21Mar2016 Pre-Market Commentary: World Markets Mixed But USA Poised For A Higher Open

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money

European markets are mixed. The DAX is higher by 0.57%, while the CAC 40 is leading the FTSE 100 lower. They are down 0.33% and 0.09% respectively.

Exclusive: DBS seen as frontrunner for Barclays’ HK, Singapore wealth units – sources

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings is seen leading the race to buy British bank Barclays’ Hong Kong and Singapore private wealth units, valued at as much as $300 million, sources with knowledge of the situation said on Monday.

Futures rise as market recovery gains momentum

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures were higher on Monday as stocks continued to recover from a brutal selloff that had gripped the market for most of the year.

Sheraton-owner Starwood accepts higher offer from Marriott

(Reuters) – Marriott International Inc said it made a higher offer for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc that was accepted by the owner of the Sheraton and Westin hotel brands.

EU stops Halliburton, Baker Hughes deal probe again, wants more info

BRUSSELS – Halliburton’s plan to acquire Baker Hughes and create the world’s biggest U.S. oilfield services provider faces more delay after European Union antitrust regulators halted their investigation into the $35 billion deal for the second time.

Exclusive: China central bank to Fed: A little help, please?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Confronted with a plunge in its stock markets last year, China’s central bank swiftly reached out to the U.S. Federal Reserve, asking it to share its play book for dealing with Wall Street’s “Black Monday” crash of 1987.

IHS to buy London-based Markit in all-stock deal

(Reuters) – Business research provider IHS Inc said it would buy Markit Ltd in an all-stock deal that values the London-based financial data provider at about $5.9 billion.

Fed’s Lacker says he is confident inflation will return to 2 percent

PARIS (Reuters) – U.S. inflation is likely to accelerate in coming years and move toward the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target, Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker said on Monday, flagging upside risks to price growth.

Priceline strikes deal with Cuba to let Americans book hotels

(Reuters) – Priceline Group has agreed with Cuba to make Cuban hotel rooms available to U.S. customers via subsidiary Booking.com, becoming the first U.S. online travel agency to strike a deal with the island state, a Booking.com executive said.

After a year, Carnegie Mellon and Uber research initiative is stalled

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – More than a year after Uber announced a research pact with Carnegie Mellon University – and then hired away four of the institution’s faculty and 36 researchers and technicians – the ride-hailing company and university have not collaborated on a single project, according to CMU faculty and administrators.

Global Stocks Levitate Despite Ongoing Oil Weakness; China Stocks Jump After Easing Margin Debt

The sarcastic highlight of the overnight session was the Chinese stock market, where just one month after injecting a record amount of new loans into the financial system, the PBOC lamented the danger posed by China’s tremendous debt load: “Lending as a share of GDP, especially corporate lending as a share of GDP, is too high” People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan told China Development Forum yesterday.

At the same time he warned about dangers from a stock market bubble, and perhaps just to assure the bubble gets even bigger, at the same time China eased on margin debt limits, in the process sending Chinese stocks soaring higher by 2.2%, and pushing the Shanghai Composite over 3000 for the first time in months as China now appears set to attempt another housing bubble “soft landing” while at the same time restarting its housing bubble.

Aside from China, another key market followed by traders was crude which in early trading fell for a second day after the first increase in U.S. drilling rigs this year, sparking losses in currencies of commodity-producing nations and shares of miners and energy companies. West Texas Intermediate oil fell further below the three-month high reached last week, pulling down the Bloomberg Commodity Index. The South African rand and Norwegian krone were among the biggest casualties in currencies as the dollar extended its rebound into a second day after slumping to a five-month low last week. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index erased earlier losses.

Supply and Demand Report, 20 Mar, 2016

Early on Monday morning (Arizona time), silver began to rise. From its close on Friday of $15.46, it ran up to $15.82. Then it began to slide, eventually dropping to $15.17 by midmorning on Wednesday. Then ¦

*BAM*

The Fed said not a lot. It will go on manipulating the rate of interest rate to the same level as it had been previously. This was not what the market was expecting, as many believed the Fed was on the war rate-hiking path. Lower interest means more quantity of money dollars which means more rising prices which means gold and especially silver should go up.

And go up, silver did. At least, if you measure it using muggle money. Silver ran up 44 cents on the Fed announcement. Then consolidated before running up over $16. It finally exhausted itself $16.15.

It ended the week at $15.78, about 30 cents higher than it began. As the muggles would reckon it, gold went up $5.

As always, we’re interested not so much in the price chart as the fundamentals of supply and demand. We like to know if a move was just leveraged speculators buying or selling futures, or if it was buyers or sellers …

Meet The “Professional Agitator” Who Was Beaten At Yesterday’s Trump Rally: “I Was Protesting Trump’s Fascism”

As reported last night, something surreal happened at Trump’s Saturday rally in Arizona: a man who, as part of a group that had donned KKK attire and was occasionally giving out Nazi salutes in attempts to mock and provoke Trump supporters, did just that when he was punched and kicked by none other than a black man while being escorted out of the building. The moment was captured on the photo below which will surely become part of the 2016 presidential race archive.

Who is the protester?

According to a profile by the Arizona Daily Star, his name is Bryan Sanders who describes himself as an indepedent “I’m not a republican, I’m not a democrat”, and in a video interview after he left the rally he said the crowd was like an angry mob. What he ignored to note is that it was him and his fellow protesters who were doing everything all they could to rile up this “angry mob” and provoke them, ostensibly in hope of being attacked – which is precisely what happened. In other words, this group of Trump protesters which seem to follow him from state to state may be nothing more than a group of provocateurs, who do their best to get beaten up in order to stem up anti-Trump sentiment, something Sanders implicitly admits.

Starwood Agrees to Sweetened Merger With Marriott

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. said it had agreed to a sweetened $13.6 billion deal with Marriott International Inc. on Monday, trumping last week’s boosted bid from Chinese insurer Anbang Insurance Group.

IHS and Markit to Merge, Creating Data Heavyweight

Information and analytics provider IHS Inc. and market-data firm Markit Ltd. said Monday they will merge, a so-called inversion deal that will create a data heavyweight based in London.

Rally in Global Stocks Runs Out of Steam

Global stocks were steady at the start of a shortened trading week in many markets, with the recent rally in share prices running out of steam in Europe.

Early Headlines: Asia Stocks Mostly Down, China Up, Oil Lower, IMF Praises Neg. Rates, NY Fed Hacked, Treasury Glut On Wall St, ECB Could Heli Money To People And More

Written by Econintersect

Early Bird Headlines 21 March 2015

Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.

The Margin: Boaty McBoatface? More proof that you shouldn,t ask the Internet to name anything

An online contest to name a $288 million polar research ship looks on course to get hijacked, as voters so far overwhelmingly prefer “RRS Boaty McBoatface”.

Economic Report: How a Brexit could cost U.K. £100 billion and a million jobs

A U.K. exit from the European Union will cause a serious shock to the British economy, Britain’s largest business lobby group the CBI warns.