Written by Gary
The US stock markets closed mixed with the SP 500 edging fractionally higher while the DOW posted a 14 point loss (SPY +0.1%). Tech stocks rally offsets trade dispute concerns.
Todays S&P 500 Chart
The Market in Perspective
| Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
 | Britain clears way for Murdoch to battle Comcast for SkyLONDON (Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch faces a 22 billion pound ($29.3 billion) fight with U.S. cable company Comcast for European pay-TV company Sky after Britain cleared his bid providing he sells off its TV news business. |
| S&P rises; technology helps Nasdaq hit intraday record(Reuters) – The S&P 500 edged slightly higher on Tuesday, on track for its third straight day of gains, while Nasdaq hit an intraday record high with help from the technology and consumer discretionary sectors. |
| Expect frank trade talks at G7 summit: Canada officialOTTAWA (Reuters) – The Group of Seven leading industrial nations can expect frank discussions on trade at a summit this week, which U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to attend, a senior Canadian government official said on Tuesday. |
| David Koch to retire from Koch Industries due to poor health: memo(Reuters) – Conservative billionaire industrialist David Koch is retiring from his roles at Koch Industries and associated companies due to poor health, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. |
| Microsoft launches program for women returning to workSAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp is stepping up its hiring of women seeking to rejoin the workforce, following a rash of complaints about sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the world’s largest software company. |
| Two Allergan shareholders call for split of chairman-CEO role(Reuters) – Two of Allergan Plc’s shareholders, hedge funds Appaloosa Management and Senator Investment Group, asked the drugmaker’s board to split the role of chief executive officer and chairman as well as reconsider its acquisition strategy. |
| Wells Fargo pulls back from U.S. Midwest, selling 52 branches to Flagstar(Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co is pulling back from retail banking in the U.S. Midwest, selling all of its branches in three states, as the bank embarks on a broader review of branch profitability across the country. |
| Twitter shares jump 5 percent as they win new follower: The S&P 500NEW YORK (Reuters) – Consider it the ultimate “like” for a stock: Twitter Inc is joining the benchmark S&P 500 U.S. index, pushing the social media company’s stock price up 5 percent on Tuesday as demand surged from equities investors. |
| Want to extend the bull market by $6 trillion? Add womenLONDON (Reuters) – The secret to unlocking a further $6 trillion of gains in global stocks and adding another ten years to this bull run? Forget tax cuts and share buybacks, women are key, according to research by S&P Global. |
| Big-Tech & Small-Caps Record High But Bonds, Bullion, & Black Gold BounceThis seemed appropriate… Quick summary – ISM/PMI beat (good news) and stocks sank but as Europe closed (Italy was ugly again today), so a mysterious bid returned to US stocks – the Dow and S&P scrambled back green briefly, Nasdaq and Small Caps surged again to new records, bond yields fell (bonds were bid), commodities rallied (gold and oil bid), as the dollar tumbled in the late day to unchanged (erasing the overnight gains). Make sense, good. Tech surged again along with Small Caps as the Dow and S&P trudged sideways around unchanged… Small Caps and Nasdaq ramped into the close to the highs of the day…
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| Crypto ‘Whales’ Dominate Ownership Of World’s Largest-Ever ICOOwnership concentration has become a commonplace problem in the cryptocurrency market – but even this is extreme. We’ve reported on bitcoin’s whale problem, where roughly 40% of all the bitcoin in circulation – an amount worth some $51 billion – are held by a group of less than 1,000 people, many of whom were among the earliest adopters.
In fact, it’s widely believed that bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto alone controls a combined 1.1 million bitcoins (though it’s impossible to discern an exact number). Ethereum is even more concentrated, with 40% of the total float owned by 100 people. But even Ethereum pales in comparison to Block.one, the largest ICO in history, which raised more than $4 billion last week. According to Bloomberg, the 10 largest Block.one owners hold nearly 50% of coins in circulation. |
| QE & The Laurel-Yanny DistortionVia Global Macro Monitor, Interesting clip from Wired, interviewing a neuroscientist explaining how people get the sound Laurel and Yanny name so different. The interview is profound if you take the principles and apply them to the markets. It’s all about reading the correct signals — such as low or high frequencies -to determine what you hear.
Bistable illusion, indeed. |
| Millions Trust Ancestry.com With Their Genetic Code: What Could Go Wrong?Millions of semi-conscious consumers, most of whom were probably outraged and appalled by recent privacy scandal outbreaks involving companies like Facebook and Equifax, have been casually shipping away the most precious keys to their genetic code and helping ancestry.com compile the worlds largest DNA database. More than 5 million people have already “spit into tubes” and mailed it into ancestry.com’s database, according a recent report by the Tampa Bay Times. These 5 million people were the basis of a brand new investigative report published by the Tampa Bay Times, which detailed how ancestry.com, marketing itself as a family friendly and wholesome way to discover ones ethnicity, is actually possibly setting itself up for the largest and most complex security breach of all time. That’s because ancestry.com is compiling a database, not just of personal information like your Social Security number or date of birth, but also of your DNA. As the report notes, your DNA is arguably the most complex a … |
| Food Makers Can’t Figure Out What Americans Want to EatThe food industry is struggling to keep up with consumers who are shifting to fresh from packaged products while new competitors are beating them on price and quality. |
| In Biotech, $6 Billion Can Vanish QuicklyNektar Therapeutics shed billions in market value after a disappointing clinical trial update for investors. Shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Nektar’s development partner, also slid. |
| Time for Australian Banks to Lose Their PremiumPast wrongdoing has mired Australia’s leading banks in controversy. Investors should worry, too, that the country’s rip-roaring property market is finally cooling. |
| April 2018 CoreLogic Home Prices Up 6.9% Year-over-YearWritten by Steven Hansen CoreLogic’s Home Price Index (HPI) shows that home prices in the USA are up 6.9 % year-over-year year-over-year (reported up 1.2 % month-over-month). CoreLogic HPI is used in the Federal Reserves’ Flow of Funds to calculate the values of residential real estate. The quote of the day was in this data release:
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| The Moneyist: This man has 4 daughters, but believes only his youngest deserves an inheritanceShould he split his estate equally or give his youngest daughter preference? |
| Scientists from 5 universities say doing this one thing faster could add years to your lifeEvery little bit helps, particularly when it comes to staying healthy. |
| MarketWatch First Take: Here’s a reminder Italy is headed for a showdown with Europe and the marketsItaly’s newly installed prime minister serves up a reminder that Rome isn’t fading away as a source of turmoil and volatility so quickly. |
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