8.8 C
New York
Thursday, March 28, 2024

News You Can Use From Phil’s Stock World

Financial Markets and Economy

Verizon Communications to Buy AOL for $4.4 Billion (Bloomberg)

Verizon Communications Inc. agreed to buy AOL Inc. in a deal valued at $4.4 billion that intensifies the battle for advertising on mobile devices.

Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless provider, gets two of AOL’s technologies: its mobile streaming service, featuring live TV, original shows and pay-per-view, and its ability to automatically send targeted ads to mobile devices.

467429844 A FIN POL USA DCInflation worries have Treasury yields rising (USA Today)

The stock market might seem stalled, but there has been a lot going on in the bond market, where sinking prices recently have yields on a steady rise.

The 10-year Treasury note yield is creeping up, thanks to a domino effect of rising energy prices and growing expectations that inflation will tick up as well.

S&P 500: A Pause That Refreshes, Or Is the Top In? (Wall Street Examiner)

The current rally has reached extremes: more than three years above the neutral line of MACD and almost 500 points above the 200-week moving average.

People walk inside JP Morgan headquarters in New York, October 25, 2013.  REUTERS/Eduardo MunozBank parents or main units seen pleading guilty over FX: sources (Reuters)

The parent companies or main banking units of as many as five major banks, rather than their smaller subsidiaries, are expected to plead guilty to U.S. criminal charges over manipulation of foreign exchange rates, people familiar with the matter said.

A handful of banks will likely resolve forex-rigging investigations by the U.S. Justice Department as soon as this week: JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) Citigroup (C.N), British banks Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) and Barclays (BARC.L) and Swiss bank UBS (UBSG.VX).

bank occupy protestBank execs held a secret meeting to prepare for anti-Wall Street talk in the 2016 presidential campaign (Business Insider)

Top executives from the biggest US banks, concerned about anti-Wall Street rhetoric that is already bubbling up on the 2016 campaign trail, are working to push back against the prevailing narrative that "banks are bad," The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Senior executives from seven of the biggest US banks gathered at, or dialed into, a lunchtime meeting held in the Bank of America Tower in New York on March 31, The Journal reported.

Why Would Anyone Want to Restart the Credit Default Swaps Market? (Bloomberg)

Last week, Bloomberg reported that BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, is leading a push to revive a type of derivative known as the single-name credit default swap. Readers may remember that such CDSs were blamed for exacerbating the financial crisis of 2008. So why, one might ask, would anyone want to revive this particular corner of the credit market.

Image One57Why Billionaires Don't Pay Property Taxes in New York (City Lab)

When a duplex condominium in New York's new One57 supertall tower sold for $100.5 million dollars in January, it shattered all records. This condo is the most expensive single-family residence ever sold in Manhattan. Yet, at the rate that luxe residential towers are coming online in the part of Midtown known as Billionaires Row—consider the $91.5 million sale just last month—even that mondo One57 record may not last for long.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry PaulsonEx-Treasury Chief Paulson Says Low Rates Fuel Asset-Bubble Risk (Bloomberg)

Central banks that hold borrowing costs low for a prolonged period raise the risk of asset-price bubbles, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said.

“Until we get back to a world where interest rates are determined by real economic forces and reflect economic reality, there are going to be asset bubbles,” Paulson said Monday in an interview with Bloomberg Television in London. “There’s going to be volatility and clearly, there are bubbles, so the question is, are they manageable and how big they are.”

Paul Krugman: The "vampires of finance bought themselves a Congress" and want to destroy America with itPaul Krugman: The “vampires of finance bought themselves a Congress” and want to destroy America with it (Salon)

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is surprisingly sanguine about the current state of finance reform, claiming today that “the vampires of finance” have been disappointed by the rate-of-return on their dollars recently. As it turns out, he argues, “the enemies of reform can’t withstand sunlight.”

“Almost nobody wants to be seen as a bought and paid-for servant of the financial industry,” he writes, “least of all those who really are exactly that.”

Financial Advisers Don't Care About Millennials, and the Feeling Is Mutual (Bloomberg)

The investment industry has an age discrimination problem, and millennials and Generation X are bearing the brunt of it. Only 30 percent of financial advisers are actively looking for clients under age 40, according to a survey of 500 advisers by the research firm Corporate Insight. 

Advisers prefer older clients for a simple reason: Most advisers get paid based on a percentage of the assets they manage. And typical households in their late 60s and early 70s are far richer than their children and grandchildren, with net worths that are five times that of a median 35- to 44-year-old household. These older baby boomers own 22 times more in assets than those under age 35, Federal Reserve data show.

This is a bad sign for anyone hoping for a consumer spending surge (Business Insider)

The American consumer is feeling pessimistic.

One of the questions on the New York Fed's monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations asks respondents how they expect their household spending to change over the next year. This has been a very jumpy indicator over the last several months, with expectations plummeting in February and then spiking back up in March.

HH spending growth

America's Future Got $7 Trillion Worse Since the Financial Crisis (Bloomberg)

Still feeling uncomfortable about that tax bill you owed last month? Think about it this way: If you didn't pay it, America's fiscal future would look even worse than it does now, six years out from the financial crisis.

How to Save the Middle Class (Bloomberg View)

No one can quite agree on what it means, much less what to do about it, but that hasn’t stopped every announced candidate for U.S. president in 2016 from pledging to focus on it. What is it? The middle class, of course, and addressing its economic anxieties will be among the next president's most daunting challenges.

29629-20150508205025000000000?

Stocks and Trading

Goldman Sachs: These Are the Best Stocks for Investing in Millennial Parents (Bloomberg)

In a note titled "Spending implications from a new generation of parents." Goldman Sachs takes a deeper look into what companies and sectors could benefit from this massive age group approaching parenthood. 

30Y Treasury Yield Tops 3.00% For Only 2nd Time In Over 5 Months, Stocks Slide (Zero Hedge)

Having briefly tested above 3.00% on Thursday, for the first time since December 2nd, 2014, the post-payrolls reaction continues today with 30Y yields up 9bps and back above the 3.00% Maginot Line. We note, additionally, that as Deutsche reports, net short exposure to Treasuries is back at the extremes of its recent range.

Now up 16bps from post-payrolls knee-jerk…

Chinese Stock Bubble Now Plumbing Depths Of Human Stupidity (Zero Hedge)

What’s in a name? A lot apparently, especially if you’re a property developer-turned P2P company riding the wave of China’s self-fulfilling, margin-fueled equity mania. Enter Shanghai Duolun Industry, a Shanghai-listed company which, until recently anyway, engaged in real estate development and commodity residential buildings distribution. All of that changed however, on April 29th when the company announced it was setting up a financial services business. 

'Dry Powder' Runs Dry as Stocks Try to Break New Records (Bloomberg)

Regardless of your opinion of technical analysis, it's hard not to be mesmerized watching the level of the U.S. stock market over the last two sessions.

You can play along at home, or office desk, or sailboat, or jail cell, or wherever it is you watch the market. Keep your eye on the number 2,117.69 for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. That's its last closing record from April 24.

Shares of Etsy fall 9 percent as analyst downgrades stock on concerns about counterfeiting (Fox Business)

Shares of crafty e-commerce site Etsy Inc. fell Monday after an analyst said there is a bigger-than-expected risk for fraud on the site and downgraded the stock to "Underperform."

Shares fell nearly 9 percent in afternoon trading.

Politics

U.S. Will Allow Drilling for Oil in Arctic Ocean (NY Times)

The Obama administration on Monday gave conditional approval to allow Shell to start drilling for oil off the Alaskan coast this summer, a major victory for the petroleum industry and a devastating blow to environmentalists.

 

The decision adds a complex new chapter to the legacy of President Obama, who has pursued the most ambitious environmental agenda of any president but has sought to balance those moves by opening up untouched federal waters to new oil and gas drilling.

How Republicans have made a science out of white working-class resentment How Republicans have made a science out of white working-class resentment (Salon)

My first exposure to the term “identity politics” came from conservative commentators who used it to complain about civil rights. (It usually went hand-in-hand with derisive right-wing phrases like “playing the race card” and “professional poverty pimp.”) Indeed, I assumed for years that it was a catch-all conservative insult for anyone who sought equality and advancement for marginalized constituencies. That’s my bad. As it happens, the term has a serious academic pedigree and is hotly debated in intellectual circles so it’s not just another right wing epithet.

Farage to Stay On as UKIP Leader, Three Days After Resigning (Bloomberg)

Nigel Farage will stay on as U.K. Independence Party leader, just three days after announcing his resignation following his failure to win a seat in Parliament.

After Farage was beaten in the coastal South Thanet district in southeast England Friday, he said he was looking forward to a “well deserved holiday,” though he said he might run for the leadership again later in the year.

Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis arrives on a motorbike at Maximos Mansion to attend a governmental meeting with Prime Minister Tsipras in AthensGreece seemingly has no Plan A or Plan B on debt (Reuters)

Strategy is a word with Greek roots. But, sadly the current government led by Alexis Tsipras doesn’t seem to have a strategy for extricating the country from its parlous state.

Its government lacks a credible plan for reaching agreement with its euro zone creditors and the International Monetary Fund. It doesn’t seem to have a thought-out fallback plan of how to default while containing the damage either.

One third of millennials view socialism favorablyOne third of millennials view socialism favorably (You Gov)

Younger Americans have a much better view of socialism, and worse view of capitalism, than their elders

Bernie Sanders, a Senator for Vermont and currently the only declared challenger to Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, is the only member of Congress to describe himself as a socialist. For much of the Cold War socialism evoked images of military parades in Moscow's Red Square, but for Sanders, and many of America's self-declared socialists, their aim isn't to bring revolution to America but to make America more like Sweden and Norway. 

Technology

APphoto_Driverless Cars-AccidentsGoogle acknowledges 11 accidents with its self-driving cars (LA Times)

Google Inc. revealed Monday that its self-driving cars have been in 11 minor traffic accidents since it began experimenting with the technology six years ago.

The company released the number after The Associated Press reported that Google had notified California of three collisions involving its self-driving cars since September, when reporting all accidents became a legal requirement as part of the permits for the tests on public roads.

DSC8910_kinderenvanboven2The World’s First Solar Road Is Producing More Energy Than Expected (Think Progress)

In its first six months of existence, the world’s first solar road is performing even better than developers thought.

The road, which opened in the Netherlands in November of last year, has produced more than 3,000 kilowatt-hours of energy — enough to power a single household for one year, according to Al-Jazeera America.

shutterstock_208242976Apple Makes Huge Commitment To Sustainability (Think Progress)

Apple is a technology company, and it takes a lot of paper to package that technology.

On Monday, Apple announced a new initiative with the World Wildlife Fund to help align this forest-driven segment of its global supply chain with its aspirations to be a leader in sustainability and renewable energy production. According to the release, Apple’s goal is to “achieve a net-zero impact on the world’s supply of sustainable virgin fiber” — in other words, it wants to get 100 percent of its paper packaging from renewable sources. A renewable forest is one in which trees are grown and harvested in a sustainable fashion that does not require new forests to be cleared.

Health and Life Sciences

Personal microbiomes shown to contain unique 'fingerprints' (Science Daily)

A new study shows that the microbial communities we carry in and on our bodies — known as the human microbiome — have the potential to uniquely identify individuals, much like a fingerprint. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers and colleagues demonstrated that personal microbiomes contain enough distinguishing features to identify an individual over time from among a research study population of hundreds of people. The study, the first to rigorously show that identifying people from microbiome data is feasible, suggests that we have surprisingly unique microbial inhabitants, but could raise potential privacy concerns for subjects enrolled in human microbiome research projects.

40 years of a changing American diet, in one massive chart (Vox)

You don't eat the way your parents did. You can probably see that by just glancing at a cookbook from the 1960s or '70s. (So much Jell-O. So much canned food.) But you can quantify those differences more precisely using data from the USDA. Below, in one giant chart, we have compiled how Americans' eating patterns have changed over a generation.

Life on the Home Planet

GM Ignition Deaths Rise to 100 as Fund Aims for July Finish (Bloomberg)

The lawyer hired by General Motors Co. reported 100 deaths classified as having been caused by defective ignition switches on recalled small cars and aims to complete the process this summer.

There are 37 death and 589 injury claims still under review by Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed by the Detroit-based carmaker to run a compensation fund for victims, according to the latest statistics released Monday. There have been 184 injury claims approved for compensation as of May 8, according to the update from the fund.

Sea Levels Rose at Faster Pace, Study Says (Wall Street Journal)

Global sea levels are rising faster than previously thought, though seawaters haven’t climbed as high as scientists estimated, according to a new study.

Climate Science Deniers Unable To Comprehend Scientific Study (Think Progress)

new study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography finds that the Arctic sea may go ice free in the summer faster than previous models had projected. Somehow climate deniers took this to mean something completely different.

Arctic sea ice

In this April 2007 file photo, a shovel preparesto dump a load of coal into a 320-ton truck at the Black Thunder Mine in Wright, Wyo.Proposed Coal Rule Sparks Huge Public Outcry (Think Progress)

A seemingly low-profile proposal from a little-known natural resources agency in the Department of the Interior (DOI) has attracted a record-breaking 210,000 public comments from taxpayers, who argue that they are not receiving a fair share of revenues from the mining of coal on U.S. public lands.

The public outcry came in response to a proposed rule from DOI’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue that aims to close a regulatory loophole that allows coal companies to avoid paying royalties owed to taxpayers. Critics argue that the proposed rule does not go far enough to guarantee that western states and U.S. taxpayers are receiving a fair value for the coal mined on America’s public lands, due to additional subsidies given to coal companies under the rule.

A Chinese billionaire sent 6,400 of his employees on a French vacation (QZ)

The Chinese conglomerate Tiens Group treated 6,400 of the company’s employees to a four-day trip to France last week in a move that appears to be part benevolence, part publicity stunt.

The massive tour group, which Reuters reported is expected to spend €13 million ($15 million) total, filled 84 planes to Paris where they packed into 4,000 rooms across 140 hotels and took over the Louvre for a visit. They then ventured southwards to the French Riviera, where the group paraded down the street in blue and white color-coordinated outfits, spelling out the phrase, “Tiens’ Dream is Nice in the Côte d’Azure.”

MAY15_11_000001667330What It Will Take to Fix America’s Crumbling Infrastructure (HBR)

May 11-15 is national Infrastructure Week in the U.S., but don’t get out the party hats. It’s not a celebration. It’s more like a cry for help. Bridges are crumbling, buses are past their prime, roads badly need repair, airports look shabby, trains can’t reach high speeds, and traffic congestion plagues every city. How could an advanced country, once the model for the world’s most modern transportation innovations, slip so badly.

In the zone: Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk and ‘world’s happiest person’, wears a geodesic sensor net.What would you pay to be happy? (The Guardian)

The happiest man in the world is a 67-year-old Buddhist monk called Matthieu Ricard. He starts his day sitting in a meadow in front of his hermitage in Nepal. He watches hundreds of miles of Himalayan peaks glowing in front of him in the rising sun. The scene “blends naturally and seamlessly with the peace he has within”.

Deutsche Bank’s Veteran Says He’s Leaving to ‘Walk the Earth’ (Bloomberg)

Richard Herman, global head of fixed income and currencies at Deutsche Bank AG, told employees he’s leaving after 20 years at the company to pursue interests outside of finance.

 

Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Stay Connected

157,452FansLike
396,312FollowersFollow
2,280SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Articles

0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x