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☆ What it was like to pilot the supersonic Concorde jet
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Francesca Street | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +28 min

It’s said that during the aircraft’s 27 years of service, there were more qualified American astronauts than there were British Airways Concorde pilots. Supersonic flyingA photo of Concorde pilot Barbara Harmer, Concorde at the controls for a London to New York flight in 1993. Concorde: When supersonic travel was a reality 02:32 - Source: CNNThe small pool of Concorde pilots also meant everyone knew everyone. It would take him back to the day he stood at Heathrow, watching the first commercial Concorde flight take off. Future of supersonic flightAlmost two decades since Concorde’s final flight, the allure of supersonic flight hasn’t waned, with companies such as Boom Supersonic plotting plans for Concorde’s successor.

☆ As US and Philippine defense ties grow closer, China drives wedge over Taiwan issue
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Kathleen Magramo | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

But the election of his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, last year has returned relations to a more even keel, in part because Manila has become wary of a more assertive China. Last year the US granted $100 million to boost the Southeast Asian country’s defense capabilities and military modernization. Heydarian added that China has to rethink its strategy towards the Philippines, as the Marcos Jr administration is openly more aligned with the US. China remains one of the top trade partners of the Philippines, while Marcos Jr also continues to negotiate energy and agriculture investments from Beijing. Some worry Marcos Jr might be giving too much access to the US, especially when it comes to bases and facilities close to Taiwan, Heydarian said.

☆ Here are Wednesday's biggest analyst calls: Tesla, Coinbase, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Roku & more
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Michael Bloom | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Here are Wednesday's biggest calls on Wall Street: Needham upgrades TransUnion to buy from hold Needham upgraded the stock after its earnings report Tuesday. Deutsche Bank reiterates Apple as buy Deutsche said it's standing by its buy rating heading into earnings next week. Bank of America downgrades Danaher to neutral from buy Bank of America downgraded the commercial products company after a "disappointing" earnings report. Bank of America reiterates General Motors as buy Bank of America said it's standing by its buy rating after the company's earnings on Tuesday. " Bank of America reiterates Roku as buy Bank of America said it's bullish heading into Roku earnings after the bell on Wednesday.

☆ Morning Bid: Banks calm the horses
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

As U.S. banking giants calm the horses, global investors are now concentrated on world growth and earnings signals more than interest rate rises for direction - with an assumption the latter are near an end anyway. Somewhat relieved analysts marginally brightened their dim outlook for first-quarter U.S. results compared with a week ago. Futures markets now see a more than 80% chance the Fed will execute one final quarter point rate rise next month - reversing it by September. That rate rise would bring the real Fed policy rate - adjusted by headline consumer price inflation - into positive territory for the first time in three years. The dollar extended Friday's rebound as the May rate rise pricing hardened.

Paris CNN —Air France and Airbus have been found not guilty of involuntary homicide in a criminal trial over the 2009 crash of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris that killed 228 passengers and crew. The acquittal was confirmed in an abstract of the court’s ruling provided by the Paris prosecutor’s office. The court did find Airbus and Air France both liable for civil damages for certain failings, though they lacked a “tie of certain causality” with the accident. The 2009 crashMystery initially surrounded the crash of Air France flight 447, in part because it occurred while the plane was flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Problems with pitot tubes had affected Airbus aircraft in the past, but the company had not corrected the problem.

☆ World leaders are lining up to meet Xi Jinping. Should the US be worried?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Simone Mccarthy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Hong Kong CNN —Xi Jinping has had a busy couple of weeks. “(Chinese leaders) believe it’s time now for China to make its strategic plans,” said Li Mingjiang, an associate professor of international relations at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. Beijing has watched uneasily as the war in Ukraine has driven the US and its European allies closer. When French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Beijing last week, Xi drew comparisons between China and France: both “major countries with a tradition of independence,” Xi said, and “firm advocates for a multi-polar world” – or a world without a dominant superpower. But how Beijing navigates these initiatives, observers say, comes down to a bottom line that’s integrally related to Xi’s global ambitions and world view.

RBC Capital Markets anticipates that the next quarter could be choppy for stocks, but the firm shared its list of high-conviction names to navigate the volatility. With these concerns in mind, RBC shared a list of high-conviction stocks that it says are well-positioned to offer upside this quarter. Below are 10 of the names: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and biotech engineering stock Boston Scientific are new additions to RBC's list of high-conviction names. RBC analyst Shagun Singh said Boston Scientific is "positioned to drive consistent double-digit EPS growth," with upcoming device launches and trial data readouts to act as catalysts. On the energy front, RBC named oil company Diamondback Energy as one of its top picks for the quarter.

☆ Morning Bid: Markets labor under recession cloud
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan. If the tight U.S. labor market is finally unwinding, markets suspect the Federal Reserve's job may well done after all - but at the cost of a looming recession. With Wednesday's private sector jobs reading for March and Friday's national payrolls report ahead, U.S. interest rate markets were jolted again on Tuesday by surprisingly soft data on job vacancies that suggested cooling demand for staff. More decisively, the two-year Treasury yield plunged more than 20 basis points intraday to hover just above 3.8% on Wednesday. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

ORLANDO, Florida, April 5 (Reuters) - When U.S. government bonds become the epicenter of global market volatility, investors' room for taking on additional risk shrinks, sucking the oxygen out of their risk budget. The shock blindsided speculative investors who had been positioned for higher U.S. interest rates and yields. The full extent of the turmoil - hedge funds were among those who got crushed - will become clearer as first-quarter readouts emerge. A pension fund's tolerance for risk, and therefore its VaR, will be lower than a hedge fund's. "When you plug a two-year Treasury into any risk model now using past returns models, expected risk will be higher going forward," van Vliet said.

[1/4] Demonstrators protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Britain, in London, Britain March 24, 2023. Netanyahu invited Sunak for an official visit to Israel, the Israeli statement said. 'WE'RE HERE TO PROTEST'In London protesters wanted to talk about Netanyahu's move on the judiciary, which has caused fear at home and abroad for the country's democratic checks and balances. "We're here to protest against Netanyahu, to protest against his attacks on democracy," said Amnon Cohn, who described himself as an Israeli living in London since 2005. "We are more determined than Bibi is," said Liron Rosiner Reshef, an Israeli-born protester in London, using a popular nickname for Netanyahu.

☆ This little-known biotech stock developing treatments for blood disorders could jump 80%, BMO says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Sarah Min | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Investors should take a closer look at Disc Medicine as it develops treatments for blood disorders, according to BMO Capital Markets. Analyst Evan David Seigerman initiated coverage of Disc Medicine with an outperform rating and a $40 price target, saying that the firm's development of bitopertin to treat erythropoietic porphyrias and other blood disorders appears promising. IRON YTD mountain Disc Medicine shares YTD Last year, Disc Medicine went public in a reverse merger with biotechnology company Gemini Therapeutics, trading under the ticker symbol "IRON." Disc Medicine shares are up 8% this year. The analyst's $40 price target means that Disc Medicine shares can jump 84% from Wednesday's closing price.

☆ China's parliament approves changes to speed up 'emergency' laws
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Laurie Chen | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The amendment to the Legislation Law, which governs how laws are enacted, gives the highest body of the national parliament, the roughly 170-member National People's Congress Standing Committee, special powers to pass laws after just one review session. Three years ago, China imposed a national security law on the semiautonomous city of Hong Kong, criminalising a broad range of vaguely defined offences intended to stifle dissent. China has repeatedly brushed off criticism of the law, saying it protects Hong Kong residents' freedoms and only targets a small minority of "criminals" who "endanger national security". The latest draft of the law, published March 5, did not define what constitutes an emergency situation. Reporting by Ryan Woo and Laurie Chen; Editing by Tom Hogue and Stephen CoatesOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ This under-the-radar biotech stock can surge 40% on upcoming cancer treatment data, Wells Fargo says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Sarah Min | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

It's time to buy Exelixis shares ahead of readouts on the biotech firm's cancer treatment, according to Wells Fargo. Analyst Derek Archila initiated coverage of Exelixis with an overweight rating, saying the biotech company's consistent revenue growth and upcoming clarity around the firm's cancer product called cabozantinib will drive upside. "We like cabo's near-term growth prospects and believe upcoming clarity on its [loss of exclusivity] will serve as a catalyst for shares. Exelixis shares are 2% higher this year, after falling 12% in 2022. EXEL 1D mountain Exelixis shares 1-day —CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

☆ Morning Bid: Job runes, China offer sliver of rate hope
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

That certainly ups the ante for Friday's monthly employment report and next week's consumer price index releases. But the rate at which people were leaving jobs voluntarily was falling and layoffs were up. Another pause for thought came from China's February inflation numbers that show annual consumer price rises slowed to just 1%, the lowest rate in a year. More broadly on Thursday, interest rates markets retained their dramatic re-pricing and relatively resilient stock markets tilted negative again. The implied end-2023 rate is now above 5.50% - more than a full percentage point above where it was assumed on February 1.

The Tokyo core consumer price index (CPI), which excludes fresh food but includes fuel costs, exceeded the BOJ's 2% target for nine straight months. The slowdown was mostly due to the effect of government energy subsidies to curb soaring utility bills, the data showed. It marked the fastest year-on-year pace of increase since August 1991, when the index also rose 3.2%. Service inflation, which the BOJ sees as key to achieving sustained wage growth, perked up to 1.3% in February from 1.2% in January, the data showed. Nationwide core consumer prices rose 4.2% in January from a year earlier, hitting a fresh 41-year high, as an increasing number of companies passed on higher costs to households.

This is despite another week of even higher U.S. bond yields and Fed interest rate expectations, and deteriorating relations between the U.S. and China. Perhaps because it had fallen nearly 10% over the preceding four weeks, it was primed for a technical or short-covering rebound. Perhaps stocks are making a bet that policymakers won't raise rates as aggressively as rates markets are implying. Maybe it's a play that rising nominal rates are merely matching inflation and inflation expectations, so policy isn't so tight in real terms and growth isn't suffering. Investors will also be watching the dollar, which rose across the board on Thursday, spurred on by higher U.S. yields.

☆ A risk taken, UK's Sunak announces the Windsor Framework
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Elizabeth Piper | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

But it was secrecy that fostered suspicion among two big hitters in the years-long Brexit debate - the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Northern Ireland's biggest unionist party, and the pro-Brexit Conservative European Research Group (ERG). "I am pleased to report that we have now made a decisive breakthrough, together we have changed the original protocol and are today announcing the new Windsor framework," Sunak told a news conference. Then both former leaders had threatened to rip up the Northern Ireland protocol with legislation in parliament and their administrations had regularly criticised the EU for being overly legalistic and inflexible. Pressing pause on the Northern Ireland Protocol bill which would all but rip up the earlier agreement, he saw solving the Northern Ireland standoff as a concrete "win" for his administration which has struggled to establish itself. But Sunak still has to win over not only some of his lawmakers in the ERG, but more importantly the DUP.

☆ Morning Bid: Hang on a minute
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

And so a speech from New York Fed chief John Williams make give a better steer on current thinking. Markets are now priced for a Fed 'terminal rate' in the 5.25-5.50% range by July and no cut from there by year-end. European central bankers are also talking tough as the region's economies dodge recession and inflation stays high. But geopolitical concerns rankle again ahead of Friday's anniversary, with Russia unilaterally withdrawing from a key nuclear arms control treaty. As G20 finance chiefs meet in India, the world is watching closely the extent of the alliance between Beijing and Moscow.

☆ Morning Bid: Growth trumps rates
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

While there were some questions about seasonal adjustments in the data, economists were impressed that sales growth was pretty broad based and have scrambled to re-crunch first quarter U.S. output forecasts as a result. There may be a more mixed picture from Thursday's data slate on producer prices, housing starts and weekly jobless claims. Even though rates futures and Treasury yields ticked back a bit today, pricing now has Fed policy rates moving as high as 5.25% and staying above 5% all year. And while full-year earnings growth estimates for S&P500 companies have sunk to zero, consensus forecasts are now pencilling in a rebound of almost 12% next year. Uncertainty about the pace of growth and annual tax receipts in April makes it difficult for government officials to predict the exact "X-date", it said.

Two-year Treasury yields hit their highest in three months at 4.65%, now on par with the current Fed policy rate. Morgan Stanley's Matthew Hornbach described the payrolls as a "mood changing" print that's seen markets chase rates higher as if gripped by a sort of reverse FOMO - fear of missing out. Reports circulated last week of swaps and options market activity on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that bet on market rates touching 6%, or at least hedging against that possibility. If that's true, the battle over the terminal rate may now be overtaken by how long the Fed can keep rates higher to achieve its goals. BofA chart on peak rates from fund manager surveyInflationThe opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.

☆ Morning Bid: Corporate scatter
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan. A hail of mega corporate updates distracted stock markets from a confusing macro picture - but offers little more clarity with scattergun fortunes and ambiguous readouts for the wider economy. The flub fed worries that the Google parent is losing ground to rival Microsoft (MSFT.O) in the renewed craze around artificial intelligence. European shares touched a fresh nine-month high on Thursday as Germany's Siemens and UK's AstraZeneca boosted earnings euphoria, while Britain's bank, commodity and pharma heavy FTSE100 hit another record high. Norway's $1.35 trillion sovereign wealth fund said it had recently divested virtually all its remaining shares in the Adani group.

[1/6] German Economy Minister Robert Habeck and French Minister for Economy, Finance, Industry and Digital Security Bruno Le Maire hold a joint news conference in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2023. "It's a process, and in a process you go step by step," Le Maire told reporters. After meetings with Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and White House officials, Habeck and Le Maire emerged with few specifics other than pledges to be clear about their competing green subsidies. Noting the agreement on both sides on the need for transparency on subsidies, Habeck said, "We will (create) a technical group to make this transparency work." But Commerce said she applauded the TTC's work to promote transparency for U.S. and EU semiconductor subsidies and support supply chains.

☆ U.S.-China relations just got more fragile
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Evelyn Cheng | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken indefinitely postponed his visit to Beijing due to a Chinese surveillance balloon flying over the United States. Brown | AFP | Getty ImagesBEIJING — U.S.-China relations look increasingly fragile, analysts say, after a now-downed Chinese balloon forced U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to indefinitely postpone his trip to Beijing. "A key question is why the Biden administration decided to publicize this balloon but not previous [reported] ones," Wildau said. While discussion of the balloon — including memes — circulated on Chinese social media, China's official Chinese-language mouthpieces have been more muted so far. "That alone would mean the Chinese leadership would be more restrained and would not want to let this balloon situation blow out of proportion."

☆ Morning Bid: A quart and two halves
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan. February kicked off on Wednesday without too much trepidation about how all that will pan out. Before the Fed announcement, ADP releases its January private sector employment readout for last month and markets will also scan the December JOLTS job openings report. While markets await the 'Triple-A' of Big Tech releases on Thursday, Meta (META.O) is due to report later today and the dour news from elsewhere in the tech sector kept coming. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Morning bid: No safety net?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

"I just think we need to keep going," Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said. And many forecasters are now wary the Fed will err on the side of tighter policy to ensure inflation is slayed. Markets wobbled on the prospect on Wednesday, with the S&P500 (.SPX) staging its biggest decline of the year so far. At 3.32%, 10-year U.S. Treasury yields fell to their lowest since September. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

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