25Apr2016 Market Close: Markets Closed Down, Volume Low Crude Steady

Written by Gary

US markets closed down as energy shares dragged down Wall Street today, coinciding with a decline in oil prices, while earnings and guidance from companies including Perrigo and Xerox also weighed on U.S. stocks.

Todays S&P 500 Chart

The Market in Perspective

Here are the headlines moving the markets.
	Oil drop, lackluster earnings weigh on Wall Street (Reuters) – Energy shares dragged down Wall Street on Monday, coinciding with a decline in oil prices, while earnings and guidance from companies including Perrigo and Xerox also weighed on U.S. stocks.
	U.S. approves Charter’s Time Warner Cable buy with conditions WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Monday approved Charter Communications Inc’s proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable Inc and Bright House networks, which would create the second-largest broadband provider and third-largest video-provider.
	USA Today publisher Gannett makes unsolicited bid for Tribune (Reuters) – Gannett Co Inc, publisher of USA Today, said it offered to buy Tribune Publishing Co in a deal valued at about $815 million, including debt, but the owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune refused to begin “constructive” talks.
	Valeant names Papa CEO after he resigns from Perrigo (Reuters) – Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc named former Perrigo Co Plc head Joseph Papa as its chief executive officer on Monday, a move investors said brought credibility to the drugmaker.
	Saudi prince unveils sweeping plans to end ‘addiction’ to oil RIYADH (Reuters) – The powerful young prince overseeing Saudi Arabia’s economy unveiled ambitious plans on Monday aimed at ending the kingdom’s “addiction” to oil and transforming it into a global investment power.
	New U.S. home sales drop on sharp decline in the West WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New U.S. single-family home sales unexpectedly fell in March, but the decline was concentrated in the West region, suggesting that the housing market continued to steadily improve.
	Bombardier in spotlight as market watches for Delta deal, AGM MONTREAL/TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian planemaker Bombardier Inc faces a pivotal week that may see a key deal announced with Delta Air Lines Inc but a federal aid package is unlikely to be approved in time for its annual meeting on Friday.
	Oil down; Morgan Stanley, Barclays warn of bearish forces NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil prices fell more than 2 percent on Monday as data pointed to fresh U.S. crude builds, while leading banks in commodities said the two-month long oil market rebound has defied fundamentals.
	VW to go to U.S. court to keep 160 Tennessee plant workers from UAW DETROIT (Reuters) – Volkswagen AG said on Monday it would go to a U.S. federal appeals court in an effort to keep the United Auto Workers union from representing a portion of the company’s plant workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
	Bullion Pops & Trannies Drop As S&P Signals “Golden Cross” And your post-Doha gains are… gone… Chinese intervention at the end of their day turned an overnight losing session into a BTFD winner, but it did not take long for selling to begin again in futures, erasing all the post-Doha gains…BUT that was not allowed to stand… Despite a 50 Dow point vertical spike at 1pmET (2Y auction), US (cash) equities drifted lower all day with each bounce met with fresh selling pressure near VWAP… UNTIL The late-day panic buying instigated by a VIX slam left Nasdaq perfectly 0.0000% for the day! Dow Transports worst day since March 8th. With The S&P 500 signaling a “Golden Cross”… What day would be copmplete without a panic slam of VIX into the close- in this case a desperate attempt to push Dow back to 18k…
	The Awful Lull Before The Storms Of Summer Strike Submitted by by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, Spring unfolds at last in all its loveliness and Hillary sits back in repose like the matriarch of toads with a clear path to her toadstool throne, having swallowed the mouse-king Sanders. (She forgets that there are millions more mice under the thatched grass, including new mouse-kings awaiting.) And Trump with his bullfrog smile now casts his baleful eye on the two remaining gnats circling his lily pad. Yes, this magical week when the world bursts into leaf and flower, the life of our nation seems like a fairy tale. Weeks from now when we’re used to the mild air and the greened world, going coatless and care-free, is when the storms of summer strike and the life of the nation turns from fairy tale to horror comic. Both Clinton and Trump are perfect representatives of the nascent forces moving towards some kind of civil war in comic book America. Clinton perfectly embodies the fortress of the status quo, including especially her praetorian guard of black ghetto grandmothers, giving Hillary the false appearance of some sort of righteousness when, really, she has nothing to offer the greater crisis of black manhood, boxed into prison by the ancient crippling rules of federal welfare policy with its extreme penalties on active fathering. Otherwise, the stone wall of her status quo fortress conceals her privy council of Wall Street necromancers, and the fortune they have helped her lay up in the vaults of the Clinton Foundation. All of which is to say that Hillary represents the forces that want to keep things just as a they are: rackets rampant. What can crush her triumph of fakery is the sudden manifestation of rackets collapsing under their own weight — a set of awful probabilities waiting to happen, ranging from riots at …
	Bad News For Trannies: “These Headcount Numbers Aren’t Encouraging” One of the more confusing market moves in recent weeks has been the tremendous surge in transportation, or as we call them trannies, stocks… … even as underlying fundamentals have continued to steadily deteriorate. On one hand, none other than Railway Age had an article titled “Down, down goes the freight traffic” in which it said that “freight traffic still shows no signs of growth in the week ending April 16, 2016, as carloads and intermodal units were both down nearly 13% and 7.5%, respectively, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported on April 20, 2016…. For the first 15 weeks of 2016, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 3,613,417 carloads, down 14.1% from the same point last year; and 3,848,344 intermodal units, up 0.2% from last year. Total combined U.S. traffic for the first 15 weeks of 2016 was 7,461,761 carloads and intermodal units, a decrease of 7.3% compared to last year.” Words, however, hardly do justice to the unprecedented, coal-driven collapse in total rail freight carloads, shown below: But maybe if one excludes rail, things are better? Sadly no. In a note released on Friday by RBC looking at the broader airfreight and surface transportation sector, and subtitled “These headcount numbers aren’t encouragi …
	Computer Virus Discovered In German Nuclear Power Plant Remember when “someone” used the Stuxnet virus, or rather worm, in an Iranian nuclear plant several years ago to freeze Iranian nuclear production, leading to a major diplomatic scandal involving the spy agencies of both the US and Israel, as the world learned that in the present day industrial sabotage only needed a flash drive and a computer virus to render even the most sophisticated piece of industrial machinery obsolete? Well, moments ago, Bloomberg reported that a computer virus was discovered in a German nuclear power plant. A computer virus was discovered at the Gundremmingen nuclear power plant in Bavaria, German news service DPA reported. No danger to employees or populace Power plant noticed the virus in its Block B on Mon. RWE specialists to determine how malware entered computer system built in 2008 * * * BR (google translated) is reporting that the malware is thought to be brought in by a data carrier, and the affected portion of the system is the fueld assembly loading area. The affected IT system is part of the fuel assembly loading machine of the power plant. This raises, for example, old fuel from the reactor core and transports it to the storage pool. An influence on the control of these loading machine has the IT system according to the operator but not. In the power plant all other safety-related IT systems have been checked without finding the meantime. The competent aut …
	The Fed Fights the Tape Over Interest Rates Despite the Federal Reserve’s protests to the contrary, the market remains unconvinced a rate increase is coming.
	Big Pharma Gets Solace From Europe Are the transatlantic tables turning in the pharmaceuticals industry? Switzerland’s Novartis says it is seeing faster uptake of heart-failure drug Entresto in Europe than in the U.S.
	Global Bond Yields: Still Too Low for Comfort Fears about the global economy have receded. So why are bond yields still so low?
	Earnings deluge threatens to overwhelm investors As many as 900 companies will report earnings this week, most of them on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
	Earnings Outlook: What to expect from Panera Bread’s earnings Panera Bread is expected to report same-store sales growth of more than 4% as its digital upgrades, called Panera 2.0, start to yield results.
	Student debt surpassed $1 trillion four years ago today. Here’s why it’s still growing Why student loan debt keeps soaring.