Written by Gary
The US equities main benchmarks jumped today (SPY +1.1%) as technology shares bounced back from a sharp selloff.
Here is the current market situation from CNN Money | |
 | North and South American markets are mixed today. The Bovespa is up 1.45% while the S&P 500 gains 1.16%. The IPC is off 1.43%. |
Traders Corner – Health of the Market
Looking at the last three columns (below), the first one (Actual), is what was reported this morning. The second column (Forecast) is what analysts had forecast and the third column is the previous report. Full calendar HERE.
What Is Moving the Markets
| Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
| Wall Street surges on last day of turbulent quarter(Reuters) – U.S. stocks jumped on Thursday as technology shares bounced back from a sharp selloff ahead of a long weekend that marks the end of a turbulent quarter for Wall Street. |
| Trump escalates attack on Amazon, focusing on tax, shippingWASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump accused Amazon.com Inc on Thursday of not paying enough tax, taking advantage of the U.S. postal system and putting small retailers out of business, but did not present any evidence to back up his criticisms or suggest any specific actions he planned to take. |
| British lawmakers publish evidence from Cambridge Analytica whistleblowerLONDON (Reuters) – A committee of British lawmakers on Thursday published written evidence provided by a whistleblower who says information about 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. |
| Automakers keep wary eye on tariff impact, possible trade warNEW YORK (Reuters) – Executives from major automakers raised concerns at the New York auto show this week about the possibility of a trade war after the Trump administration imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports earlier this month, especially at a time when U.S. sales of new vehicles are in decline. |
| Tesla shareholder lawsuit against SolarCity deal set to proceed(Reuters) – A class action lawsuit by Tesla Inc shareholders against the electric car maker’s chief executive, Elon Musk, and the company’s board over the SolarCity deal was set to proceed after a Delaware judge refused to dismiss it. |
| Melrose wins UK engineer GKN with $11 billion hostile bidLONDON (Reuters) – Melrose Industries has narrowly clinched an 8 billion-pound ($11 billion) takeover of British engineer GKN , after a three-month battle for control of the FTSE 100 company. |
| FirstEnergy calls on U.S. energy secretary to save nuclear, coal plants(Reuters) – FirstEnergy Corp called on U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday to direct the operator of the Mid Atlantic and Midwest power grid to take steps to keep several nuclear and coal-fired power plants in service to maintain the future reliability of the region’s electric grid. |
| Barclays $2 billion fraud fine resolves major U.S. legal issueLONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Barclays will pay $2 billion to settle claims for billions of dollars of losses suffered by investors who bought toxic mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the 2007 financial crisis, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday. |
| Big Deutsche Bank investors seek clarity on CEO: sourcesFRANKFURT (Reuters) – Large investors in Deutsche Bank have urged its chairman to provide a clear signal on whether the board backs the lender’s embattled chief executive or not, sources close to the matter told Reuters on Thursday. |
| Facebook Ends Cooperation With “Third Party” Data Providers Including TransUnion, ExperianFacebook is making an unprecedented effort to reassure its billions of users after years of surreptitiously hoovering up reams of data before packaging it and selling it to the highest bidder. The practice was extremely lucrative for Facebook But after allowing users to view all of the data Facebook has collected on them over the years (an option that likely only served to incite more panic about the company’s all-seeing ways), Facebook is finally beginning to sever its relationships with certain third-party data providers that – though they were lucrative – were also the source of some of the company’s worst abuses of unsuspecting consumers’ data.
According to RT, Facebook said Thursday that it will stop offering an advertising option that allows its customers to exploit personal data provided by third-party data aggregators – firms like Acxiom, Epsilon, TransUnion, Experian and others, according to Product Marketing Director Graham Mudd. These data aggregators helped Facebook provide its advertising customers with more precise data p … |
| “Recklessness Prevails” – Covenant-Lite Loan Issuance Hits New RecordAuthored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk, Institutions in search of yield are gobbling up loans with little protection, at riskier and riskier spreads.
Record-breaking chart from LeveragedLoan.Com. The share of outstanding leveraged loans that are covenant-lite crept to another record high in February, reaching 75.8%, according to LCD and the S&P/LSTA Loan Index. At the end of February the amount of U.S. leveraged loans outstanding was $984 billion, meaning there is now $745 billion of covenant-lite loan debt held by institutional investors. The share of outstanding cov-lite loans matches the rate that newly-issued loans are cov-lite, according to LCD. Of the nearly $92 billion of U.S. leveraged term debt issued so far this year, $69 billion is cov-lite, according to LCD. More Risk, Less Return Also consider |
| Why Albert Edwards Thinks “NOW Is The Time To Worry”When back in February, we pointed out a disturbing and dramatic divergence in the delinquency and charge-off rates between America’s thousands of small banks and the 100 or so biggest…
… we wondered if anyone would notice it. After all the implications were profound, and as TCW had previously noted, it “was America’s smaller banks – those not in the Top 100 by asset size – that have experienced in just the recent months a surge in charge-off deterioration, which at 7.9% is on par with the last financial crisis!” Well, just a few days later, the WSJ did, and overnight so did SocGen’s Albert Edwards, who unlike the paper of record had a kind introduction to this critical inflection point in the economic data, if only for those banks which cater to the less affluent, more “regional” Americans:
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| “Prove The Haters Wrong”: Tesla Urges Workers To Ramp Model 3 ProductionWith its bonds and stocks in freefall amid concerns that the company will run out of cash in the summer, Tesla management is desperately shifting its priorities to Model 3 production, as Bloomberg reports the company plans to shutdown the S and X production line and give a limited number of workers the option to work on the crucial Model 3 line instead. The market is not buying it for now…
And that collapse in asset prices has upset one man in particular (via Bloomberg)
At the time of Field’s email, Tesla was reportedly makin … |
| There’s Much to Fear as Brexit NearsAt a time when tariffs and the upending of global trade deals are a key risk, the U.K.’s coming exit from the European Union points to the complexity and cost of withdrawing from trade agreements. |
| Clock Is Ticking Faster at TeslaTesla will soon need money again. The trouble is, raising it suddenly looks a lot more challenging. |
| Banking System Alarm Bell That Doesn’t Signal DangerA crisis-era red light is flashing and provoking old fears about banks. But the world has changed a lot since 2008: this signal no longer means banks are struggling to find cash. |
| London Markets: FTSE 100 lands daily win, but marks worst quarter in yearsU.K. stocks edged higher Thursday, with a late-afternoon push coming from GKN after the engineering group’s stakeholders accepted a massive M&A deal, but it was a losing month and quarter for London-listed blue-chips. |
| CryptoWatch: Cryptocurrencies fall more than 10% as selloff continuesDigital currency prices took another leg lower Thursday as the persistent selling pressure continues. |
| Is the REIT bloodbath finally a buying opportunity?As real estate investment trusts struggle, investors who previously shunned them now say they’re at attractive buying levels. |
Earnings Summary for Today
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