https://youtu.be/yc_7n7my7ek

Shares in BioNTech BNTX, 2.80% surged 8% in premarket trading on Monday, after the German biotechnology group reported first-quarter earnings. Jointly with Pfizer PFE, 0.88% 0Q1N, -2.43%, BioNTech co-developed the first COVID-19 vaccine to receive the green light from regulators following large-scale clinical trials. The group reported revenue of €2.05 billion ($2.49 billion) in the first three months of the year, outpacing expectations for €1.7 billion, according to FactSet consensus. Revenue in the same period in 2020 was €27.7 million. Net profit surged €1.13 billion in the first quarter of 2021, up from €53.4 million in 2020. BioNTech said that it had supplied more than 450 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to 91 countries or territories as of May 6, with signed agreements for more than 1.8 billion doses in 2021. The estimated revenue from COVID-19 vaccine deliveries, based on the currently signed contracts, is €12.4 billion. The group said there was no evidence that its COVID-19 vaccine needed to be adapted to deal with variants of the virus that have been identified. Nick Note: this puts the P/E ratio at eight times earnings. As far as the cow kings making this vaccine…. Really. One machine they need costs 200 million dollars and their is a long lead time. Give India the patent????? This makes me want to open a steak restaurant in Deli!

https://youtu.be/8VRjXgQv7AU

It’s all very simple. The economy isn’t strong enough for the Federal Reserve to taper stimulus, therefore stay-at-home tech shares will rally. And any efforts to heal the economy are likely to drive up inflation, meaning banks and airlines will benefit. Such is the can’t-lose logic underpinning American stocks in May 2021, almost 14 months since the pandemic crashed the market and left an 8 million-job hole in the U.S. labor market. To strategists at JPMorgan Chase, now is no time to doubt equities — as long as Fed Chair Jerome Powell and President Joe Biden are in charge of the recovery. Anyone looking for confirmation need only recall Friday’s reaction to one of the largest downside misses on record for a U.S. employment report. Small caps surged, buoyed after President Biden used Friday’s numbers as justification for his multi-trillion fiscal aid package. The Nasdaq 100 also jumped as investors took April’s jobs whiff to mean that the Fed won’t be turning off the taps anytime soon, keeping rates low and helping to sustain sky-high tech valuations. “It doesn’t hurt equities to know the Fed is still the backdrop with lower rates for longer,” Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at LPL Financial. “The stay-at-home and the tech names are going to get a little bit of a bid here on worries about the reopening but I think it’s more of a near-term blip and the bigger cyclical names will still take the baton over the coming months.” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said as much, telling Bloomberg Television that Friday’s print validates the central bank’s new outcome-based approach — the idea that policy makers won’t change anything based on economic forecasts, but actual data. Every sector in the S&P 500 rallied in the aftermath, with tech vying with cyclical energy and industrial shares for the top spot. The Russell 1000 Value Index and its growth counterpart both ended Friday 0.8% higher, after value outperformed every day this week. Meanwhile, JPMorgan strategists led by Marko Kolanovic are doubling down on the reflation trade. Just days after warning that many money managers need to quickly switch gears from their deflationary playbook or risk an “inflation shock,” Kolanovic recommended clients increase their tilt toward cyclical and value assets. He advised investors to cut holdings in cash and credit, using the money to buy commodities and stocks. “We expect a strong pickup in inflation this year, which the market will likely be slow to recognize and is poorly positioned for,” Kolanovic and his colleagues wrote in a note Friday. “A combination of boomy global growth and significant bottleneck price pressures should keep inflation on an upward trajectory while most central banks remain committed to their very accommodative stances and are looking through the inflation pickups.” And even for all the hand-wringing over inflation, the latest batch of quarterly reports suggests it’s already here and helping corporate America. Faced with rising prices for everything from lumber to oil to labor and computer chips, chief executive officers have cut costs and boosted prices for their products. As a result, first-quarter income from S&P 500 companies is jumping five times as fast as sales, data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence show. Based on actual results and analyst estimates for those yet to report, profits probably surged to an all-time high of $48.21 a share. That’s 13% above the record set in 2018 of $42.79. The next test for the equity market’s cheer comes in Wednesday’s inflation data, which is expected to show that price pressures jumped by the most on an annual basis since 2011. But given that Fed chief Powell has said that the central bank will need to see a “string” of strong data before shifting their stance, it’s likely that April’s payroll miss was a big enough blow to keep them on the sidelines. “It justifies the Fed, it keeps them from having their tapering discussion or thinking about raising rates,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.. “That by and large is supportive for equity markets.” Nick Note: the reflation rally is alive and well. And the truth is mega corporations are making a killing. Ma and Pop business can not compete, do not have access to capital and frankly are completely befuddled……

TOLD YOU SO

• CDC updated its guidance on how coronavirus spreads to include transmission through fine particles that travel more than 6FT through the air, or aerosols
• Experts have warned for months that it likely spread this way, not just through close contact and ‘droplets’ 
• It comes after the CDC said that fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks outside, but amid confusion over how to tell who is and isn’t vaccinated  

U.S. health officials have finally acknowledged that coronavirus is airborne and can travel more than six feet in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines updated Friday.  ‘COVID-19 spreads when an infected person breathes out droplets and very small particles that contain the virus. These droplets and particles can be breathed in by other people or land on their eyes, noses, or mouth,’ the guidance reads. ‘People who are closer than 6 feet from the infected person are most likely to get infected.’  Previously, the CDC warned that coronavirus spread primarily through close contact, coughs and sneezes, not through what’s known as ‘airborne transmission.’  Viruses that are airborne are tiny enough to travel farther distances as aerosols, rather than larger ‘droplets.’  Evidence has mounted for months that coronavirus travels this way, but the CDC largely punted on the issue, saying it was still assessing the data, until now.  The agency’s advice also continues to move away from warning about the risk of contracting the virus from surfaces, though the new guidance does acknowledge their potential to become contaminated. The CDC acknowledged back in October that there was the possibility of airborne transmission, but downplayed this risk, saying that the risk of transmission was low at distances greater than six feet all though such cases had been documented.  Indoor settings among close contacts remain the primary hotbed for the spread of coronavirus. The CDC’s new guidance at last acknowledges how the virus can travel long distances in a fine mist and inhaled. With plenty of anecdotal stories of people mysteriously developing COVID-19 without any known close contacts being infected, aerosol transmission seemed like it would inevitably be recognized as a mode of spread. CDC’s updates also come at a poignant moment, a week after it advised that fully vaccinated people can safely go without a mask for just about any outdoor activity, regardless of the vaccination status of those around them – unless they are in a crowd.  However, the agency still says that unvaccinated people need to continue to wear masks outdoors, unless they are exercising with members of their own household or with fully vaccinated friends and family. It also said that fully vaccinated people can ditch their masks during small indoor gatherings with other fully vaccinated people – which President and first lady Joe and Jill Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris were pictured doing for the first time in the past two weeks.   The change was long-anticipated and welcome, but also left confusion in its wake because the U.S. does not require people to carry proof of vaccination, meaning there’s no way to tell who is and isn’t vaccinated.  Like any form of transmission, aerosol transmission is less likely to occur outdoors than in.  But the newly articulated warning about the ability of the virus to spread further than six feet in fine particles comes at a time when more Americans – vaccinated or unvaccinated – are going maskless. The CDC has finally removed language specifying that the virus spreads with ‘close contact.’  And many experts have said that the CDC has been slow to change much of its guidance throughout the pandemic.  ‘CDC. has now caught up to the latest scientific evidence, and they’ve gotten rid of some old problematic terms and thinking about how transmission occurs,’ Virginia Tech aerosol expert Linsey Marr told the New York Times.  Experts clarified that the risk of aerosol spread of coronavirus is still very low outdoors because ample space and wind tend to quickly carry away and disperse particles of the virus.  That means that you’re less likely to come into contact with any viral particles and, if you do, the concentration is less likely to be enough to infect you because the risk of contracting the virus increases with the volume you encounter.  But if you are indoors, especially in a poorly ventilated room, the virus is liable to linger in the air and remain a threat – a danger the CDC has finally acknowledged. The new information has significant implications for indoor environments, and workplaces in particular, Dr. Michaels said. Virus-laden particles “maintain their airborne properties for hours, and they accumulate in a room that doesn’t have good ventilation.” “There’s more exposure closer up,” Dr. Michaels said. “But when you’re further away, there’s still a risk, and also these particles stay in the air.” Donald Milton, an aerosol scientist at the University of Maryland, agreed that federal officials should provide better guidelines for keeping workplaces safe.

“We need better focus on good respirators for people who have to be close to other people for long periods of time,”

Dr. Milton said. “A surgical mask, even if it’s tucked in on the edges, is still not really going to give you enough protection if you’re elbow to elbow all day long with other people.”

Health care workers, bus drivers and other workers may also require respirators, Dr. Michaels said. Customers in retail stores should continue to maintain distance from one another and to wear masks, he added; good ventilation is paramount in these settings. Nick Note: finally vindicated. I guess my ugly mask with the custom ULPA filter really saved lives… Do not let your guard down especially in crowd fuckfests

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said a rapid U.S. economic recovery would boost overall global growth, but more work was needed to shore up weaknesses the global COVID-19 crisis exposed in the non-bank financial sector, supply chains and social safety nets. Yellen on Tuesday told leaders of the IMF and the World Bank that the Biden Administration had decided to “go big” with its COVID-19 response to avert the negative “scarring” impact of long-lasting unemployment, adding that she hoped the U.S. economy would return to full employment next year. Speaking during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings, the former Federal Reserve chair said the crisis had dealt a huge blow worldwide, and it was the responsibility of advanced economies to ensure that years of progress in reducing poverty were not reversed by the crisis. “We are going to be careful to learn the lessons of the (global) financial crisis, which is: ‘Don’t withdraw support too quickly,'” Yellen said, “And we would encourage all those developed countries that have the capacity… to continue to support a global recovery for the sake of the growth in the entire global economy.”

May.07 — Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari discusses the April U.S. payrolls report, criticism from Wall Street over the Fed’s aggressive support of the U.S. economy, and inflation expectations.  The latest Nonfarm Payrolls report, which showed that the US added only 266,000 jobs in April, validates the Federal Reserve’s outcome-based approach to policy, Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said “I’m confident pricing pressures will be transitory,” Kashkari further added. Nick Note: As i keep insisting their is no inflation but only a reflation. AND AND AND the Fed will continue buying 120 billion a month in securities and keep interest rates virtually near zero… and the market will scratch its ass figure it out and do a Zoom ZOOOM ZOOOOOOM