Author: BlackMask Financial

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Stocks clamber up from 4-week low, dollar hovers beneath 10-week high

LONDON, June 21 (Reuters) – Global stocks recovered some losses after hitting a four-week low on Monday as investors digested last week’s surprise hawkish shift by the U.S. Federal Reserve, while the dollar hovered below a 10-week high. Shares of banks, energy firms and other companies that tend to be sensitive to the economy’s fluctuations have fallen sharply since the Fed’s meeting on Wednesday, when the central bank caught investors off guard by anticipating two quarter-percentage-point rate increases in 2023. Stocks in Asia took their cue from Wall Street’s falls on Friday but European shares bucked the trend, with the pan-European STOXX 600 index up 0.3% by mid-morning trade in London. U.S. stock futures also moved firmly into positive territory, suggesting gains at the open on Wall Street later in the day.

“The interesting part about this correction is that it was lagged, so it took a while for the market to sort through the news,” said Sebastien Galy, senior macro strategist at Nordea Asset Management.

“The situation in reality is actually pretty good – the Fed is stabilizing inflation…Cyclical sectors may have overshot the market in the short term and so you may have a bit of pressure on the sector.” St. Louis Fed President James Bullard further fuelled the sell-off on Friday by saying the shift toward faster policy tightening was a “natural” response to economic growth and particularly inflation moving quicker than anticipated as the country reopens from the coronavirus pandemic. “The Fed’s pivot to begin the tightening discussion caught most by surprise, but markets began discounting this inevitable process months ago in our view,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a report. “It’s exactly what the mid-cycle transition is all about, and fits nicely with our narrative for choppier equity markets and a 10-20% correction for the broader indices this year.” Several Fed officials have speaking duties this week, including Chair Jerome Powell, who testifies before Congress on Tuesday. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde speaks before the European Parliament on Monday.Nick Note: of course you broker fucks you…  As you know we fuck back…….. We took what the market had to give… Now we wait and watch…..

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US pulling anti-missile systems from Middle East – report

https://youtu.be/bB9DIwEeEhk

air defence system in action real us military anti missile defense system | iron dome israel -Arma 3

The United States has started to significantly reduce the number of its anti-missile systems in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reported citing officials in the Biden administration. The report noted that the Pentagon is in the process of withdrawing eight Patriot anti-missile batteries from Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, where the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system is also being pulled. According to officials, the decision to withdraw the weaponry from the region comes as the Biden administration wants to focus on countering China. Nick Note: Why would you take out DEFENSIVE weapons in one of the worlds hot spots. Why because Bernie and Obama wants them gone……

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Pfizer/BioNTech shot more effective than Sinovac – study

People who are vaccinated against COVID-19 with BioNTech’s vaccine were found to have “substantially higher” levels of antibodies than those who received Sinovac’s jab, the South China Morning Post reported on Saturday, citing a Hong Kong study.

People who are vaccinated against COVID-19 with BioNTech’s vaccine were found to have “substantially higher” levels of antibodies than those who received Sinovac’s jab, the South China Morning Post reported on Saturday, citing a Hong Kong study.  Some who received the Sinovac vaccine might need a third booster shot as well, the newspaper said, citing lead researcher Professor Benjamin Cowling, an epidemiologist with the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The government-commissioned study was conducted by HKU’s school of public health and involved tracking the antibody responses of 1,000 people who received either vaccine, the report added.Earlier this week, officials in Indonesia warned that more than 350 medical workers have caught COVID-19 despite being vaccinated with Sinovac and dozens have been hospitalized, raising concerns about its efficacy against more infectious variants of the virus.

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Wall Street closes mixed as Nasdaq hits all-time high

Major stock markets in the United States ended Thursday’s trading session mixed, with Nasdaq 100 reaching a record high at the close, bolstered by tech and chip stocks. Google Cloud unveiled it is partnering with AMD on their new technology for scale-out workloads, while NVIDIA announced that it is investing $100 million into the United Kingdom’s largest supercomputer. The Nasdaq 100 closed 1.29% in the green, with Atlassian Corp increasing 5.65%. The Dow Jones rebounded slightly, but couldn’t recover from its earlier drop, ending the session 0.62% lower, as Caterpillar Inc. declined 3.55%. The S&P 500 closed flat. The euro declined 0.77% against the dollar trading for $1.19027 at 4:02 pm ET.

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Fed keeps interest rate steady

The United States Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that the members of its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted unanimously to leave the key interest rate unchanged near zero. The central bank stated that the indicators of the country’s economic activity and employment have strengthened amid rising vaccinations and strong policy support. Even the most pandemic-affected sectors have shown improvement, albeit they remain weak, the committee said. Additionally, the Fed warned that inflation has climbed up, but attributed the increase to “transitory factors.” Nevertheless, the headline inflation expectation for this year has been raised to 3.4%, while the majority of FOMC members now predict two rate hikes in 2023.

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Five U.S. states had coronavirus infections even before first reported cases:study

June 15 (Reuters) – At least seven people in five U.S. states were infected with the novel coronavirus weeks before those states reported their first cases, a new government study showed. More than 24,000 blood samples taken for a National Institutes of Health research program between Jan. 2 and March 18, 2020 were analyzed and seven participants reported antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The positive samples came from Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the researchers said. (Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

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US industrial production up 0.8% in May

US industrial production up 0.8% in May, factory output 0.9%
WASHINGTON — Surging output of cars, trucks and auto parts pulled U.S. factory production up 0.9% in May. Adding utilities and mines, overall U.S. industrial production climbed 0.8% in May from April, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday. Auto production jumped 6.7% despite ongoing problems arising from a shortage of computer chips. Production rose 1.2% at mines last month and 0.2% at utilities. American industry is rebounding from the coronavirus recession along with the rest of the U.S. economy. The Institute for Supply Management, an association of purchasing managers, reported that manufacturing activity rose in May for the 12th straight month despite supply chain problems and labor shortages.

US retail sales down 1.3% in May

Retail sales in the United States dropped 1.3% in May compared to the previous month, according to a report by the US Census Bureau released on Tuesday. The figure was below expectations, which put the decrease at around 0.8%. Total retail sales for May stood at $620.2 billion. On a yearly basis, sales increased 28.1% in May. Total sales for the period between March 2021 and May 2021 were up 36.2% compared to the same period in 2020.

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US producer prices up 0.8% in May

https://youtu.be/N-ab9sD3E7o

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wholesale prices, boosted by rising food costs, increased 0.8% in May, and are up by a record amount over the past year, another indication that inflation pressures are rising since the economy has begun to re-open following the pandemic lockdowns. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that the monthly gain in its producer price index, which measures inflation pressures before they reach consumers, followed a 0.6% increase in April and a 1% jump in March. Food prices rose a sizabel 2.6% while energy costs were up 2.2%. Over the past 12 months, wholesale prices are up 6.6%, the largest 12-month increase on records going back to 2010. The gain in wholesale prices followed a report last week that consumer prices rose 0.6% in May with prices over the past year surging by 5%, the biggest 12-month gain in more than a decade. Nick Note: The children are confused on something they have never seen before… This is a reflation trade in a modern age. Something never seen before///////////////////// This is no accident they are by design trying to put the masses into inflation hysteria. In the panic they will buy stupid shit the huskers have for them and in a year they will lose their. Lumber has fallen in the past week 40%.  The saw mills are opening up like gang busters… get this to many of them.. It will be a slaughter of all the people who mistaken reflation for inflation

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Investors see transitory inflation and peaceful Fed taper – BofA survey

Taper tantrum remains the top tail risk for the market
Some interesting tidbits from the latest BofA survey:
  • 72% of managers believe that inflation is a temporary phenomenon
  • 63% of managers believe that the Fed may begin to wind down QE in Aug/Sept
  • Long commodities overtook Bitcoin as ‘most crowded trade’
  • 81% of investors still believe cryptocurrency is in “bubble” territory

LONDON (Reuters) – The majority of investors surveyed by BofA believe inflation is transitory and expect the U.S. Federal Reserve to signal a dial back in monetary stimulus by September, the investment bank said on Tuesday. Unprecedented stimulus sparked worries about inflation earlier this year, driving U.S. 10-year borrowing costs to 1.8% in March and spooking stock markets. But those concerns have abated recently, pushing stocks to record highs and benchmark U.S. bond yields back below 1.5%. “Investors (are) bullishly positioned for permanent growth, transitory inflation and a peaceful Fed taper,” said Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at BofA, adding that 63% of the investors believe Fed will signal a taper by September.

Some 72% of investors said inflation was transitory, according to the June BofA survey.

Still, inflation and a “taper tantrum” — a selloff related to the Fed scaling back its quantitative easing programme — remained the top tail risks for markets, BofA’s survey of 224 fund managers with $667 billion in assets under management showed. BofA said the investment cycle was shifting from early to mid-cycle and that investors don’t expect a recession until 2024 at the earliest.Investors said value stocks, so-called because they trade at …

Though the majority of investors in the survey said equities were not in a bubble, BofA said positioning was peaking with a near-record 62% of investors “overweight” on stocks.

Unprecedented stimulus measures to tackle the COVID-19- induced recession have now sparked worries about inflation, prompting investors to raise their rate hike expectations. Worries that the U.S. Federal Reserve would scale back – or “taper” – its quantitative easing programme was seen as the biggest risk among investors. Discussions about a minimum global corporate tax rate and a rise in the corporate tax rate in the United States in the past few weeks have soured the outlook for equities. Investors’ cash allocation rose to 4.1% last week versus 3.8% in February, the survey showed.After soaring 82% from March 2020 lows and scaling $90 trillion in market capitalisation, world stocks are holding up near record highs. Still, two-thirds of the 200 panellists with $553 billion in assets under management said U.S. equities were in a late-stage bull market. Only 7% think U.S. stocks were in a bubble. Six out of ten investors surveyed by BofA now expect a rise short-term rates in the next 12 months, the highest since January 2019. But they expect a more than 10% pullback in stocks if U.S. 10-year Treasury yields hit above 2.1%. The benchmark 10-year yield is now hovering near 1.70%, holding below a 14-month high of 1.776% reached on March 30.