And Pause
DOW – 112 = 21,002
SPX – 14 = 2381
NAS – 42 = 5861
RUT – 17 = 1395
10 Y + .03 = 2.49%
OIL – 1.21 = 52.62
GOLD – 15.00 = 1235.00
Yesterday, the Dow advanced about 300 points to close above 21,000
for the first time, just 24 trading sessions after it first hit 20,000.
That matches the fastest-ever move between thousand-point milestones,
which last happened in 1999 and took the index above 11,000.
The number of
Americans filing for unemployment benefits
fell to near a 44-year-low last week. Initial claims for state
unemployment benefits dropped 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 223,000
for the week ended Feb. 25, the lowest level since March 1973.
It was
the 104th straight week that claims remained below 300,000, a threshold
associated with a healthy labor market. That is the longest stretch
since 1970.
The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book,
a collection of anecdotes about the economy gathered
before the central bank makes interest-rate decisions, said “businesses
were generally optimistic about the near term but to a somewhat lesser
degree than in the prior report.” Overall, the US economy continues to
meander along, with all districts reporting “modest to moderate” growth.
Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard has
been among the most consistent doves at the Fed, but now, “near-term
risks” to the U.S. from abroad appear to have diminished. Brainard the
US economy appears to be in transition to a more stable growth path and
gradual interest-rate hikes are likely to be appropriate “soon.”
Fed
Gov. Jerome Powell became the latest Fed official to hint that a hike is
imminent when he said Wednesday that the case for raising interest
rates in
March “has come together.” Fed
Chair Janet Yellen is set to speak on the economic outlook in Chicago
on Friday in her last speech before the Fed’s March 14-15 meeting.
Emerging-market borrowers
are selling bonds at an unprecedented pace before the Federal Reserve
raises interest rates. Emerging-market issuance in dollars and euros
this year has already exceeded $100 billion. That’s the fastest pace
ever and almost 20 percent more than the previous record for the period
in 2014. With yields still favorable to borrowers, they may accelerate
plans to refinance maturing debt and lock in current yields.
The yield on the two-year US Treasury note rose 3 basis points to
1.32% in recent trade, its highest end-of-day level since June 10, 2009.
Bond yields rise as prices fall. The yield also notched its largest
four-day increase since Feb. 8, 2011. The yield on the 10-year Treasury
note has popped about 16 basis points in the past week.
The dollar
advanced. Oil closed at the lowest level in more than three weeks. US
stockpiles expanded to 520 million barrels, the most in weekly
government data going back to 1982, even as Saudi Arabia continued to
lead OPEC’s efforts to cut production to end the glut.
Snapchat parent
Snap Inc raised $3.4 billion in its IPO last night, valuing the company
at $24 billion, more than double the size of Twitter and the richest
valuation in a U.S. tech IPO since Facebook five years ago.
The shares
priced at $17 each, above the expected range of $14-16. And the IPO was
oversubscribed by more than tenfold; and when shares started trading,
there was a pop to $25, and shares closed at $24.47.
Snapchat’s founder
and early investors cashed out over $1 billion today. This for a company
which reported revenues of $404 million with losses of $515 million in
2016. And shareholders don’t have voting rights. Go figure.
About 32 million
Yahoo user
accounts were accessed by intruders in the last two years using forged
cookies. The company said some of the latest intrusions can be connected
to the “same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the
2014 breach,” in which at least 500 million accounts were affected.
Yahoo also said in December that data from more than 1 billion user
accounts was compromised in August 2013. Yahoo’s board of directors have
decided to forgo CEO Marissa Mayer’s 2016 bonus following the results
of an internal investigation of how the company’s massive hacks were
handled.
Yesterday, Amazon’s cloud service S3 went down for a few hours.
Today, Amazon blamed the outage on human error and the movie LaLa Land.
Banks globally have paid $321 billion in
fines since 2008 for an abundance of regulatory failings from money
laundering to market manipulation and terrorist financing, per
data compiled by Boston Consulting Group. That tally is set to increase
in the coming years as European and Asian regulators catch up with their
US peers, who have levied most charges to date.
The Labor Department has proposed delaying a rule that would require
retirement advisers to act in the best interest of their clients. The
“fiduciary rule” was
set to go into effect on April 10 and would have prohibited retirement
advisers from accepting incentives for promoting certain funds over
others.
The Labor Department announced a proposed 60-day extension for
the rule to go into effect on June 9. During that time, the department
said it will collect applicable information on the possible effects of
rule, including public comments.
As credit card companies compete for customers by offering increasingly better rewards and perks,
American Express
is giving its Platinum card a facelift and a benefits overhaul. The
newly-enhanced card will come with Uber credits, increased travel
rewards and more access to special events. But the new benefits don’t
come cheap. The card carries a $550 annual fee, an increase from $450,
and currently offers no sign-up bonus.
Federal law enforcement
officials searched three facilities of heavy machinery manufacturer
Caterpillar in Illinois. It was not immediately clear why federal agents
raided the three locations, but Caterpillar has been fighting an
Internal Revenue Service demand that the company pay $2 billion in taxes
and penalties for profits assigned to a Swiss parts distribution
subsidiary, Caterpillar SARL, or CSARL, per filings with the
Securities and Exchange Commission.
That subsidiary was also the subject
of a 2014 Senate committee report that charged Caterpillar “shifted
billions of dollars in profits away from the United States.” Caterpillar
also disclosed in its report that it had received grand jury subpoenas
from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois
seeking documents and information related to the movement of cash among
U.S. and non-U.S. subsidiaries, and the purchase and resale of
replacement parts.
Boeing
is cutting its Seattle-area workforce by at least 1,800 jobs this year
as the company streamlines operations. Boeing approved voluntary layoffs
for 1,500 mechanics. Another 305 engineers and technical workers are
leaving voluntarily.
Anheuser-Busch InBev reported worse-than-expected quarterly results. The company said that challenges in Brazil hurt its overall performance.
Shake Shack same-store sales whiff. The
burger chain announced adjusted earnings of $0.09 a share, matching
estimates, but said same-shack sales, or sales in stores open at least
two years, rose 1.6%, well shy of the 2.6% estimated gain.
Barnes & Noble
reported third-quarter profit that missed expectations. Same-store
sales fell 8.3%, largely due to lower traffic and a decline in coloring
books, artist supplies and the best-selling Adele album that was
released in 2015. The company now expects full-year 2017 same-store
sales to decline about 7%.
Broadcom
came in 15 cents above estimates with adjusted quarterly earnings of
$3.63 per share, while the chip maker’s revenue was slightly above
estimates. The company, which is a major supplier for Apple, said it
expects healthy demand for its products to continue.
After the closing bell,
Costco
reported fiscal second-quarter per-share earnings and sales below
expectations and said it plans to raise membership fees in June by $5.
The creepiest thing of the day, and there were multiple candidates – goes to
Spiral Toys; a company that sells
internet-connected teddy bears that
allow kids and their far-away parents to exchange heartfelt messages
left more than 800,000 customer credentials, as well as two million
message recordings, totally exposed online for anyone to see and listen.
Since Christmas day of last year and at least until the first week of
January, Spiral Toys left customer data of its CloudPets brand on a
database that wasn’t behind a firewall or password-protected. The
exposed data included more than 800,000 emails and passwords.
As we’ve
seen time and time again in the last couple of years, so-called “smart”
devices connected to the internet—what is popularly known as the
Internet of Things or IoT—are often left insecure or are easily hack-able, and often leak sensitive data. There will be a time when IoT
developers and manufacturers learn the lesson and make secure by default
devices, but that time hasn’t come yet.
So, if you are a parent who
doesn’t want your loving messages with your kids leaked online, you
might want to buy a good old fashioned teddy bear that doesn’t connect
to a remote, insecure server.
Tomorrow is the first Friday in March, but it is not a Jobs Report
Friday. The jobs report is a monthly ritual for anyone following markets
or the US economy, as it contains some of the main data points
measuring the health of the labor market in the world’s largest economy.
The report almost always comes out on the first Friday of the month,
but not this month: The February 2017 report is scheduled to be released
on March 10, a week later than might be expected. It turns out that
this is due to the way the jobs numbers are gathered and how the days of
the week fell this year during a short month.
When the 12th is on a
Sunday and there are 30 days or less in the month, the release date will
wind up being the second Friday of the following month – so March 10,
not tomorrow.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he would recuse himself from
investigations involving the Trump campaign over his contacts with
Russian officials during the 2016 election, but stood firm on the
answers he gave during his Senate confirmation hearing about his past
communications. Sessions denied during his confirmation hearing that he
had ever communicated with any Russian officials while he was a top
Trump campaign surrogate.
During his press conference, Sessions
emphasized that he didn’t meet with Russian operatives about the Trump
campaign during the election. So, the story is shifting. Is it too late
to change my vote for Creepiest Thing of the Day?
