01Mar2018 Pre-Market Commentary: Wall Street Set To Slip As Traders Brace For Second Day Of Fed Chair Powell’s Testimony On The Hill, Crude And Gold Index Slip Against Rising US Dollar

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money

European markets are broadly lower today with shares in Germany off the most. The DAX is down 1.58% while France’s CAC 40 is off 1.10% and London’s FTSE 100 is lower by 0.80%.

Big pharma, big data: why drugmakers want your health records

LONDON (Reuters) – Drugmakers are racing to scoop up patient health records and strike deals with technology companies as big data analytics start to unlock a trove of information about how medicines perform in the real world.

Stock futures fall as Powell nerves weigh again

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures pointed to a third consecutive session of falls for Wall Street on Thursday, with sentiment weighed down by nerves ahead of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s second round of congressional testimony.

Best Buy posts higher comparable sales during key holiday quarter

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Best Buy Co Inc , the No.1 U.S. consumer electronics retailer, reported a jump in quarterly comparable sales on Thursday that exceeded forecasts amid strong demand, a favorable competitive environment and robust sales in the gaming category.

Gold as an inflation hedge? Well, sort of…

LONDON (Reuters) – Rising inflation has put gold back on the radar for investors looking to protect themselves from emerging price pressures, but history suggests its reputation has been overstated.

EU clears merger of Essilor, Luxottica without conditions

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission on Thursday approved the 48-billion-euro ($58.49 billion) merger of eyewear groups Luxottica and Essilor without setting conditions, saying the merger would not harm competition.

Kohl’s sales growth, 2018 outlook send shares higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Kohl’s Corp on Thursday reported slightly stronger-than-expected comparable sales growth for the fourth quarter and gave a 2018 earnings outlook that exceeded analyst forecasts, sending shares higher in premarket trading.

WPP punished for slow response to advertising upheaval

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s WPP struggled to keep pace with changes in advertising in 2017, with its worst annual sales performance since the financial crisis and a gloomy outlook putting its shares on track for their worst day in 20 years.

Walmart joins Dick’s Sporting Goods in raising age to buy guns

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Walmart Inc , the largest U.S. retailer, joined Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc in raising the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21 after the massacre at a Florida high school that has reopened a fierce debate over gun control in America.

CSX outlines path forward after death of former CEO Harrison

(Reuters) – U.S. railroad operator CSX Corp on Thursday reaffirmed its longer-term plan for boosting profitability and outlined financial targets for the next two years, ahead of its first investor day after the death of former chief executive officer, Hunter Harrison.

YouTube Goes On Rampage Against Conservative Accounts; Blames “Newer Members” Of Mod Team

YouTube has blamed “newer members” of it’s 10,000 person fleet of content moderators for a virtual bloodbath of video takedowns, strikes, and account restrictions taking place across a large cross-section of conservative channels.

The Google division announced the new moderators in December, tasked with spotting said fake news, along with misleading or extreme content in the wake of a raging debate over the effect of propaganda and inaccurate reporting after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election loss.

Google essentially responded to the crackdown on conservatives with “our bad,” after news of the mass censorship began to spread.

“As we work to hire rapidly and ramp up our policy enforcement teams throughout 2018, newer members may misapply some of our policies resulting in mistaken removals,” wrote a YouTube spokesman in an email. “We’re continuing to enforce our existing policies regarding harmful and dangerous content, they have not changed. We’ll reinstate any videos that were removed in error.”

Some of the banned accounts include:

Anti-School, Bombard’s Body Language,

An Apocalyptic Paul Tudor Jones Warns The Fed Is About To Lose Control

In a striking interview with Goldman’s Allison Nathan, legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones argues that US inflation is set to accelerate sharply, making bonds a very poor investment, and that the Fed must act swiftly to tackle financial bubbles created by prolonged monetary easing.

Joining such luminaries as Bill Gross and Ray Dalio, who have both claimed the bull market in bonds is over, PTJ joins the choir and warns that “markets disciplined Greece for its budget transgressions; it’s just a matter of time before they discipline us” and as a result he sees the 10-year yields rising to 3.75 percent by year-end as a “conservative” target amid the now traditional and widely discussed bogeymen: supply outweighing demand, economic momentum outpacing the monetary policy response, and “glaring” bond valuations. Oh, and central banks ending the party, of course:

Beginning next September, when the ECB concludes its asset purchases, the aggregate balance sheet of the main central banks will start contracting after nearly a decade of expansion. That will be a major data break, making it a horrible time to own bonds.

PTJ also pours cold water on the repeated suggestion that higher yields will lead to more buying from pension funds: “Bond pension buying, for example, is very pro-cyclical. When stock prices rise, pensions reallocate their capital gains from stocks into bonds. As we’ve seen, this depresses the term premium and fuels more gains in the stock market. If and when the Fed raises rates enough to stop and reverse the stock market rise, that virtuous circle predicated on increasing capital gains will reverse, and bonds and stocks will decline together like they did in the 1970s.”

The biggest factor, however, which is preventing PTJ from owning any risk assets is today’s unnaturally low rates: “with rates so low, you can’t trust asset prices today. And if you can’t tell by now …

“There’s A Sense Of Shock”: World’s Largest Ad Agency Suffers Biggest Crash In 19 Years

In a world in which a handful of tech companies which derive the bulk of their revenues from advertising are the market leaders, what happened to WPP Plc – the world’s largest ad agency – this morning is particularly relevant: the company suffered its biggest one day crash since 1999, tumbling as much as 15%, after CEO Martin Sorrell again slashed the company’s profit outlook and predicted another year of no growth, in what Bloomberg dubbed a jarring reminder to investors “that the advertising industry is undergoing its most dramatic upheaval in decades.”

To be sure, WPP’s woes are hardly new, with the company tumbling almost as much back in August when it reported dismal earnings and unveiled “terrible” guidance. This time it was even worse.

WPP unveiled that its long-term earnings growth will be as little as 5% and twice that at best, slashing its previous guidance of as much as 15%. The year got off to a “slow start,” WPP said, continuing a trend from 2017 that saw flat margins and sales. Investors responded by sending shares down by the most in 19 years, resulting in a brief trading halt. In …

Putin: If Attacked, Russia Will Respond With New “Unstoppable” Nukes

A day after his foreign minister accused the US of violating the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, Russian President Vladimir Putin shocked his audience during his annual state of the union address to his country’s political elite by claiming Russia had developed new nuclear weapons that cannot be shot down by US anti-ballistic missile defenses, according to the Sun.

The missiles, Putin said, are capable of striking almost any point on Earth.

Russia is testing the new line of strategic, nuclear-capable weapons, the president said, as he showed video and animation of Russian ICBMs, cruise missiles and other weapons that he said have been developed by Russia as a result of the US pulling out of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty, the Guardian reported.

In what sounded like an implicit threat, Putin said Russia has repeatedly warned Washington not to go ahead with anti-missile systems that Moscow fears could erode its nuc …

Time To Get Smart About Chinese Smartphone Maker Xiaomi

The company appears to be growing fast. Its global smartphone shipments rocketed up 75% last year to 92 million, with much of its sales coming in markets like India and Russia. But that success followed a disastrous 2016, when Xiaomi lost ground within China to local rivals.

Why International Investors Aren’t Buying Treasurys

The rise in Treasury yields should make U.S. debt more attractive to international investors still struggling with low returns at home—yet few are buying.

In Xi Jinping’s China, Success Is Getting More Dangerous

CEFC Energy appears to have joined the ranks of big, privately held Chinese conglomerates that have run afoul of the changing political environment in China. For investors, dealing with successful private firms in China is getting riskier.

The Tell: Stock-market volatility is coming back and investors need to get used to it

The stretch of “ultralow” stock-market volatility is over. But rising volatility isn’t necessarily bad news for stocks, say analysts at Société Générale.

Bond Report: Treasury yields slide ahead of Powell’s Senate testimony, economic reports

U.S. government bonds see buying early Thursday, driving yields lower, ahead of second day of congressional testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in front of a Senate committee, while Treasury investors also awaited an important inflation reading.

Everything coming to Netflix in March — and what’s leaving

Netflix Inc. continues to throw its weight around and zero in on luring Hollywood’s top creative talent to make shows and films exclusively for the streaming platform. Here’s a list of the shows and movies coming to Netflix in March.