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☆ Analysis: Bearish fundamentals, buoyant charts complicate outlook for US stocks
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Saqib Iqbal Ahmed | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Technical indicators such as equity price movement largely show stocks are poised to continue a rally that has seen the S&P 500 climb 8% year-to-date, analysts who track them said. TECHNICALLY SPEAKINGThe S&P 500 (.SPX) has traded in a 9.7 percentage point range year-to-date, its narrowest range for comparable periods since 2017. Johnson, who has a year-end S&P 500 target of 4,625, is encouraged by the reversals in downtrends for many U.S. stock indexes. The S&P 500 has traded higher 83% of the time for the full year, returning an average 13.73%, when it hasn't dropped below the preceding year’s December low in the first quarter, a Piper Sandler analysis showed. The S&P 500 is trading at about 18 times 12-month forward earnings estimates compared to its long-term average P/E of 15.6 times, according to Refinitiv Datastream.

☆ Morning Bid: Crowded bonds unnerved
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

This has some wondering if the recent dash for cash and top-rated bonds has become a bit crowded and how much more tightening central banks have to do. As we move into the weeds of the first-quarter U.S. earnings season, it's been a mixed bag so far. That clearly unnerved UK government bonds - where 10 year yields jumped 10bps - but it also jarred sovereign bonds around the world. Elsewhere, further signs of healing were evident in the global bank funding market. Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (8316.T) sold $1 billion of additional tier-1 debt, the first major global bank to sell the risky securities since similar bonds issued by Credit Suisse were wiped out last month.

LONDON, April 19 (Reuters) - If a mega Western recession is coming down the pike in the second half of this year, someone should point it out to the junk bond market. The investment herd seems more convinced than ever that recession is on the way amid tightening bank credit after the March bank stress - even if not all the incoming evidence supports that take. More than a third now see the biggest risk ahead as a bank credit crunch and global recession. And that's with junk spreads more than three times higher than quality corporates. U.S. and European junk bond spreads historicallyBank of America survey on investment grade bonds vs junkCOURAGE AND DECOMPRESSIONThere's little doubt than many investors want to steer well clear, for now at least.

MSCI's Europe index, for example, still trades more than a point below its average historic valuation - with the index priced at less than 13 times its 12-month forward earnings. The top sectoral weighting in the STOXX Europe 50, for example, is healthcare - at almost 23%. With British-based stocks the biggest country weighting in the STOXX Europe index at 26%, the other top four sectors in the index include the food, beverages and tobacco grouping, consumer products, industrial goods and energy. The dollar peaked late last year against most European currencies as the Federal Reserve raced to ratchet up interest rates. Some think the slide in the dollar index of some 12% since last September is barely half of the whole move.

☆ India NSE's IPO plan stumbles at market watchdog's door - sources
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Jayshree P Upadhyay | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has formed an internal view that due to the pending cases it won't approve NSE's application made last year for an IPO, the sources said. “Till the legal and regulatory issues are cleared there is no chance that SEBI will approve NSE's IPO plans,” said one of the sources, who is a senior regulatory official. A delayed NSE IPO will test the patience of its core shareholders - banks, insurance companies and foreign funds - who have been waiting for an exit opportunity in rising markets. The regulator's reluctance to approve NSE's IPO has not been previously reported. These include whether certain brokers made unfair gains due to preferential access to NSE’s trading systems and another lapse in NSE’s trading architecture, the source said.

☆ Sentiment indicators have been at extremes, but investors don't seem in any hurry to take advantage of it
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Bob Pisani | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Sentiment indicators have been at extremes, but investors don't seem in any hurry to take advantage of it. That is a good thing: sentiment indicators are mostly useful at extremes, and when sentiment gets this pessimistic it is usually associated with at least short-term market bottoms. This morning, for example, Lori Calvasina at RBC Capital Markets also pointed out that many sentiment indicators were at extremes. In theory, this is good news: she notes that when sentiment gets this bad, the S & P 500 is up 15% on average over the next 12 months. Other sentiment indicators are also at extremes.

☆ First Citizens buys Silicon Valley Bank
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

First Citizens BancShares has agreed to buy Silicon Valley Bank. The deal includes the purchase of about $72 billion of Silicon Valley Bridge Bank assets at a discount of $16.5 billion. Silicon Valley Bank was shut by regulators on March 10 after a bank run and capital crisis. Silicon Valley Bank was shut by regulators on March 10 after a bank run and capital crisis. —First Citizens Bank (@firstcitizens) March 27, 2023First Citizens said in a Monday statement the transaction is "structured to preserve First Citizens' solid financial position."

London/Oakland, California CNN —First Citizens Bank is buying most of the business of Silicon Valley Bank, the US tech lender that failed earlier this month. Seventeen former branches of SVB will begin operating as “Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank,” on Monday, First Citizens said. The FDIC said First Citizens was getting the $72 billion in SVB loans at a discount of $16.5 billion. “The FDIC estimates the cost of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank to its Deposit Insurance Fund to be approximately $20 billion. It had to be rescued a week ago by bigger rival UBS (UBS) in an emergency takeover orchestrated by the Swiss government.

Companies Deutsche Bank AG FollowNEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) has settled a lawsuit in which it accused two offshore funds of reneging on an agreement to sell it $1.6 billion of claims in the bankruptcy of Bernard Madoff's namesake firm. Incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, the Kingate funds funneled client money to Madoff for many years before his Ponzi scheme collapsed in 2008. The funds sold their claims against the former Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC to Deutsche Bank for 66 cents on the dollar in 2011. But the bank said the Kingate funds later got "sellers' remorse" because the value of the claims rose substantially. The case is Deutsche Bank Securities Inc v. Kingate Global Fund Ltd et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.

☆ Asia hopes for best on banks, much rests with Fed
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Wayne Cole | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Efforts by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to calm nerves seemed to be working with bank shares rallying overnight. The unease left both S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures barely changed. EUROSTOXX 50 futures edged up 0.2%, while FTSE futures rose 0.1%. All of which puts the Fed in a tough position as it decides whether to raise interest rates later today. Two-year Treasury yields were hesitating at 4.13%, having made a remarkable round-trip from 5.085% to 3.635% in just nine sessions.

☆ Asia shares hope for best as Fed decides on rates
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Wayne Cole | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Efforts by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to calm nerves seemed to be working with bank shares rallying overnight. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) added 0.9%, with Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) up 0.3%. All of which puts the Fed in a tough position as it decides whether to raise interest rates later today. Two-year Treasury yields were hesitating at 4.14%, having made a remarkable round-trip from 5.085% to 3.635% in just nine sessions. German two-year yields overnight recording the biggest daily jump since 2008 as markets went back to pricing in more ECB hikes.

☆ Investor pessimism is reaching extremes, and that may be good for markets
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Bob Pisani | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The monthly Bank of America Global Fund Manager Survey shows "investor sentiment close to levels of pessimism seen at lows of past 20 years," according to the survey. This pessimism is consistent with other investor sentiment surveys. The weekly AAII Investor Sentiment Survey, out last Thursday, was at a 6-month low for bullish sentiment and close to the levels of last September, which were near historic lows. Two rules about sentiment indicators: 1) they are contrarian indicators, and 2) they are most useful when the readings are at extremes (as they are now). The firm also noted that other sentiment indicators (money flows, private clients' asset allocation) are not yet in "capitulation" territory.

☆ Bill Gates says OpenAI's GPT is the most important advance in technology since 1980
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Microsoft founder Bill Gates speaks during the Global Fund Seventh Replenishment Conference in New York on September 21, 2022. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says that OpenAI's GPT AI model is the most revolutionary advance in technology since he first saw a modern graphical desktop environment (GUI) in 1980. Now, Gates sees parallels with OpenAI's GPT models, which can write text that resembles human output and generate nearly usable computer code. "The whole experience was stunning," Gates wrote. Gates and Microsoft have close ties to OpenAI, which developed the GPT model.

☆ Treasury yields decline as investors weigh UBS’ takeover of Credit Suisse
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Sophie Kiderlin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

ET, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was down by over six basis points to 3.3319%. U.S. Treasury yields fell on Monday as investors considered the stability of the banking sector after Swiss bank UBS agreed to buy its rival Credit Suisse. Over the weekend, the Swiss National Bank, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority and the Swiss government worked on the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS, the two largest Swiss banks. As part of the deal, the Swiss National Bank and Swiss government also announced they would take measures to support the deal, including a loan of up to 100 billion Swiss francs ($108 billion). Last week, Credit Suisse's biggest investor, the Saudi National Bank, said it could no longer support the Swiss bank financially.

☆ Fed and other central banks try to head off crisis by boosting flow of dollars
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Mark Thompson | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Credit Suisse — one of the 30 most important banks in the global financial system — was bleeding money last week after investor and customer confidence collapsed. Swap lines are agreements between two central banks to exchange currencies. They allow a central bank to obtain foreign currency from the central bank that issues it, and distribute it to commercial banks in their country. During the global financial crisis of 2008 following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, funding markets dried up because of an extreme aversion to risk. From Monday through at least the end of April, the Fed and other central banks will make dollars available on a daily basis, rather than weekly.

☆ Cathie Wood's flagship fund pockets $300 million in fees since its 2014 launch – but her investors haven't been so lucky
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Zahra Tayeb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Cathie Wood's Ark Invest has raked in $310 million in fees on its flagship ARK Innovation ETF fund since its inception, new research shows. ARKK's annual management fees of 0.75% of assets is double the average of actively managed ETF's, per FactSet. The data shows investors have remained loyal to Wood's ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) despite its poor performance in 2022. Per Morningstar data, Wood's fund has lost $9.5 billion in investor money over the years with her risky bets. Wood's earnings from ARKK's management fees are still going strong in the new year.

☆ This half-century old fund seeks out global value and has Warren Buffett's style all over it
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Yun Li | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Warren Buffett has inspired generations of value investors, and one 53-year-old, market-beating mutual fund has his legacy all over it. For almost three decades, starting in 1979, the fund was run by another acolyte of value, Jean-Marie Eveillard. Since 1979, First Eagle Global has returned more than 12% annually, even including the 5% load fee charged on the first $25,000 invested. The fund employs three main elements when it comes to security selection within the universe of global value, Brooker said. When we're not able to find things that make sense to us, that meet our underwriting criteria, we'll wait in cash," Brooker said.

☆ New Zealand launches global fundraiser for post-cyclone reconstruction
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Lewis Jackson | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SYDNEY, Feb 27 (Reuters) - New Zealand will launch an international fundraising appeal for the massive reconstruction work needed after Cyclone Gabrielle tore across the country's north earlier this month, forcing thousands of people into shelters and killing eleven. The appeal will fund longer term recovery projects and target wealthy expatriates, businesses and anyone with affection for New Zealand, said Prime Minister Chris Hipkins on Monday. The appeal will be modeled after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake fundraiser, which collected over NZ$94 million ($57.94 million). A national state of emergency, only the third declared in the country's history, will continue in cyclone-hit regions. ($1 = 1.6223 New Zealand dollars)Reporting by Lewis Jackson; Editing by Simon Cameron-MooreOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Nvidia vs. TSMC: Wall Street pros name their favorite stock as chip battle heats up
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Zavier Ong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has dumped most of its stake in TSMC, just months after buying the Taiwanese chipmaker's stock. TSMC TSMC, meanwhile, is sometimes seen as a barometer of the strength of the U.S. consumer, with Apple among its biggest customers. This is a Game of Thrones battle and AI is here to stay with Nvidia a great play on that front. TSMC is a global chip recovery play that is well positioned with Nvidia in the left lane of innovation," he told CNBC Pro. "TSMC is the short-term play with Nvidia more of the longer-term AI bet."

This would take the rate the ECB pays on bank deposits to the highest level since November 2008, after a steady climb from a record low of -0.5% in July. Reuters GraphicsThe ECB said in December that rates would be increased "at a steady pace" until it is happy inflation is heading back down to its 2% target. BNP Paribas also thought the ECB might take out the reference to a "steady pace" of rate hikes or offset it so that a 50-basis-point increase would be "not predetermined (but) still a possible outcome". And an ECB survey showed banks were tightening access to credit by the most since the 2011 debt crisis - usually the harbinger of lower growth and slowing inflation. To some observers, this meant the ECB would be wise not to commit to any future policy move.

☆ Investors are piling the most cash into European stocks in nearly as year as recession outlook fades
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

European stock funds drew in $3.4 billion last week, the largest inflow since early 2022. Investors want exposure to the euro area as it looks increasingly likely it will avoid a recession. Investors poured in $3.4 billion into European equity funds over the past week, Bank of America said in its Flow Show note published Friday. But demand has been weaker than anticipated, leading to a roughly 70% crash from highs for natural gas prices. EU Economic Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said this week there's "a chance to avoid a deep recession," for the bloc.

☆ India plans to classify clean activities, technologies under a new policy -sources
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Sarita Chaganti Singh | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW DELHI, Jan 27 (Reuters) - India is working on a policy to classify economic activities and technologies into sustainable and non-sustainable categories to help investors looking for green projects, three government officials say. The renewable energy ministry and the finance ministry are working on the draft policy. The officials said the draft framework is the first step in a long process of identifying sustainable projects and phasing out others. The EU also places green investment disclosure obligations on financial companies, pension funds, companies and financial market participants. Last week, India sold its first sovereign green bonds worth a total of 80 billion rupees, at yields below comparable government bonds.

☆ Japanese yen tumbles, bonds rally after BOJ keeps policy ultra easy
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Stella Qiu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The bank, however, maintained ultra-low interest rates, including its 0.5% cap for the 10-year bond yield. The dollar also gained 2.5% against the Japanese yen to 131.4 yen, in its biggest percentage daily rise since March 2020. In a Reuters poll, 97% of economists expected the BOJ to maintain its ultra-easy policy at the meeting. A survey of global fund managers by BofA Securities out on Tuesday showed that expectations of further appreciation in the Japanese yen in January were the highest in 16 years. The dollar index , which measures the safe-haven dollar against six peers, rose 0.4% at 102.84.

☆ Asian shares tentative, Japan yields close to policy cap ahead of BOJ meeting
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Stella Qiu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

SummarySummary Companies Asian shares mixed; Nikkei up 0.6%Markets eye change to yield policy from BOJ meeting on WedJapan yields retreat from policy cap; Yen eases from 7-mth highOil extend gains on China optimismSYDNEY, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Asian shares were mixed on Wednesday while Japanese yields hugged a policy cap, with markets anxiously awaiting a pivotal Bank of Japan (BOJ) meeting that could see the world's third largest economy shift away from decades of ultra-low interest rates. In early Wednesday trade, however, the 10-year yield fell to 0.485% before returning to 0.5%. China's blue chips (.CSI300) rose 0.2%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index (.HSI) was 0.2% lower. It has been undermined by falling U.S. bond yields as markets wager the Federal Reserve can be less aggressive in hiking rates. The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose slightly to 3.5402% from its U.S. close of 3.535%, partly in anticipation of the BOJ tweaking its policy.

☆ Asian shares mixed, yen tumbles after BOJ keeps yield policy unchanged
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Stella Qiu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

read moreThe 10-year yield stayed at 0.5100% on Wednesday. In a Reuters poll, 97% of economists expected the BOJ to maintain its ultra-easy policy at the meeting. Mahjabeen Zaman, head of FX Research at ANZ, now expects any further rises in the Japanese yen might have to be delayed until April when the new BOJ governor assumes position. A survey of global fund managers by BofA Securities out on Tuesday showed that expectations of further appreciation in the Japanese yen in January were the highest in 16 years. After Bank of Japan decision, the dollar strengthened 2.4% to 131.18 yen , pulling away from Monday's seven-month low of 127.21 yen.

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