The Pension Crisis Is Worse Than You Think

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Last year I penned an article discussing the “Unavoidable Pension Crisis.”

“Currently, many pension funds, like the one in Houston, are scrambling to slightly lower return rates, issue debt, raise taxes or increase contribution limits to fill some of the gaping holes of underfunded liabilities in their plans. The hope is such measures combined with an ongoing bull market, and increased participant contributions, will heal the plans in the future.

This is not likely to be the case.

This problem is not something born of the last ‘financial crisis,’ but rather the culmination of 20-plus years of financial mismanagement.

An April 2016 Moody’s analysis pegged the total 75-year unfunded liability for all state and local pension plans at $3.5 trillion. That’s the amount not covered by current fund assets, future expected contributions, and investment returns at assumed rates ranging from 3.7% to 4.1%. Another calculation from the American Enterprise Institute comes up with $5.2 trillion, presuming that long-term bond yields average 2.6%.

With employee contribution requirements extremely low, averaging about 15% of payroll, the need to stretch for higher rates of return have put pensions in a precarious position and increases the underfunded status of pensions.”

Facebook Stays in the Friend Zone

The social network’s first-quarter report showed that about 48 million daily active users signed up during the period, suggesting that the world’s largest social network isn’t easily unplugged despite its recent problems.

Shell Will Win on Gas But Is Losing on Oil​

Shell’s first-quarter net profit surged thanks to higher prices and natural gas output. The company’s strategic shift into natural gas makes sense long term, but has a cost now as oil rebounds.

A Healthier Viacom Makes a CBS Deal Trickier

Struggling media company Viacom’s revival won’t make reaching a deal with CBS any easier.

Durable Goods New Orders Improve in March 2018?

Written by Steven Hansen

The headlines say the durable goods new orders and backlog improved. Our analysis shows the rate of increase slowed for new orders.

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The Ratings Game: AMD stock on track for best day in more than a year, but doubters remain

AMD shares are soaring after the company beat earnings and revenue expectations and delivered a strong outlook, but analysts still are not convinced.

Trump Today: President says he won’t ‘stay away’ from Justice Department

President Donald Trump said he was “very disappointed” in his Justice Department and that he wouldn’t stay away from it, blasting the agency during a spirited interview on Fox News on Thursday.

Trump wants hospitals to post their prices online. There’s just one problem

The plan has been tried in some parts of the U.S., with underwhelming results.