Financial Markets and Economy
China Risks Spoiling Global Markets Party as Stocks Tumble Again (Bloomberg)
While global risk appetite returned on Monday on the heels of France’s presidential election, shares in China bucked the trend, dropping the most in three months. The Shanghai Composite Index has lost almost 5 percent since its mid-April peak, worse than all other national benchmarks in the world.
The currency trades up 1.2% at 1.0859 versus the dollar, and is flirting with its best close in five months, following the French election.
Here’s What Analysts Are Saying About the First Round of French Elections (Bloomberg)
Investors are cheering the results of the first round of voting in France’s presidential elections after centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen emerged victorious from the five-way race.
China Just Gave Perhaps Its Strongest Response Yet to Trump’s Steel Probe (Reuters)
Washington's move to probe steel imports could trigger a trade dispute between the United States and its major trading partners, who are likely to take retaliatory steps, the official China Daily said in an editorial on Monday.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Saturday called on the International Monetary Fund to enhance surveillance of its members' exchange rates and external imbalances, as large trade imbalances would hamper "free and fair" trade.
China’s credit excess is unlike anything the world has ever seen (South China Morning Post)
From a global macroeconomic perspective, we encourage readers to consider that the world is experiencing an extended, rolling process of deflating its credit excesses. It is now simply China’s turn.
China is squeezing North Korea – but not too hard (CNN)
China wields huge influence over the North Korean economy, accounting for more than 80% of its smaller neighbor's foreign trade and serving as its main gateway to the rest of the world.
Copper Sends Mixed Signals on World Economy as Bulls Do a Runner (Bloomberg)
Money managers’ long-only positions in the metal, often used as a barometer of global economic health due to its widespread use, are at their lowest since the U.S. election, according to the latest weekly data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
European Stocks Rally With CAC 40 After French Election Result (Bloomberg)
France led gains in European equities as investors speculated that pro-growth centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron will win the country’s presidential election after he made it through to the second round.
Oil Halts Five-Day Slide as Markets Rally and OPEC Keeps Cutting (Bloomberg)
Oil rose for the first time in six days as an OPEC-led committee was said to back prolonging supply cuts and as other markets rallied after the first round of French presidential elections.
China stocks post worst day this year as regulators tighten grip (Reuters)
China stocks tumbled more than 1 percent on Monday in their worst day this year amid signs that Beijing will tolerate further market volatility as regulators increasingly clamp down on shadow banking and speculative trading.
Top Iron Ore Forecaster Says Prices Will Sink Back Below $50 (Bloomberg)
Iron ore is destined to retreat back below $50 a metric ton next year as supplies go on rising, according to the top forecaster, who warned that weakening prices will probably encourage the sale of inventories.
U.K. Gilt Yields Rise as French Election Sparks Risk Rally (Bloomberg)
U.K. 10-year gilt yields rose the most since January as centrist Emmanuel Macron and nationalist Marine Le Pen’s progressed into the second round of France’s Presidential election, boosting the chances of a market-friendly outcome.
China policymakers bullish on economy, cite strong first-quarter GDP, stable yuan (Reuters)
Policymakers in China are pushing a bullish message on the world's second-biggest economy after a solid first quarter, pointing to a slow down in capital outflows and a stable yuan after a selloff last year stoked fears of instability.
The Sustainable Economy (Harvard Business Review)
No one these days seriously denies the need for sustainable business practices. Even those concerned about only business and not the fate of the planet recognize that the viability of business itself depends on the resources of healthy ecosystems—fresh water, clean air, robust biodiversity, productive land—and on the stability of just societies. Happily, most of us also care about these things directly.
Natural Gas Is Eerily Quiet As It Grinds Its Way Towards $3 (Andrew Hecht)
It was a very quiet week in the natural gas market as the May NYMEX futures contract traded in a range from $3.0820 to $3.2490 on the active month May NYMEX futures contract.
Wall Street gears up for busiest earnings week in years (Reuters)
Corporate America is set to unleash its biggest profit-reporting fest in at least a decade next week, with more than 190 members of the S&P 500 index delivering quarterly scorecards, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices data.
America's Real Estate Is Booming, But Is It A Bubble? (DH Taylor)
The existing homes sales was released Friday morning. The number surged above expectations. The housing market is the strongest game in America's economy. The release made me want to take a more-than cursory look at what was going on in housing.
Trading VIX Update – Long Volatility Trade Was Short-Lived (Options Trader, Seeking Alpha)
The first round of French elections went pretty much according to what polls were suggesting and VIX futures have moved significantly lower from Friday's closing levels.
Be Very Afraid (Bram de Haas, Seeking Alpha)
I have highlighted this ratio in two separate recent pieces (here and here)
Tudor Jones adds a new piece to the puzzle by identifying the rise of risk parity as a strategy as a potential accelerant in a sell-off.
Want to Invest in the $6 Billion Marijuana Industry? Here Are 3 Stocks You Can Buy (Inc.)
There's no question, legal marijuana is a growth industry, in every sense of the word. Legal cannabis sales reached $6.7 billion in 2016, and experts predict that number may triple now that California has voted to legalize recreational use. Bloomberg forecasts that the industry may reach $50 billion in the next 10 years.
Kinder Morgan: It's The Permian, The Permian, And The Permian (Long Player, Seeking Alpha)
The three most important things in real estate are location, location and location. Well sometimes the three most important things to consider when investing are location, location, and location. Sometimes, management appears to be focused on one location because the project or projects are far enough along to be revealed to shareholders.
Target2 and Secret Bailouts: Will Germany be Forced Into a Fiscal Union with Rest of Eurozone? (MishTalk)
Under the ECB’s QE program, which started in March 2015, eurozone members’ central banks buy private market securities for €1.74 trillion ($1.84 trillion), with more than €1.4 trillion to be used to purchase their own countries’ government debt.
"The Retail Bubble Has Now Burst": A Record 8,640 Stores Are Closing In 2017 (Zero Hedge)
The devastation in the US retail sector is accelerating in 2017, and in addition to the surging number of brick and mortar retail bankruptcies, it is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the soaring number of store closures.
Deutsche Bank: "It Was Good While It Lasted" (Zero Hedge)
It all started in February, when we first reported that something unexpected had happened: for reasons that were at the time unknown, the global credit impulse had unexpectedly tumbled, turning negative, a move which we predicted would result in a steep slide in the "soft" economic data, end the "reflation" optimism and unleash a wave of dovishness from the Fed.
Visualizing The Evolution Of The American Economy Over The Past 50 Years (Zero Hedge)
The American economy and the industries that power it have experienced fascinating change over the last half century. An interesting way to track that change is by following the largest, most powerful companies in the United States has they make their way up and down the annual Fortune 500 list.
Companies
JAB Puts Jimmy Choo, Bally Up for Sale to Focus on Coffee (Bloomberg)
Investment firm JAB put shoemakers Jimmy Choo Plc and Bally International AG up for sale, focusing on its growing food and coffee operations and seeking to benefit from a rebound in sales of luxury footwear and accessories.
How to make Twitter profitable (Tech Crunch)
For better and sometimes worse, Twitter is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Twitter has arguably played a critical role in at least two of the defining political upheavals of our era: The Arab Spring and the election of a political outsider, Donald Trump, as president of the United States.
Technology
Netflix to raise $1 billion through debt offering to fund new content and other ‘strategic transactions’ (Venture Beat)
Netflix has announced that it intends to raise €1 billion — a smidgen more than $1 billion (USD) when converted at today’s rate — via a senior note debt offering for “general corporate purposes,” which include “content acquisitions, capital expenditures, investments, working capital and potential acquisitions, and strategic transactions,” according to a statement issued by the company.
Tim Cook threatened to kick Uber out of App Store over iPhone tagging (The Telegraph)
Uber was threatened with removal from the iPhone's App Store after the car-hailing company bypassed Apple's rules by tagging iPhones that had deleted its app.
Now you can buy TV ads through Google’s DoubleClick (Tech Crunch)
Google is announcing that advertisers can now buy traditional TV advertising through the DoubleClick Bid Manager.
Driverless cars trial set for UK motorways in 2019 (BBC News)
The cars will communicate with each other about any hazards and should operate with almost full autonomy – but will have a human on board as well.
Woman says she suffered 2nd-degree burns after her Fitbit exploded (ABC News)
Concerns this morning over a popular fitness device a Milwaukee woman says her fit fit flexed to bracelet exploded while she was reading a book. The device apparently melted right on her arm look at that. How we might be treated in the emergency room for second degree burns a company is investigating but says this is a first hit its safety complained that they are aware.
Scott Galloway on the biggest thing in tech in 2017: Amazon could eliminate the existence of brands with voice technology (Business Insider)
Scott Galloway is a marketing professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and the founder of business intelligence firm L2.
Completed wants to take on LinkedIn with a Yelp-style rating model (Tech Crunch)
If Black Mirror is anything to go by, rating everyone around you isn’t always a great idea, but Completed wants to make it easier to rate and rank the business professionals around you. It’s kind of like Yelp, but instead of rating companies, you’re rating the people within the businesses.
Elon Musk's new plan to save humanity from AI (CNN)
In October 2014, Musk ignited a global discussion on the perils of artificial intelligence. Humans might be doomed if we make machines that are smarter than us, Musk warned. He called artificial intelligence our greatest existential threat.
'iPhone 8' Tsunami Coming: Morgan Stanley Raises OLED Phone Forecast, Despite Delays (Forbes)
Apple's shift to the OLED iPhone is apparently so massive that Morgan Stanley upped its forecast of the displays used on that phone by a whopping 2X this past week. But delays are also baked into the forecast.
If You Love Machine Learning, You Should Check Out General Electric (The Motley Fool)
I know, I know. There are many flashy start-ups and technology giants touting their ability to feed vast stores of data to computers to arrive at solutions more quickly and accurately than human counterparts.
Politics
Trump visits a Trump-branded property for the 12th weekend in a row (The Washington Post)
Since his first trip to Mar-a-Lago in early February, the longest stretch Donald Trump has gone without visiting one of the properties that is part of his private business empire has been six days. From March 27 to April 1, he didn’t spend time at Mar-a-Lago or at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida or at Trump National in Virginia or at his hotel down the street from the White House.
Obama Steps Back Into Public Life, Trying to Avoid One Word: Trump (NY Times)
Former President Barack Obama will return to his adopted home on Monday for his first public event since leaving the White House, holding a conversation with six young people in front of an audience at the University of Chicago.
Farmers Fear Losing Immigrant Workers Under Trump Crackdown (Associated Press)
The head of Bethel Heights Vineyard looked out over the 100 acres of vines her crew of 20 Mexicans had just finished pruning, worried about what will happen if the Trump administration presses ahead with its crackdown on immigrants.
Congress Aims to Avoid Shutdown as Trump Presses for 100-Day Wins (NBC News)
Congress returns from a two-week break facing a deadline to keep the government operating while President Donald Trump presses harder for some legislative accomplishments as his first 100 days in office wind to a close.
Will the Government Be Open in a Week? Here Are the Dividing Lines (NY Times)
Congressional leaders and White House officials have steered the nation to the brink of a government shutdown that virtually all parties agree would be a terrible idea.
Bloomberg To World Leaders: Ignore Trump On Climate (Associated Press)
New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg urged world leaders not to follow President Donald Trump's lead on climate change and declared his intention to help save an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions.
Misfires In Trump's AP Interview (Associated Press)
In an Associated Press interview, President Donald Trump claimed more progress than he's achieved on his 100-day plan and showed he was not completely familiar with what he had promised in that "contract" with voters.
Bernie’s brilliance: Sen. Sanders sums up Republicans’ entire economic model in one word (Alternet)
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ multi-state unity tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez continued for a third day in Miami Wednesday, where he spoke to a crowd of approximately 2,000 at the James L. Knight Center.
Justice Department warns 9 'sanctuary' jurisdictions they may lose funding (USA Today)
The Department of Justice on Friday sent nine local governments letters that warned they may lose federal funding because of their "sanctuary" policies restricting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Health and Biotech
Study links diet soda to stroke and dementia risks (UPI)
New research suggests artificially sweetened drinks like diet soda may be putting the brains of imbibers at increased risk of dementia and stroke. The new study was published last week in the journal Stroke.
Life on the Home Planet
30 terrifying before and after images of climate change (SFGate)
The first-ever March for Science happened Saturday in hundreds of cities across the country, rallying against what many see as an emerging disregard for the study of the natural world and the answers it provides.
Lawsuit Alleges Fox News Bosses Forced Black Employees to Arm Wrestle White Co-Workers (Vice)
A letter drafted by former Fox News Network employees suing their past employer alleges that black employees were forced to arm wrestle their white co-workers.
The United States is the third most populous nation on Earth, with about 319 million inhabitants. So it's no surprise the country uses a lot of resources — and makes an incredible amount of waste.
