Written by Gary
US stocks futures rise, bonds drop on China data (SPY +0.6%), WTI crude climbs.
Here is the current market situation from CNN Money | |
European markets are higher today with shares in Germany leading the region. The DAX is up 0.67% while France’s CAC 40 is up 0.36% and London’s FTSE 100 is up 0.23%. |
What Is Moving the Markets
Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
Oil has best run in three years; JPM earnings boost stocksSigns of stabilization in China’s economy and a weaker dollar helped oil markets to their best run in more than three years on Friday, while global stocks edged up after JP Morgan’s results began the corporate earnings season in style. | |
JPMorgan profit beat eases fear of slowing economyJPMorgan Chase & Co posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Friday, easing fears that slowing economic growth could weigh on its results. | |
Wells Fargo’s quarterly profit rises 16 percent as cost cuts pay offWells Fargo & Co reported a 16.4 percent jump in quarterly profit on Friday, as the lender reaped the benefits of its aggressive cost-cutting efforts. | |
Chevron to buy Anadarko for $33 billion in shale, LNG pushChevron Corp on Friday said it will buy Anadarko Petroleum Corp for $33 billion in cash and stock to bolster its position in shale oil and the liquid natural gas (LNG) market with the biggest industry merger since Royal Dutch Shell bought BG Group in 2016. | |
Alibaba founder defends overtime work culture as ‘huge blessing’Alibaba Group founder and billionaire Jack Ma has defended the grueling overtime work culture at many of China’s tech companies, calling it a “huge blessing” for young workers. | |
Merck KGaA agrees $6.5 billion takeover of VersumGermany’s Merck KGaA said it signed a takeover agreement with target Versum Materials for a price of $53 per share after Versum walked away from a prior merger agreement with rival Entegris. | |
HSBC faces shareholder anger over pensions, coal finance at AGMHSBC shareholders on Friday overwhelmingly voted against ending a form of pension cuts affecting thousands of former employees, following a protest by some of them outside the bank’s annual meeting in Birmingham. | |
Chinese group to get control of Japan Display after $2.1 billion bailoutA Chinese-Taiwanese group will take control of Apple Inc supplier Japan Display after pumping in funds as part of a 232 billion yen ($2.1 billion) bailout plan for the troubled display panel maker. | |
Take Five: Wall Street calling! World market themes for the week aheadFollowing are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them. | |
Import Prices Come In Hot As Fuel Costs ResurgeAfter a mixed picture of America’s inflationary outlook from CPI and PPI, import prices were expected to shrink year-over-year for the fourth month in a row in March. But both import and export prices came in hot in March, rising 0.6% and 0.7% MoM respectively, which pushed import prices back to unchanged year-over-year (but fell 0.8% ex-fuel)… Import prices ex-fuels fell 0.2% m/m after rising 0.2% in Feb. Import prices ex-petroleum rose 0.2% m/m after rising 0.2% in Feb. Import prices ex-food and fuel fell 0.7% y/y in March | |
Disney’s New ‘Netflix Killer’ Won’t Turn A Profit For At Least Five YearsIn a move that leverages its purchases of a suite of entertainment assets formerly owned by 21st Century Fox, as well as its purchase of the Star Wars franchise and other popular entertainment assets, Disney on Thursday unveiled its “Netflix killer” streaming service. And in keeping with the business model for Silicon Valley ‘content’ plays, Disney said that the service, which will be priced at just $7.99 a month, or an annual fee of $69.99, isn’t expected to turn a profit for at least five years. During what was described as an “Apple-style” product launch event, Disney introduced the new service Thursday on a sound stage used to make the original “Mary Poppins,” delivering an Apple-style presentation of the online product, Bloomberg reports. Despite the company’s promise that the service could be a perpetual lossmaker, investors embraced the news, sending Disney shares nearly 4% higher in a powerful vote of confidence. This isn’t so hard to fathom, given Disney’s strong content offerings, ranging from the entire catalogue of ‘The Simpsons’ (which it acquired in the Fox deal) as well as movies from Pixar studios, as well as its Marvel holdings. To try and entice customers, the service will be priced at roughly two-thirds the cost of Netflix’s most popular plan. “We are confident this is a product people are going to sign up in droves to have,” CEO Bob Iger said during a Bloomberg Television interview with Emily Chang. The service, called “Disney+” will launch in the US, western Europe and Asia on Nov. 19, before arriving in Eastern Europe and Latin America a year later. Now that it has ended its licensing deals with Netflix and other rivals, Disney+ expects to dump $1 billion into streaming programming over the next year. I … | |
How You Can Be Certain That The US Charge Against Assange Is FraudulentAuthored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com, Julian Assange sits in a jail cell today after being betrayed by the Ecuadorian government and his home country of Australia. A British judge named Michael Snow has found the WikiLeaks founder guilty of violating bail conditions, inserting himself into the annals of history by labeling Assange “a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest.” So that tells you how much of a fair and impartial legal proceeding we can expect to see from the British judicial process on this matter. | |
Billionaire-Bashing Socialist Bernie Sanders Joins The 1%: “You Can Be A Millionaire Too”For a party whose most outspoken members proclaim the mere existence of the 1%’s great-wealth-holders is “immoral,” socialism-supporting presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has some explaining to do to the proletariat. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has said this week that he’ll release 10 years of returns by April 15th (having refused to release his full tax returns when he vied for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016) which will show his income and wealth to be far more capitalism-inspired that socialism-shared. | |
Rail Week Ending 06 April 2019: Less Deep In ContractionWritten by Steven Hansen Week 14 of 2019 shows same week total rail traffic (from same week one year ago) contracted according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) traffic data. The economically intuitive sectors rolling averages remain in contraction. | |
The Ratings Game: Keurig Dr Pepper’s stock sinks after bearish analyst callShares of Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. are knocked lower after Morgan Stanley turns bearish, citing evidence that the growth in single-serve coffee’s share of the “at home” coffee market is slowing. | |
Economic Report: Rising import prices also show higher cost of oil is chiefly behind recent inflation spikeThe price of imported goods rose sharply in March for the second month in a row, but once again almost all the increase was tied to higher oil prices. The cost of other imports excluding fuel fell, another sign that inflation in the U.S. remains subdued. | |
Need to Know: How you can use your tax refund to boost your credit scoreMoney can’t buy a good credit score, but you might be able to use your refund strategically to prop it up. |
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