Market Snapshot
Asia: Japan +0.2% to 20472. Hong Kong -0.6% to 28081. China +0.6% to 4942. India +0.1% to 27565.
Europe: London +0.6%. Paris +0.5%. Frankfurt +0.1%.
Futures: Dow flat. S&P flat. Nasdaq +0.1%. Crude +0.4% to $58.25. Gold -0.2% to $1184.20.
Ten-year Treasury Yield +2 bps to 2.16%
Economic News
7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications
8:55 Redbook Chain Store Sales
1:00 PM Results of $13B, 2-Year FRN Auction
1:00 PM Results of $35B, 5-Year Note Auction
Key earnings before the open
BMO, BWS, CHS, DSW, KORS, MOV, TIF, TOL, VAL
Key earnings after the close
ANW, COST, CPRT, PANW, PLKI, RENT, SMTC, TLYS, UHAL
Markets
U.S. stock futures point to a rebound on Wall Street after a sharp selloff in the previous trading session. With no major economic releases on the calendar, the focus was instead expected to center on corporate news from retailers such as Tiffany & Co. and Costco Wholesale Corp., as well as on the rebound in commodity prices. Stocks were hard hit on Tuesday, when a sharp increase in the dollar spurred global investors to dump riskier assets such as equities and commodities. Both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered their biggest one-day declines in three weeks.
The markets appear to be dismissing Greece’s problems with a shrug at the moment, but it’s going to get more pressing soon. Queen Elizabeth II’s speech today is expected to contain an EU referendum bill, as the path towards a vote looks potentially shorter than anticipated, with some now talking of a referendum in 2016 rather than 2017. The speech will begin at 6:30 ET and promises to contain several other major policy announcements.
Policymakers must ensure that financial industry creditors do not expect government bailouts and must be willing to let firms fail in order to restore market discipline, Richmond Fed boss Jeffrey Lacker said on Tuesday. Lacker also continued his assault on Dodd-Frank’s Title II and repeated his call to repeal the Fed’s emergency lending authority, arguing that less regulation, not more, is needed to make the system safer.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen plans to skip the annual gathering of economists and policy makers in Jackson Hole this year, marking the second time in three years the Fed’s top official won’t be traveling to Wyoming. Yellen’s predecessor, Ben Bernanke, skipped the 2013 gathering. The topic of this year’s Aug. 27-29 conference is inflation dynamics and monetary policy.
Tax return information for about 100,000 U.S. taxpayers was illegally accessed by cyber criminals over the past four months, the IRS announced, in the latest series of data thefts that have alarmed American consumers. The theft, however, differs in that it did not involve a computer hack. Criminals used information they had gathered about individuals to access the system as it was designed to be used.
Stocks
The Irish government has agreed to sell its 25% stake in Aer Lingus (AIRXY) to IAG (ICAGY), clearing the way for the owner of British Airways and Iberia to make a formal bid for the Irish carrier. IAG’s proposed €1.36B ($1.48B) offer for Aer Lingus was recommended by the Irish airline’s board in January but is still conditional on receiving the support of its other main shareholder, Ryanair (RYAAY).
With attention already starting to shift to regulatory approval, Charter Communications (CHTR) CEO Tom Rutledge said his company’s $55B acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC) would do better with the FCC than Comcast’s (CMCSA) recent offer.
As the telecom-network industry consolidates, Ericsson (ERIC) is now more open to a bigger M&A deal in order to remain competitive in the market. CEO Hans Vestberg plans to gather with his top managers in June to discuss strategy, and a key area is what the company can do to counter Nokia’s (NOK) recent $16.6B acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent (ALU). Possible targets: Ciena (CIEN), Infinera (INFN) and Juniper (JNPR).
General Electric(GE) is in advanced talks to sell assets of its vehicle fleet management business, GE Capital Fleet Services, to Element Financial Corp (ELEEF), Bloomberg reports. In a presentation last week, GE CEO Jeff Immelt said he hopes to have agreements in place to sell as much as $30B of GE Capital assets by the end of the quarter.
Former Petrobras director of international operations Nesto Cervero has been sentenced to five years in prison for money laundering, the second Petrobras (PBR) executive convicted in Brazil’s ongoing corruption probe. Last year, Cervero told a congressional committee looking into corruption that he had never taken bribes and was unaware of the alleged corruption scheme.
Reynolds American’s $27.4B purchase of Lorillard has won approval from the FTC on condition that the companies sell four cigarette brands – Winston, Kool, Salem and Maverick – to Imperial Tobacco (ITYBY). The FTC has also required Reynolds (RAI) to divest Lorillard’s (LO) manufacturing facilities in Greensboro, N.C.
Snapchat has revealed plans for an IPO, saying they had no desire to field any acquisitions offers. Facebook (FB) made a $3B bid for the company nearly two years ago. The comments, coming at the Code Conference in California, were the first time the company has publicly acknowledged the possibility of an IPO. When is still up in the air.
SpaceX has won a critical battle in its campaign to win business launching military and spy satellites after the U.S. Air Force certified its Falcon 9 rocket to handle the work. The decision throws pressure on United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing (BA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT), which has held a monopoly on national security launches since it was formed in 2006.
Despite being blocked in China, Twitter (TWTR) is courting Chinese companies to buy advertising space on its service – used by more than 300M people elsewhere across the globe. Twitter collected $436M in Q1 revenue from advertisers who paid to inject their ads, known as “promoted tweets”, in to users’ timelines.
Several other Internet giants reached out and held early discussions about buying Flipboard in recent weeks, including Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), although those talks involved ideas around how products would be integrated rather than centering around price. Talks with Twitter (TWTR) went further, discussing a $1B all-stock deal, but those negotiations have largely stalled since April.