Written by Gary
SpaceX’s Starship prototype again explodes on landing attempt after successful launch (SPY +1.4%). 30-year Treasury yield back at three-week high as global stocks extend gains.
The Market in Perspective
| Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
 | Will Saudi Arabias Surprise Production Cut Backfire?Global energy markets and industry insiders believe that it was a good idea for Saudi Arabia to slash oil production by one million barrels daily until the end of March 2021. While it certainly helped to buoy short-term oil prices and spark a sense of optimism regarding the outlook for oil prices, which were severely impacted by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, it may not be as favorable as initially believed. The surprise cut allowed a new OPEC Plus production agreement to be established after initial discussions failed because some participants, |
| Oil Prices Continue To Rise As Bullish News MountsInvestor Alert! Oilfield service giants are looking like an increasingly good investment as oil prices rebound. Read our latest Global Energy Alert investment column to get the full breakdown of what to watch…Chart of the Week- Global oil demand fell to 92.2 mb/d in 2020, a 9% decline from the year before, according to a new EIA estimate.- Demand rebounded rapidly after hitting a low point in April 2020, but demand was stagnant and even contracted slightly in late 2020.- The EIA expects a |
| Is A Space Mining War Inevitable?A brewing war to set a mining base in space is likely to see China and Russia joining forces to keep the US increasing attempts to dominate extra-terrestrial commerce at bay, experts warn. The Trump Administration took an active interest in space, announcing that America wouldreturn astronauts to the moonby 2024 and creating theSpace Forceas the newest branch of the US military. It also proposed global legal framework for mining on the moon, called the Artemis Accords, encouraging citizens to mine the Earths |
| Turkish Media: Libyas Haftar Sells Oil IllegallyLibyas strongman in the east, General Khalifa Haftar, is selling through illegal corporations oil pumped in areas in eastern Libya under the control of his forces, Turkish media reported on Tuesday. Turkey supports the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), which has been fighting with Haftars forces for control of Libya and its oil riches. Haftar has signed an agreement to form a parallel company to sell oil from Libya, security sources told Turkish IHA news agency. Haftars corporation is reportedly selling the |
| OPEC+ Now Sees Weaker Oil Demand Growth For 2021OPEC+ expects global oil demand to rise by 5.6 million barrels per day (bpd) this yearlower estimated growth than OPECs assessment of 5.9-million-bpd demand increase from less than three weeks ago, according to the groups Joint Technical Committee (JTC), which met via videoconference on Tuesday. Last year, oil demand is estimated to have crashed by 9.72 million bpd, Amena Bakr, Deputy Bureau Chief and Chief Opec Correspondent at Energy Intelligence, tweeted quoting the JTCs assessment, which also notes that this year, |
| Oil Prices Rise As Producers Stick To Supply CurbsOil prices hit a one-year high early on Tuesday on the back of improving market fundamentals and a general risk-on market sentiment. As of 10:08 a.m. ET on Tuesday, WTI Crude was up by 2.45 percent at $54.85, after hitting $55 earlier in the day, and Brent Crude was trading up 2.32 percent at $57.65. Oil prices on Tuesday extended their gains from Monday, amid expectations that the oil production curbs by OPEC+ and its leader Saudi Arabia would tighten the market in the first quarter. Saudi Arabia has said it would reduce its crude oil production |
| Here’s what to expect from Chipotle earningsShares of Chipotle have risen 77% over the last year, giving the company a market value of $43 billion. |
| Biden administration will start sending Covid vaccines directly to pharmacies as it ups shipments to statesThe U.S. will provide a minimum of 10.5 million vaccine doses per week for the next three weeks across all jurisdictions, a Biden administration official said. |
| Kraft Heinz is reportedly in talks to sell Planters for $3 billion to HormelKraft Heinz is nearing a deal to sell its Planters brand to Hormel for roughly $3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. |
| U.S. Covid hospitalizations and cases are falling, but new strains could undo that progress“There’s a sense of dread of what’s to come,” said Dr. Leana Wen, former Baltimore health commissioner. |
| Senate confirms Pete Buttigieg as Transportation secretaryThe Senate confirmed Pete Buttigieg as President Biden’s Transportation secretary, becoming the youngest person to run the department. |
| Boeing cuts its 777X backlog by more than a third after pushing back deliveries until 2023Boeing took more than 100 orders out of its backlog for its newest plane. |
| Pfizer plans to deliver 200 million doses of Covid vaccine to U.S. by May, sooner than expectedThe company, which developed its vaccine with German drugmaker BioNTech, also said it can potentially deliver 2 billion doses globally by the end of this year. |
| Dr. Scott Gottlieb rips U.S. Covid testing system, says don’t expect it to be fixed until fall“You don’t have an efficiently run system because no one really built this rationally,” former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb told CNBC. |
| SpaceX’s Starship prototype again explodes on landing attempt after successful launchThe latest prototype of SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket exploded on impact during an attempted landing after a test flight on Tuesday. |
| Kitchen United and Westfield team up to bring ghost kitchen tech to the mallWestfield Valley Fair will use Kitchen United’s technology to facilitate to-go food orders. The system includes lockers for pickup or delivery. |
| Ulta Beauty to double Black-owned brands in its stores, feature more Black women in adsThe retailer plans to invest $25 million in the initiative, which will celebrate and highlight Black women in ads and TV commercials. |
| Impossible Foods lowers grocery store prices amid pandemic-fueled retail expansionImpossible Foods is slashing the suggested prices for U.S. grocery stores by 20%, pushing it closer to achieving price parity with meat. |
| BMW will now use aluminum that’s been made with solar powerGerman carmaker is latest firm attempting to integrate renewables into its supply network. |
| Stocks, Crypto, & Bond Yields Pop As WSB Game StoppedStocks, Crypto, & Bond Yields Pop As WSB Game Stopped It appears the Reddit-Raiders Game just Stopped. Most-Shorted stocks tumbled…
Source: Bloomberg Did it look something like this?
Led by GME and KOSS, down some 60-70% from Friday’s close (despite some insane intraday swings)… |
| MicroStrategy Buys Another $10 Million Of Bitcoin, Adds To ReserveMicroStrategy Buys Another $10 Million Of Bitcoin, Adds To Reserve Via PlanetFreeWill.news, Business intelligence and mobile software firm MicroStrategy has further added to its bitcoin holdings, disclosing on Tuesday that it purchased an additional $10,000,000 of the world’s largest crypto by market capitalization.
MicroStrategy first disclosed it was purchasing bitcoin as a part of its treasury reserve policy in August 2020 … |
| Hold œIf You Can Afford To, Billionaire Mark Cuban Tells GameStop ShareholdersHold œIf You Can Afford To, Billionaire Mark Cuban Tells GameStop Shareholders Billionaire Mark Cuban is telling scores of clueless retail investors to ‘hodl’ their GameStop “if they can afford to”. Cuban, best known for his role on Shark Tank, besting the SEC years ago and owning the Dallas Mavericks, took to a Reddit message board to do an “Ask Me Anything (AMA)” for the WallStreetBets crowd, many of whom spent the morning on Tuesday complaining on the message board that their positions in GameStop are getting trounced. œIf you can afford to hold the stock, you hold. I don’t own it, but that’s what I would do, were Cuban’s words of wisdom to Reddit users, while GameStop stock plunged in the background. Cuban also offered advice on switching brokers, writing: œPick the brokerage with the strongest balance sheet. What ruined it on RH is that they didn’t have enough cash to deal with the growth in accounts, margin loans and volatility. The EXACT SAME THING will happen at the next broker if you don’t make sure they have aMULTI-TRILLION dollar balance sheet to be able to handle these kind of circumstances. He continued: œThe only question is what broker do you use. Do you stay with RH, who is going to have the same liquidity problems over and over again, or do you as a group find a broker with a far, far, far better balance sheet that won’t cut you off and then go ham on Wall Street. After admitting he had “no idea” what was going to happen next, he then joined the crowd in blami … |
| Will WallStreetBets Send The VIX Soaring Next? One Bank’s Surprising AnswerWill WallStreetBets Send The VIX Soaring Next? One Bank’s Surprising Answer One week ago, the Reddit crowd – then numbering 2 million users- sparked a historic squeeze among the most shorted Russell 3000 stocks (led by Gamestop) which inflicted hundreds of billions of losses on some hedge funds (while making other hedge funds that much richer), and launched a deleveraging VaR shockwave which forced even non-shorting hedge funds to unwind some of their biggest (and most popular) positions. Then, this Monday, the same Reddit crowd – now having tripled to 7.5 million users – managed to spark the biggest surge in silver prices since the collapse of Lehman, and even though there were not nearly as many shorts here, the move was sizable enough to unleash another major VaR shockwave across markets, and forcing even unlinked assets to selloff amid another degrossing wave. What the two episodes had in common is that any outlier event – and last week’s “most shorted vs most popular” slamdown was a 7 sigma event, which nobody had anticipated, with Goldman writing that Tuesday “was the worst day for GS HF VIP longs vs GS Most Short in our records (-7.7%)”… |
| GameStop: Real Wolf of Wall Street warns ‘you could lose it all’Jordan Belfort says amateurs should “take their chips off the table” as shares in the retailer tumble. |
| Exxon plunges to first loss in decades as pandemic chokes off demandThe firm is in the midst of drastic cuts as it bows to economic and activist pressure for change. |
| British Gas owner ‘was posted excrement’ in pay rowThe boss of Centrica defends “fire and rehire” plans amid protests from staff. |
| Bankers await clarity on ARC structure, capital allocationThough the government has not allocated any funds for this new company, expectations are that public sector banks which are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this proposal will also be asked to invest. |
| GameStop breaks below $100 as rout erases $28 billion in valueThe stock tumbled to $75 at 10:49 a.m. in New York, meaning it has now given up nearly 85% of the spectacular gains that were fueled by last month’s attack on short sellers. |
| Bharti Airtel Q3 preview: Telecom operator likely to post profit in Q3; sales may hit record highThe company had reported a consolidated net loss in the previous quarter largely because of a surge in finance costs and a one-time exceptional loss. |
| : Tesla is in decline, SUVs are king, and more insights from the world’s largest electric-vehicle marketEurope overtook China in 2020 to become the world’s largest market for electric vehicles, amid a pedal-to-the-metal push to increase EV adoption from governments and supercharged demand from consumers. |
| Earnings Results: FireEye reports record earnings, forecasts first $1 billion year as massive hack puts spotlight on securityFireEye Inc. reported record quarterly results Tuesday and said 2021 might be its first $1 billion year of sales as the priority for cybersecurity ramps up following a massive hack in December. |
| Bond Report: 30-year Treasury yield back at three-week high as global stocks extend gainsU.S. Treasury yields rose Tuesday as the positive tone in equities markets helped sap demand for safe-haven government bonds. |
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