Written by Gary
USA markets advanced slightly supposedly on “good” ADP employment data. Oil was slightly down, gold steady, and the dollar mixed against major currencies.
Todays S&P 500 Chart
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The Market in Perspective
| Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
 | OPEC fails to agree policy but Saudis pledge no shocksVIENNA (Reuters) – OPEC failed to agree a clear oil-output strategy on Thursday as Iran insisted on steeply raising its own production, though Tehran’s arch-rival Saudi Arabia promised not to flood the market and sought to mend fences within the organization. |
| Wall St. edges up, buoyed by healthcare; jobs report loomsNEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks edged higher on Thursday as another positive day for healthcare shares countered declines in tech and energy names and investors girded for the payrolls report on Friday. |
| GM, regulators clash over latest Takata air bag recallWASHINGTON (Reuters) – The push by U.S. auto safety regulators to replace potentially dangerous Takata air bag inflators in millions of vehicles is running into resistance from General Motors Co, documents released on Thursday show. |
| Tightening U.S. labor market boosts economic growth outlookWASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. private employers increased hiring in May and new applications for jobless benefits fell last week, further boosting the economic outlook for the second quarter. |
| Former PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico dies at age 71(Reuters) – Former PepsiCo Inc Chief Executive Officer Roger Enrico, a noted marketer who pioneered using celebrities including pop star Michael Jackson to help sell soda, died at the age of 71, Pepsi said on Thursday. |
| Starbucks, Anheuser-Busch to partner on bottled Teavana teasLOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Anheuser-Busch and Starbucks on Thursday announced a deal to produce, bottle, distribute and market Teavana ready-to-drink teas in the United States, with products expected to be available in the first half of next year. |
| EU throws support behind ‘sharing economy’ firms like Uber, AirbnbBRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union executive threw its weight behind the “sharing economy” on Thursday, saying governments should only ban services such as ride-hailing app Uber [UBER.UL] and Airbnb as a last resort. |
| J&J to buy hair care products maker Vogue for $3.3 billion(Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday it would acquire Vogue International for $3.3 billion, adding brands such as OGX shampoos and FX hair styling products to its consumer portfolio that includes Neutrogena and Clean & Clear. |
| Boeing to lay off 211 workers in Washington state, agency saysNEW YORK (Reuters) – Boeing Co said on Thursday it plans to lay off 211 employees in Washington state on July 22, a group that includes information technology workers that Boeing is letting go in a cost-cutting drive. |
| Dip-Buyers Panic Bid Stocks As Yield Curve Crashes To 9 Year LowsToday was yet another one of those days where you just have to laugh… (warning NSFW) As the Treasury yield curve collapses to its lowest since 2007 with the S&P within a couple of percent of record highs…
Simply put – Bernanke broke the ‘market’ in the summer of 2011. Futures show the farce once again as whatever weakness was seen overnight – red arrows – (in this case a failed OPEC meeting and drop in crude) was suddenly panic bid as US equities opened (green shaded regions)…
On the day, an ugly open was manically bid until the European close and then again into the NYMEX close…before a late day panic buying spectacle
Another day, another VIX-driven surge in stocks to make sure S&P regains 2,100 (because it makes perfect sense to sell down protection ahead of tomorrow’s “most important ever” payrolls print) |
| Hillary Clinton Proves Democrats No Longer Oppose Endless WarsSubmitted by Lucy Steigerwald via TheAntiMedia.org, In America, we do not lock up our murdering politicians. We rarely prosecute or impeach them. The only scandals that stick are sex ones. Serious voters, writers, pundits, and anyone else who feels as if they have deep principles invariably buckle under the partisan weight of the political system. She hasn’t yet been coronated, but Hillary Clinton is surely about to win the Democratic nomination. Sure, Sen. Bernie Sanders has given her an amusing amount of trouble. And though he’s voted for deaths abroad as well, he hasn’t voted for as many as Clinton. (This is not an argument for Sanders, but it is unquestionably an argument against Clinton.) Still, she’s got this thing in the bag, because she’s got party loyalty, and she may even win the hearts of a few lost, sad little neocons running away from Donald Trump. Clinton also has the nomination because war doesn’t bother Democrats. They like to think it does, when they remember it exists, but they will risk no political capital whatsoever on making sure it stops, or making sure a warmongering candidate isn’t nominated or elected. During the last few decades, any semblance of an antiwar movement has withered under Democratic presidents. Not since “hey/hey/LBJ/how many kids did you kill today?” has a warmonger from the left side of the isle provoked ire. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have much blood on their hands, but not enough to push people into the streets. There are encouraging exceptions, as there are to all rules. Code Pink and other activist groups come out and protest Democrats, and don’t seem to have any plans to stop. However, it seems the anti-Iraq, antiwar movement of the early 21st century |
| EQR Slashes Guidance (Again) As Luxury Real Estate Glut LoomsBack on April 27th, Chicago-based real estate investment trust Equity Residential (EQR) lowered its guidance during its Q1 earnings call, namely due to the luxury apartment slowdown in Manhattan. “New York City just turned very quickly and more deeply than we expected; There’s some crazy stuff going on in New York” said COO David Santee during the call.
The company admitted on the call that due to a supply glut, it had to give an estimated $600,000 in Q1 concessions in order to secure tenants in Manhattan. CFO Mark Parrell added that weaker than expected performance in New York City properties means the high end of the company’s original revenue guidance for the year was “unattainable”, and EQR lowered both top and bottom line guidance that day. Full year same store revenue growth estimates went from 4.5% to 5.25%, down to a revised 4.5% to 5%, and funds from operations went from $3 to $3.20 down to $3.05 to $3.15. Yesterday, for the second time in less than two months, EQR lowered earnings growth estimates yet again. The low end of the revised April 27th guidance of 4.5% to 5% has now become the high end of the range, as EQR now says same store revenue growth will be 4% to 4.5%. |
| How The “Rest” Of America Lives: Wanting For Work, Buried In DebtSubmitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog, The flyover zones of America are wanting for work and buried in debt. That’s the legacy of three decades of Washington/Wall Street Bubble Finance. The latter has exported jobs, crushed the purchasing power of main street wages and showered the bicoastal elites with the windfalls of financialization. The graph below depicts the main street side of this great societal swindle at work. There are currently 126 million prime working age persons in the US between 25 and 54 years of age. That’s up from 121 million at the beginning of 2000. Yet even as this business cycle is rolling over, the 77.1 million employed full-time from that pool is still 1.2 million below its turn of the century level and accounts for only 61% of the population. On top of that, average real hourly wages have fallen by 7% (based on the Flyover CPI), as well. It might be wondered, therefore, as to how real consumption expenditures rose by $3.1 trillion or 38% during the same 16-year period? The short answer is transfer payments and debt, and those troublesome realities go right to the economic blind spots of our Keynesian monetary suzerains. These paint-by-the-numbers economic plumbers care only about the great aggregates of spending and whether or not the bathtub of so-called “full employment GDP” is being filled to the brim. As a consequence, the ideas of quality, sustainability, efficiency, discipline, prudence or, for that matter, even economic justice and equity, never enter the narrative. It matt … |
| OPEC: This Is No Way to Run an Oil CartelOPEC failed to act on output at its meeting Thursday. That is becoming par for a cartel that is a shadow of its former self. |
| Stressing Over the Bigger Costs of Being a Big BankComments from Fed governor Daniel Tarullo show the cost of being a big bank will rise through annual “stress tests” |
| Jobs Numbers Are No Cause for AlarmFriday’s jobs report could show April’s hiring slowdown continued into May, but investors should be careful not to read too much into it. |
| 28 May 2016 Initial Unemployment Claims: 65 Consecutive Weeks of Initial Claims Below 300,000Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims
The market expectations for weekly initial unemployment claims (from Bloomberg) were 263,000 to 275,000 (consensus 267,000), and the Department of Labor reported 267,000 new claims. The more important (because of the volatility in the weekly reported claims and seasonality errors in adjusting the data) 4 week moving average moved from 278,500 (reported last week as 278,500) to 276,750. The rolling averages generally have been equal to or under 300,000 since August 2014. |
| May 2016 ADP Job Growth 173,000 – Near Expectations
ADP reported non-farm private jobs growth at 156,000. The rolling averages of year-over-year jobs growth rate remains strong but the rate of growth continues in a downtrend (although unchanged this month). But there is no question that this was a weaker jobs report than expected. |
| Outside the Box: These timeless investing principles made Warren Buffett richFamed investor Warren Buffett distills investment success into three words: “margin of safety,” writes Lawrence Cunningham. |
| The Wall Street Journal: Intel CEO’s fundraiser for Donald Trump canceled due to scheduling conflict, Trump saysIntel Corp. Chief Executive Brian Krzanich, who has pushed the semiconductor maker to hire more women and minorities, became a surprise target of Donald Trump’s opponents for planning to host a fundraiser for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. |
| New York Uber drivers file suit against UberAn alliance representing more than 5,000 Uber drivers has filed a lawsuit against Uber over driver classification. |
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