News You Can Use From Phil’s Stock World

Headline News: Comey, You're Fired

Into the Abyss: Trump Fires Comey (TPM)

There is a glorious swirl of irony, disingenuousness and bad faith in the vortex of opinions about James Comey and the notional rationale for firing him. Speaking just for myself, after Comey’s October 28th letter to Congress, I thought and think that by all rights he should have resigned. I think I wrote shortly after Trump’s election that by rights Comey should be fired but that it would be a national calamity if he was. An independent FBI Director was critical to the security of the nation as soon as a countdown started for Trump to become President of the United States.

F.B.I. Director James Comey Is Fired by Trump (NY Times)

President Trump on Tuesday fired the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, abruptly terminating the top official leading a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s advisers colluded with the Russian government to steer the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

After Comey, Here Are the Options for an Independent Russia Inquiry (NY Times)

President Trump’s firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, on Tuesday escalated calls among Democrats to appoint a special counsel to oversee the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, especially given Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Financial Markets and Economy

U.S. Commerce's Ross says 3 percent GDP growth not achievable this year (Reuters)

The U.S. economy will fall short of the Trump administration's goal of 3 percent growth this year and will only achieve that when its regulatory, tax, trade and energy policies are fully in place, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Tuesday.

An Emerging-Markets Rally Belies Worrying Economic Fundamentals (Bloomberg)

Emerging-market bulls from UBS Asset Management to JPMorgan Asset Management often say that developing-nation economies are solid enough that they can handle rising rates in the U.S.

Shale Drillers Are Outspending the World With $84 Billion Spree (Bloomberg)

U.S. shale explorers are boosting drilling budgets 10 times faster than the rest of the world to harvest fields that register fat profits even with the recent drop in oil prices.

Jeff Gundlach just painted an ugly picture for US stocks (Business Insider)

Legendary bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach, founder of Double Line Capital, told a group of investors to be very afraid of the US stock market.

The case of the missing US stocks (US Global Investors)

In the last 20 years, the U.S. stock market has undergone an alarming change that too few people are aware of or talking about. Between 1996 and 2016, the number of listed companies fell by half, from 7,300 to 3,600, according to a recent report by Credit Suisse.

Blankfein Says Banks Should Be Unshackled From Volcker Rule (Bloomberg)

U.S. banks with federally insured deposits should be freed from Volcker Rule restrictions that prevent them from taking some types of principal risk, a market-making function that provides a valuable public service, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said.

The VIX Tells Us Very Little About Tomorrow (Bloomberg)

Oh no, the VIX broke 10 this week — a brutal stock-market crash and decade-long bear market is all but upon us.

The War On Dividend Stocks (Forbes)

The S&P 500 is off to a fine start this year. While the economic and fundamental reasons for that are up for debate, what is clear to me is that when you break down the S&P 500 Index, it is easy to see what market segments have contributed and which have not.

The Atlantic City casino Donald Trump built for $1.2 billion sold for just $50 million (Associated Press)

Donald Trump wrote "The Art Of The Deal," but it was Florida's Seminole Indians who made a truly amazing deal to buy the opulent casino built by the man who is now president of the United States.

Analysis: You’re not getting a raise and nobody knows why (Houston Chronicle)

The economy today has almost everything experts look for as a sign of health – new jobs are popping up around the country, the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level in a decade, and consumer and business confidence is high.

Elizabeth Warren Politely Requests That Federal Regulators Bring Her The Severed Head Of Carl Icahn (Deal Breaker)

Eight Democratic Senators on Tuesday asked U.S. regulators to launch an investigation into billionaire Carl Icahn’s activities in the U.S. biofuels blending credit market, saying the activist investor may have violated securities trading laws since becoming an adviser to President Donald Trump.

10 Years of Data on Baseball Teams Shows When Pay Transparency Backfires (Harvard Business Review)

You’ve probably taken a guess as to how much money your coworkers and others make, compared with you. Evidence suggests you probably aren’t very accurate. In one PayScale survey of 71,000 people, for example, 64% of those paid the average market rate thought they were paid less than average.

Let's Make A Deal: Can OPEC's Oil Output Cuts Contiinue As They Are? (S&P Global Platts)

When OPEC reached its historic supply cut deal last year, Brent oil was trading for about $49/b … and it still is. So has the deal been a failure, and what should the market expect from OPEC now?

Hold On! The VIX Isn’t as Low as It Looks?!?! (Barron's)

Yesterday, the VIX fell to its lowest level since 1993–except for one problem: It didn't actually.

See, back in 2014, the CBOE changed the rules for the VIX index by including weekly options in the mix, says MKM Partners' Jim Strugger, so today's VIX is not quite the same as the one everyone was looking at just a few years ago.

Large scale solar power grows rapidly (Houston Chronicle)

Large-scale solar power has grown rapidly over the past six years as falling solar panel prices, tax incentives and government policies aimed at boosting renewable energy encourage the development of major solar projects.

Auto Inventories Surge: How’s That Going To Work? (Mish Talk)

Wholesale inventories in March rose 0.2% as expected by the Econoday consensus. February was revised from 0.4% to 0.3 which will take a tick off GDP first-quarter revisions.

China Commodity Crash Accelerates As Traders "Forced To Destock" (Zero Hedge)

"Iron ore doesn't have good fundamentals," warns one analyst as while the crackdown on leverage in Chinese capital markets (which has tightened liquidity everywhere) is the immediate catalyst, "supply-side pressure is huge as ever, and mills are still seeking to draw down inventories."

Blankfein's Lament: EU Still Faces More Existential Crises (Bloomberg)

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd Blankfein is wondering how many existential crises the European Union has left.

Some Chinese Banks Suspend "Interbank Business" As Regulator Demands That Collateral "Actually Exists" (Zero Hedge)

With "risk" in most of the developed world seemingly a long forgotten four-letter word, as seen by today's plunge in the VIX to a level not seen since 1993, traders hoping for some "risk event" have been confined to the recent turmoil in China, where overnight not only did trade data disappoint, with both imports and exports missing, but bond yields jumped to the highest level since 2015, dragging stocks lower even as the local commodity crash slammed iron ore and copper to new YTD lows.

WTI Bounces Back Above $46 After Biggest Crude Draw Since 2016 (Zero Hedge)

WTI and RBOB prices slipped lower today after EIA raised its 2017 US crude output forecast (and the dollar rallied) along with Libya production headlines.

Devonshire: True Inflation Is Three Times Higher Than Officially Reported (Zero Hedge)

A fascinating, recent report by the Devonshire Research Group, whose recent work on Tesla was featured here one year ago, has moved beyond the micro and tackled on of the most controversial macroeconomic topic possible: what is the true rate of inflation.

Companies

Tesla's soaring stock price is causing investors to overthink everything (Business Insider)

Tesla is a gravity-defying stock. After an epic run over the first quarter of 2017, it reported a predictable titanic loss — and yet shares remain above $300, giving Tesla a market cap larger that Ford and on par with General Motors.

The Long, Hard, Unprecedented Fall of Sears (Bloomberg)

In 1989, Sears Roebuck & Co. ruled America as its biggest retailer. It loomed over rivals from a perch high above Chicago, inside what was once the world’s tallest building—one bearing the company’s name.

Nvidia shares jump as it rides AI and gaming booms (Financial Times)

Shares in US graphics chipmaker Nvidia leaped up 13 per cent in after-hours trading, after it reported results ahead of expectations across a portfolio of products that power gaming PCs and consoles, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars.

ESPN concerns drag on Disney, shares dip (Reuters)

A decline in subscribers and higher programming costs at cash-cow ESPN weighed on shares of Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) on Tuesday, overshadowing a quarterly profit that topped Wall Street estimates.

Gillette just made an unprecedented change to be more like its competitors (Business Insider)

Gillette is facing stiff competition. Now, in an effort to win back customers, it's taking a page straight out of its competitors' playbooks.

Technology

Why the Echo Show could be Amazon’s most disruptive product (Mashable)

You might want to take a close look at Amazon Echo Show, because it’s about to change everything.

Amazon, which is on a product-release tear, revealed on Tuesday its latest Echo device, the roughly 8 x 8-inch, 2 and a half pound, 7-inch-screen-sporting Echo Show.

Amazon's 'Echo Show' Is A Tablet With A Stand You Do Not Need (Forbes)

Amazon's new product, the Echo Show, hit the tech blogs with a thud today — the $229.99 block of plastic looks like a less friendly Chumby that can do more things. The biggest selling point is a video call element that (if the video below is anything to go by) looks about a billion times clearer than any video call I have ever seen.

Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are about to get really real (Roadshow)

OK, I'll be honest, some of the most exciting tech of 2017 doesn't sound all that exciting on the surface. But bear with me, because it's going to be big.

How an Online Grocery Platform Could Reshape Retail as We Know It (Harvard Business Review)

One of the more popular business mantras to hit town recently has been: “Forget products, think platform!” The immediate result has been a world increasingly awash with platforms and, if you aren’t operating one, many will label you a strategy Luddite.

Microsoft builds emergency patch for severe Windows bug (CNet)

Microsoft has released a quickly crafted patch to combat a severe zero-day vulnerability discovered only days ago.

Late Monday, the Redmond giant issued a security advisory for CVE-2017-0290, a remote-code execution flaw affecting its Windows operating system.

Politics

Kushner Family Stands to Gain From Visa Rules in Trump’s First Major Law (NY Times)

It was the first major piece of legislation that President Trump signed into law, and buried on Page 734 was one sentence that brought a potential benefit to the president’s extended family: renewal of a program offering permanent residence in the United States to affluent foreigners investing money in real estate projects here.

White House Knew Flynn Lied, Yates Testifies (NY Times)

Five days into the Trump administration, Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general, hurried to the White House with an urgent concern.

FBI Corrects Comey Testimony On Clinton Aide Huma Abedin (Associated Press)

The FBI on Tuesday corrected the sworn testimony of Director James Comey, who last week told Congress that a top aide to Hillary Clinton had sent "hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband's laptop, including some with classified information.

If you’re 50 or older, your health insurance may get more expensive. (Washington Post)

I’m not trying to scare you, but the GOP’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, may mean the amount you need to save for retirement just got higher.

House Republicans face fiery town halls following healthcare vote (The Guardian)

As House Republicans return to their districts after approving a controversial plan to dramatically reshape the country’s healthcare system, activists on the left are mobilizing at town halls in an effort to save the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law that extended coverage to millions of Americans.

With Obamacare under GOP attack, New York could fight back with a single-payer plan (Salon)

Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act, cutting taxes by $1 trillion for the wealthiest Americans and potentially resulting in as many as 24 million people without health insurance by 2026.

The Knives Are Out for Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (Foreign Policy)

Inside the White House, opponents of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Donald Trump’s second national security advisor, want him out. 

A Conversation About Losing Obamacare With a Former Republican Who Could Have Died Without It (Fusion)

It all happened very fast. Carrie Denny was just a few weeks into a new job as a nurse in an orthopedic surgery wing when she was laid up with bilateral knee injuries. In the course of routine testing, doctors discovered a tumor on her thyroid. They removed it, but came back with a cancer diagnosis.

Republican senator calls for scrutiny of Trump’s business dealings in Russia (Think Progress)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says an exchange he had with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during a hearing on Monday stoked his curiosity about President Trump’s shady business dealings in Russia.

Here’s how Donald Trump’s White House went behind his back on NAFTA (Salon)

Last month, President Donald Trump claimed that he had “received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate.”

Tunnels Aren’t the Only Vision for New Jersey Transit in the Governor’s Race (NY Times)

Philip D. Murphy, a Democratic candidate for governor of New Jersey, stood in front of the Trenton train station, with a New Jersey Transit train that had been delayed 30 minutes behind him, and offered a starkly candid assessment: The state has a transportation crisis, and a new tax might be the only way to tackle it.

Spicer gets cagey about whatever Flynn was up to during his last days on the job (Think Progress)

At just 24 days, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn had the shortest tenure as White House National Security Adviser of anyone to ever hold that post. Now the question is why he got to remain in the job as long as he did.

The EPA is getting rid of 5 scientists and replacing them with energy insiders (Salon)

On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency fired at least five scientists that sat on the agency’s Board of Science Counselors — a major scientific review board, according to the New York Times.

Paul Ryan whined to Seth Myers about his coverage. It was a mistake (Salon)

On the “Late Show” on Monday night, host Seth Meyers revealed that he had received an email from the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan promoting the GOP’s spin on the American Health Care Act.

Trump Fires James Comey as FBI Chief (The Wall Street Journal)

President Donald Trump on Tuesday unexpectedly fired FBI Director James Comey, plunging the capital into confusion and immediately intensifying calls for a special prosecutor to assume control of the highly sensitive investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Leaked Audio Between Trump & Putin – CONAN on TBS (Team Coco)

The Presidents hopped on the phone recently to discuss ice cream, Tetris, and bombing whoever they feel like.

Health and Biotech

Express Scripts to Offer Cheaper Drugs for Uninsured Customers (NY Times)

It is one of the most acute indignities of being uninsured in this country: Those with the least ability to pay are asked to spend the most for their prescription drugs.

Life on the Home Planet

26 photos that show what popular tourist attractions really look like (Insider)

All that glitters is not gold, and famous landmarks on your friends' Instagram or in glossy magazines don't usually look like that in real life.

Hanford Nuclear Reservation tunnel collapse in Washington state leads to state of emergency (Salon)

The collapse of part of a tunnel containing rail cars full of nuclear waste has caused an emergency in Washington state.

The most promising route to ‘mental superpowers’ (BBC)

Many of us have our special ways of dealing with our feelings and emotions. For instance, when we are feeling stressed we might calm our nerves by focusing attention on our breathing. If we have a throbbing toothache, we might try to ease the pain through a meditative technique.

America may extend its laptop ban to cover flights from Europe (The Economist)

The Trump administration is considering extending its ban on laptops and tablets to include flights from Europe, according to CBS news. Security officials originally banned electronic devices larger than a phone on routes from ten Middle Eastern airports in March, citing intelligence that suggested terrorists might be planning to smuggle a bomb on board flights in such gadgets.

Ohio officials: it will take decades for wetlands to recover after major pipeline fluid spill (Think Progress)

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has told Energy Transfer Partners?—?the same company building the Dakota Access Pipeline?—?that it owes the state $430,000 for “inadvertent” damage to pristine state wetlands.