21Feb2018 Pre-Market Commentary: Wall Street To Open Higher, WTI Crude And US Dollar Rises, US Crude Inventories Expected To Rise

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money

European markets are mixed. The FTSE 100 is higher by 0.10%, while the DAX is leading the CAC 40 lower. They are down 0.55% and 0.29% respectively.

Dollar up and stocks down before key Fed meeting minutes

LONDON (Reuters) – The dollar rose to its highest level in a week on Wednesday and world stocks fell for the third day as investors braced for minutes from the Fed’s last policy meeting to see if they would herald more rises in interest rates and global bond yields.

GM proposes $2.8 billion, 10-year investment in South Korea: government official

SEOUL, Feb 21 (Reuters) – General Motors (GM) has proposed an investment of $2.8 billion into its loss-making South Korean operations over the next 10 years and has asked Seoul to provide its share of the funds, a South Korean government official said on Wednesday.

Intel plans $5 billion investment in Israel by 2020: minister

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Chipmaker Intel Corp plans to invest $5 billion to expand production at its Kiryat Gat plant in Israel in the next three years, Israeli Economy Minister Eli Cohen said on Wednesday.

Slowing U.S. auto sales prompts Japan automakers to rethink discounts

TOKYO (Reuters) – A second year of slowing growth in the U.S. auto market is forcing Japanese automakers to look beyond discounts to grow market share and focus more on boosting profitability in their largest market.

Daimler to invest 2.6 billion euros in trucks division by 2019

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Daimler said it will invest 2.6 billion euros ($3.2 billion) in research and development at its trucks division by 2019, as part of a broader effort to mass produce electric heavy-duty commercial vehicles from 2021.

Volkswagen reaches German deal on wages, leave, pensions

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Volkswagen has agreed to raise the wages of around 120,000 workers in Germany by 4.3 percent from May, resolving a dispute that had prompted its first strikes since 2004.

Dish Network profit surges on $1.2 billion U.S. tax law benefit

(Reuters) – Dish Network Corp’s fourth-quarter profit surged due to a roughly $1.2 billion benefit related to U.S. tax law reforms, the U.S. satellite and internet TV provider said Wednesday.

Exclusive: Japan to buy at least 20 more F-35A stealth fighters – sources

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan plans to buy at least 20 additional F-35A stealth fighters over the next six years, some or all of which it may purchase directly from Lockheed Martin Corp in the United States rather than assemble locally, three sources said.

Pratt may revert to previous engine seal for A320neo: sources

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – Engine maker Pratt & Whitney is likely to return to a previous seal as a way of temporarily dealing with the latest issues on the geared turbofan engine for the Airbus A320neo, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Gartman: “Today Is “Make-Or-Break” Day For Our Shorts”

One day after we first reported the bizarre news that “world-renowned commodities guru” Dennis Gartman had blown up his retirement account by investing in alleged cryptofraud Riot Blockchain (no, really), a far more important moment of reckoning is upon us: whether or not Gartman will finally be stopped out of his short, which was put on at the market lows on the Friday after the Feb 5 crash, allowing the market to resume its slide. As Gartman admits: “we are within a hair’s breadth of doing precisely that. Today shall be the “make-or-break” day for our position.”

Here is Gartman:

We are net short of a small sum of stocks… a single “unit” comprised of the US, the German and the Japanese stock markets in aggregate but for the moment we are wrong in being so. And how do we know we are wrong? We know this because our position is losing money and nothing proves “wrong- ness” quite as clearly and quite as properly as losing money. However, as we said when we initiated the short position, we shall remain short until our International Index trades above 12,253 and we are within a hair’s breadth of doing precisely that. Today shall be the “make-or-break” day for our position. We await today’s outcome.

So does everyone else.

Finally, for those who missed it last night, here it is again:

Regarding our retirement account, we are still smarting from the brutal loss suffered by a position we had taken in the block chain on Friday of last week and more importantly we are smarting from having broken our own primary rule of trading to never, ever add to a losing position. We broke that rule and our losses were magnified. That said, we are long of banking shares; we are long of two monthly dividend paying shares and we are “short” of the market via deriva …

JPMorgan To Demolish Park Avenue HQ, Build New 70-Story Global Headquarters For 15,000

JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, announced plans on Wednesday to demolish its existing headquarters in midtown Manhattan on Park Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets and build a new 70-story world headquarters on the site, that would consolidate other offices into a new office building for 15,000 employees on Park Avenue.

The 2.5 million-square-foot (232,000-square-meter) building would be the first skyscraper to go up under new zoning rules for the area surrounding Grand Central Terminal, which were designed to encourage the development of taller, more modern skyscrapers and ensure that Midtown remains one of the city’s premier business districts.

The new tower will soar as much as 500 feet higher than the existing 52-story headquarters on the west side of Park Avenue and contain an additional one million square feet of office space.

“With a new headquarters at 270 Park Ave.,” CEO Jamie Dimon, said in a statement, “we are recommitting ourselves to New York City while also ensuring that we operate in a highly efficient and world-class environment for the 21st century.”

The bank’s current headquarters at the same site, at 270 Park Ave., is an “outdated facility designed in the late 1950s for about 3,500 employees,” JPMorgan added. It plans to purchase development rights from landmarks in the surrounding dis …

Who Got Hit: Here Are The Best And Worst Performing Hedge Funds Of 2018

February is barely half-way done, and it is already shaping up as the worst month in history for most quant, CTA and managed futures funds since the great quant blow up of August 2007. And not only: a quick look at the best and worst performers so far in 2018 shows a distinct skew to the downside, with the worst performing hedge fund down 25% in 2018 compared to the 14.5% return for the best.

However, as we have extensively discussed recently, by far the worst hit were the various quant, stat-arb, momentum and trend following funds: here the bloodbath was almost unprecedented as the following snapshot of quant/systematic/managed futures funds in the latest HSBC report demonstrates.

Finally, here is o …

Bill Blain: “Is This Really The Last Chance To Sell?”

Blain’s Morning Porridge, submitted by Bill Blain of Mint Partners

“Most Winter Olympic Sports are about staying alive. Curling is about staying awake.

Last chance to sell? Or time to change approach?

Do we have a theme emerging for this week? Latvian ECB Governing Council Member Ilmars Rimsevics is being investigated for corruption and bribery. This morning it’s the Greek ECB member Yannis Stournaras under the cosh and facing the bright lights over the Novartis bribery and drugs scandal estimated to have cost the country a staggering 23 billion. That’s a seriously grown up amount of money for a country as broke as Greece. What are they going to do about it?

Back on Planet Sensible, I was asking round the trading desks this morning for any particular themes or issues they’ve been picking up from clients. Nobody seems to be enjoying February.

You must understand my colleagues and crew are a hard-bitten crowd of former investment bankers, traders and other financial desperados who’ve spent careers up to their eyeballs in financial mayhem and gore… “Last chance to sell,” was the answer from one particular cynic.

As the 10-yr Treasury continues to flirt with a 3% yield, the 2 yr trades up to 2.25%, while the bid-cover on y’days auction was “unconvincing”, and stock markets remain as wobbly as a jelly that’s been injected with extra-wobbly super wobbly-gel, one has to wonder if he’s right? What are the prospects for markets? I’m afraid my guess is no better than anyone else’s.

However, I do have a strategic outlook.

I don’t buy the recession around the corner arguments. The world has changed. We don’t have to fear an oil shock – US producers can cover any OPEC action and only get richer if the price rises. Nor are we likely to see the classic “F …

Glencore Rewards Those Who Wait

Glencore is riding high, lifted by a wave of economic optimism and high expectations for an electric-powered future. But high leverage remains a vulnerability.

BHP Is Still Caught Between a Rock and an Oil Well

BHP is emerging as a copper powerhouse, which helped buoy its first-half earnings. That strength conceals some troubling signs in oil and coal, however.

Hotels Check Into Technology Arms Race

In a wake-up call to investors, Holiday Inn owner InterContinental Hotels said it won’t return extra cash this year.

JP Morgan Chase will renovate Manhattan headquarters

JPMorgan Chase will build a new building to headquarter its operations at its current address

Bond Report: 2-year Treasury yields extend climb ahead of Fed meeting minutes

Short-dated Treasury yields climbed, as longer maturities held steady, on Wednesday as investors awaited an account of the Federal Reserve’s January monetary policy gathering for clues about the pace of rate increases in coming months and the central bank’s outlook for inflation.

Walmart execs grilled on disappointing online growth on earnings call

Walmart shares slide almost 10% after earnings fall short of estimates and analysts clamor for an explanation.