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Thursday, March 28, 2024

News You Can Use From Phil’s Stock World

 

Financial Markets and Economy

The Economy Might Just Need 55,000 New Jobs Per Month to Keep Reducing Labor Force Slack (Bloomberg)

Macquarie analyst David Doyle thinks the U.S. economy doesn’t need to add too many jobs for the unemployment rate to keep moving downwards.

Housing starts surge 20% in April (Market Watch)

In a show of housing-market vitality, the pace of construction started on new U.S. homes in April jumped to the strongest level since the onset of the Great Recession, the government reported Tuesday.

Construction started on new U.S. homes sprang up 20.2% in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.14 million. That’s the biggest monthly percentage gain in more than 24 years and the highest level since November 2007, the U.S. Commerce Department reported.

Housing Starts Surge to Highest Since Nov 2007, Permits At 7 Year Highs (Zero Hedge)

Following two ugly months of dramatically missed expectations, Housing Starts exploded to 'recovery' highs (highest since Nov 2007) jumping 20.2% MoM to 1.135million (against 1.015 exp.). This is the 2nd biggest MoM jump in history. Both single-family (3rd biggest MoM surge since the crisis peak) and multi-family starts surged. Permits also surged in April (jumping 10.1% MoM – the most since 2012) to 1.143 million (well above expectations) and the highest since June 2008. These huge mal-investment spikes make perfect sense in light of the collapse in lumber prices (and thus demand).

 

Los Angeles Raises Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour (NY Times)

LOS ANGELES — The nation’s second-largest city voted on Tuesday to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far in the national push to raise the minimum wage.

The increase — which the Los Angeles City Council passed in a 14-1 vote — comes as workers across the country are rallying for higher wages, and several large companies, including Facebook and Walmart, have moved to raise their lowest wages

Hedge Fund AUM Hits A Record High Of $2.2 Trillion (Value Walk)

Hedge funds posted their fourth consecutive month of gains returning 0.99% in April, while the MSCI World Index was up 1.25%. The NYSE Composite posted gains of 1.38% as of April, despite mediocre retail sales slump figures. Investor optimism fuelled by aggressive stimulus measures by the Chinese central bank is reflected in the strong climb of the CSI 300 Index closing the month of April with gains of 17.85%. With a continued equity rally in Japan headed by Japanese pension funds and further quantitative expansion by Bank of Japan, the Nikkei 225 closed April with gains of 1.63%…

U.K. Prime Minister David CameronDeutsche Bank Studies Impact of U.K. Exit From EU as Vote Looms (Bloomberg)

Deutsche Bank AG is studying the potential impact of Britain’s exit from the European Union on the firm’s business in the country and weighing options that may include moving activities to its home nation.

Germany’s biggest bank this month formed a working group that comprises senior executives from Deutsche Bank’s strategy, risk and U.K. management teams, a spokesman for the lender said late Monday. The panel is in an early stage of scenario planning and no decisions have been made.

Top Wall Street strategist gets hate mail and fires back after discovering his critic is actually 'bad at their job' (Business Insider)

Morgan Stanley's Adam Parker is bullish. 

Parker, the chief US equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, has a year-end price target on the S&P 500 of 2,275 and at the start of the year was among the most optimistic strategists on Wall Street. 

ECB Executive Board Member Benoit CoeureEuro Drops After ECB Official Pledges to Speed Up Bond Purchases (Bloomberg)

The euro tumbled the most in two months against the dollar after a European Central Bank official said the bank will speed up its bond-buying program before an anticipated mid-year lull.

Alaska Governor Vetoes $3 Billion From Budget as Oil Taxes Lag (Bloomberg)

Alaska Governor Bill Walker vetoed $3 billion from the state budget and said he may have to furlough government workers as lawmakers remain at odds over how to deal with a deficit caused by plummeting oil taxes and royalties.

Walker on Monday vetoed the unfunded portion of a $5 billion spending plan sent to him by the legislature May 12, saying it was the “least detrimental” choice he faced.

China Smog War Seen Dooming Coal on ‘Cheap But Dirty’ Purge (Bloomberg)Coal Fired Power Plant

China’s battle against pollution is threatening the recovery of coal prices from the lowest level in almost nine years.

Installations of new coal-fired power capacity in the world’s biggest polluter are set to halve as “cheap but dirty” plants get eliminated, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Prices of China’s benchmark power-station coal have tumbled 59 percent from a peak in July 2008, and none of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg predict a recovery.

The $18 Trillion Global Economic Boost If Everything Went Right (Bloomberg)

What if everything started to go right in the world economy?

It’s a lot to ask. The 1.1 percent global growth of the first quarter was the weakest for an expansion since 1998, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers’s “secular stagnation” warning is gaining traction and central banks are finding more and more reasons to keep monetary policy easy.

Stocks and Trading

The Looming Threat of Fines Has Foreign-Exchange Traders on Their Best Behavior (Bloomberg)

When global bond investors lost more than $400 billion in one week this month, Koon Chow, a Union Bancaire Privee currency strategist, asked sales contacts at banks about the impact on foreign-exchange markets. He didn’t get much help.

“We struggled to get any information from bank sales — they were cautious about telling us who was doing what,” said Chow, who has been in the market for more than 15 years and previously worked at Barclays Plc and Credit Suisse Group AG.

Here’s one key thing stocks need to keep moving higher (Market Watch)

I got a little piece of hate-mail after writing up a Bank America Merrill Lynch note that predicted a scary summer for stocks. “All of YOU ‘experts’ keep predicting a correction or financial ‘armageddon’ … must be nice to earn a living predicting the obvious … whenever and wherever it FINALLY does happen,” said a reader.

<p>What if overvalued real estate masks a stock-market bubble?</p> Photographer: Billy H.C. Kwok/BloombergWhich Stock Market Is Scarier: U.S. or China? (Bloomberg)

It’s scary stock-market ratio day! Bloomberg’s Lu Wang and Jennifer Kaplan point out that economist James Tobin’s Q ratio — companies’ market value divided by the replacement cost of their assets — is higher for U.S. companies “than any time other than the Internet bubble and the 1929 peak.” Meanwhile, FT Alphaville tells of a Macquarie report on margin lending in China, which now accounts for 8.9 percent of the combined free float of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. That “could already be the highest level of margins vs free float in market history.”

Politics

Bernie Sanders Wants to Tax Stock Trades to Pay for Free College (Bloomberg)

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wants to take from the rich in order to make public college tuition-free for everyone else.

On Tuesday, the Vermont senator will hold a press conference in the nation's capital at which he will introduce a plan to use a so-called Robin Hood tax on stock transactions to fund tuition at four-year public colleges and universities. 

Jeb Bush Says His Brother Was Misled Into War By Faulty Intelligence. That's Not What Happened. (Mother Jones)

Last week, Jeb Bush stepped in it. It took the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate several attempts to answer the most obvious question: knowing what we know now, would you have launched the Iraq war? Yes, I would have, he initially declared, noting he would not dump on his brother for initiating the unpopular war. "So would almost everyone that was confronted with the intelligence they got," Bush said.

In a subsequent and quickly-offered back-pedaling remark—on his way to saying he would have made "different decisions"—Bush emphasized that a main problem with the Bush-Cheney invasion was "mistakes as it related to faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the war." And as his Republican rivals jumped on Bush, they, too, blamed bad intelligence for causing the war. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), insisting that he would not have favored the war (if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction), commented, "President Bush has said that he regrets that the intelligence was faulty."…

Technology

#{project_title}'s video posterThe Light Phone Is The Anti-Smartphone (Tech Crunch)

The Light Phone is the opposite of every other phone in existence. It is thin, light, lasts 20 days on a charge, and literally does nothing but make and answer calls. It’s as if the makers of the Sports Illustrated Football Phone had studied the timeless teachings of William Walker Atkinson and created a telephone that was the platonic ideal of the ultimate telecommunication device. The best thing? It costs $100.

What does it do? Nothing. You put in a SIM card, press a few buttons, and make a call. There’s no browser. No games. No NFC. It has quick dial, which is nice, and it doubles as a flashlight. Did I mention it lasts for 20 days on a charge?

Apple releases its first official iPhone Lightning Dock for iPhone 6/6 Plus (9 to 5 Mac)

In addition to launching a new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Force Touch and a cheaper 27-inch Retina iMac, Apple has also introduced its first official iPhone Lightning Dock with compatibility for both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Of course, being this late to the charging dock game meansa number of fine solutions already exist at competitive prices.

To accommodate both the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone models with a single dock, Apple has departed from its usual design of placing the charging connector in a groove fit for the bottom of the iPhone. Instead, the new iPhone Lightning Dock features a base wide enough for either sized iPhone and a Lightning connector atop a raised bump for charging. The new design should have the added benefit of working without removing most iPhone cases as well.

Health and Life Sciences

Is nicotine all bad? (Reuters)

Since he ditched Marlboro Lights five years ago, Daniel's fix is fruit-flavored nicotine gum that comes in neat, pop-out strips. He gets through 12 to 15 pieces a day and says he has "packets of the stuff" stashed all over. But he doesn’t see himself as a nicotine addict.

Like many people, Daniel believes nicotine gum is far less harmful for him than smoking. Doctors worldwide agree. By giving up cigarettes, they say, Daniel has removed at least 90 percent of the health risks of his habit.

Life on the Home Planet

"Ooooops chocolate"Around the World of Food With Nine Photographers (Time)

On May 1, the Universal Exposition, also known as the World’s Fair, opened its door in Milan. Since its inception in London in 1851, the prestigious exposition has served as a platform for nations to showcase their innovations, fostering cultural exchange between countries.

This year, nine internationally renowned photographers were asked to take visitors on a “journey around the world in pictures” to illustrate the Fair’s theme: Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.

When Birds Squawk, Other Species Seem to Listen (NY Times)

 In the backyard of a woodsy home outside this college town, small birds — black-capped chickadees, mountain chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches — flitted to and from the yard’s feeder. They were oblivious to a curious stand nearby, topped by a curtain that was painted to resemble bark.

Erick Greene, a professor of biology at the University of Montana, stepped away from the stand and stood by the home’s backdoor. He pressed the fob of a modified garage-door opener. The curtain dropped, unveiling a taxidermied northern pygmy owl. Its robotic head moved from side to side, as if scanning for its next meal.

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