10May2018 Midday Update: Wall Street Continues To Trend Upwards, WTI Crude Trends Downward Into The 70 Handle, Labor Market Tightening Inflation Is Increasing At A Moderate Pace

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money

North and South American markets are broadly higher today with shares in Brazil leading the region. The Bovespa is up 1.94% while U.S.’s S&P 500 is up 1.02% and Mexico’s IPC is up 0.95%.

Wall Street climbs as CPI data cools rate hike fears

(Reuters) – The Dow Jones Industrial Average was on track for sixth day of gains and the S&P 500 edged past a key technical level after tepid inflation data cooled worries of faster interest rate hikes.

U.S. consumer prices rise slightly; labor market tightening

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer prices rose less than expected in April, suggesting that inflation was increasing at a moderate pace, which could allow the Federal Reserve to continue gradually raising interest rates.

Walmart Go Back! Some Indian trader, farmer groups decry Flipkart deal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A day after U.S. retail giant Walmart struck its largest deal with a big ticket investment in Indian online marketplace Flipkart, a right-wing Hindu group that fears small traders will suffer staged a protest in New Delhi calling for the deal to be scrapped.

Dollar, yields slide on soft U.S. inflation

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. dollar slid and U.S. government debt yields fell on Thursday as a modest rise in consumer prices in April damped expectations that faster inflation could lead the Federal Reserve to boost interest rates more than expected in 2018.

Wells Fargo trims expected hit from regulatory cap on assets

BOSTON (Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co on Thursday said a cap on the bank’s growth imposed by regulators after sales practices scandals would hurt earnings less than it thought this year, and forecast 2019 expenses below Wall Street expectations.

Goldman Sachs, Apple to launch joint credit card: WSJ

(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs and Apple Inc are preparing to launch a joint credit card, the Wall Street Journal reported https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-sachs-apple-team-up-on-new-credit-card-1525965387 on Thursday.

Oil slips on profit-taking from Iran-based rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Crude prices slipped on Thursday, giving up early gains as investors took profit on a rally triggered by potential disruption to oil flows from major exporter Iran in the face of U.S. sanctions.

‘Humbling’ U.S. settlement clears crisis-era hangover for RBS

LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Bank of Scotland’s shares rose as much as 6 percent on Thursday after the bank reached a $4.9 billion settlement with U.S. authorities, opening the way for its privatization and return of cash to taxpayers who bailed it out in the financial crisis.

How Trump’s steel tariffs kick the can business

The president of Pacific Coast Producers (PCP) plans to use around 700 million tin-coated steel cans this year for tomatoes, peaches and pears from 168 growers here in California.

California Mandates Solar Panels For Most New Homes

Most new homes built in California will be required to have rooftop solar panels beginning in 2020, a mandate expected to add around $9,500 to the cost of a new house – but provide around $19,000 in energy savings over a 30-year period.

Regulators agreed on Wednesday to approve the historic plan, making California the first state in the country to mandate solar-energy installations on the majority of single-family homes and multi-family residential buildings up to three stories – including condos and apartment complexes.

“We cannot let Californians be in homes that are essentially the residential equivalent of gas guzzlers,” said CA energy commission member David Hochschild, prior to the vote. “This really puts us on a path to a more efficient future.”

Experts, however, warn that forcing builders to require solar panels will just worsen the state’s already horrendous affordable housing crisis.

The California Energy Commission approved the mandate 5-0 as part of the state’s 2019 update to energy efficiency standards, and an ongoing effort to reduce greenhouse gase …

Five “Most Wanted” ISIS Leaders Captured, Trapped Using Smartphone App

Out of the blue, on Thursday morning a euphoric President Trump tweeted on Thursday that five of the “Most Wanted leaders of ISIS” have been captured.

Five Most Wanted leaders of ISIS just captured!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2018

Hours before, a security advisor to Iraq’s government said that Iraqi agents had detained a top aide to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then used an app on his smartphone to lure four commanders from the terrorist organization into a trap – convincing the four Iraqis and one Syrian to cross the border from Syria to Iraq where they were captured by officials.

Iraqi state television broadcast images of four of the men arrested in the operation.

The aide, Ismail al-Eithawi (a.k.a. Abu Zaid al-Iraqi) was captured in Turkey by authorities and handed over to Iraqi counterparts, according to an account told to Reuters by Iraqi security advisor Hisham al-Hashimi. What fo …

Central Banks: The Great Experiment Has Failed

Authored by Nomi Prins via The Daily Reckoning,

My latest book, Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, is about the leading central banks and their incestuous relationships.

The book dives into how central banks rigged the cost of money and the state of the markets, and ultimately created more inequality and instability as a result. They did all of this in order to subsidize private banks at the expense of people everywhere.

The book reveals the people in charge of these strategies, their elite gatherings and public and private communications. It uncovers how their policies rerouted economies, geopolitics, trade wars and elections.

Central banks have several functions from an official standpoint.

The first is to regulate the smooth and orderly operation of private banks or public banks within a particular country or region (the ECB is responsible for many countries in Europe).

The other function they are tasked with is setting interest rates (the cost of borrowing money) so that there’s adequate economic balance between full employment and a select inflation rate.

The idea is that if the cost of money is cheap enough, private banks will lend to the general population and businesses. The ultimate goal is that the money can be used to expand enterprise, hire people and develop a stronger economy.

In an environment where the cost of money is too cheap, it could cause inflation. When inflation rises, central banks are expected to lower the cost of money in order to keep it under wraps.

While those basic functions should be relatively simple, what has unfolded is anything but.

Goldman And Apple To Launch Joint Credit Card

One week after we reported that in its latest push to take the retail banking world by storm, Goldman has sunk so low that about 20% of the clients on its consumer loan “Marcus” platform are considered subprime and that in its push to attract even more home-improvement loan clients, the bank recruited former “bachelorette”, JoJo Fletcher, to, well, sell subprime loans…

Bbachelorette JoJo Fletcher

… it now appears that Goldman has another cunning plan of taking the retail banking world by storm: launching a joint credit card with Apple, a move which according to the WSJ “would deepen the technology giant’s push into its customers’ wallets and mark the Wall Street firm’s first foray into plastic.”

The planned “Appleman Sachs” card would carry the Apple Pay brand and could launch as soon as early 2019; as part of the transition to Goldman, Apple would replace its longstanding rewards-card partnership with Barclays.

But why would Wall Street’s (formerly) best connected FDIC-backed hedge …

Venezuela’s Brewing Oil Shock May Be Bigger Than Iran’s

Two threats could further disrupt Venezuelan oil exports, possibly taking as much crude off the market as the renewal of Iran sanctions.

Big Rewards Finally Await RBS Shareholders

RBS is—finally—investible once more. Late on Wednesday it reached a $4.9 billion settlement in principle with U.S. prosecutors over crisis-era mortgage bond sales, one of the last banks to do so.

Mahathir Zaps Malaysia Back to the Future

Mahathir is set to be back in Malaysia and Argentina is back in crisis. Shades of the 1990s and early 2000s are spooking emerging-market investors.

April 2018 CPI: Year-over-Year Inflation Rate 2.5%

Written by Steven Hansen

According to the BLS, the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) year-over-year inflation rate was 2.5 % – rate of year-over-year growth up 0.1 % from last month. The year-over-year core inflation (excludes energy and food) rate remained 2.1 %, and is now slightly above the target set by the Federal Reserve.

U.S. stocks tend to rally in ‘mid-election’ years like 2018

It’s one reason you don’t want to ‘sell in May and go away,’ says Simon Maierhofer.

Market Extra: Oil and the dollar are doing something they have only done 11 times in the past 35 years

Crude-oil prices surged by more than 10% in the past month and the U.S. dollar jumped by more than 3% in the same period—it is a dynamic that has only happened 11 times since 1983 and it has drawn the attention of market participants attempting to assess the significance of the unusual market dynamic.

Market Snapshot: Dow stages 200-point rally, putting gauge on track for 6th straight gain

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is on track for the longest winning streak since February on Thursday, with U.S. stocks rising as investors digested benign inflation data and jobless claims that pointed to continued improvement in the labor market.