Yahoo Finanza Middle-Week Screening. Seesaw on the Market. Silver and Alibaba are for long; Boeing is for short
Overview and trends
Across the pond, according to Reuters, European Union leaders did not reach solidarity on a coronavirus stimulus plan on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said as marathon negotiations ran into a third day and acrimony mounted over the demands of rich but thrifty countries.
On Monday U.S. officials including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met in the White House to discuss another coronavirus stimulus package. Mnuchin reiterated he wanted to put a cap on spending to about 1 trillion dollars, well below House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s $3.5 trillion relief plan. He also said the bill will focus on “kids and jobs and vaccines.” Meantime U.S. stocks were higher Monday as Wall Street came off its third straight week of gains and investors turned were busy analyzing more earnings reports including those from Halliburton and IBM (the latter beat estimates by a wide margin and added over 3% in post-market).
Yesterday stocks closed mostly higher on Wall Street Tuesday despite a final hour hiccup that nearly wiped out the market’s gains for the day. The S&P 500 added less than prominent 0.2%, after culminating as much as plus 0.8%. Banks, telecoms and energy stocks led the gains, offsetting mounting losses in technology stocks – something every smart investor must take seriously in the wake of more big techs’ like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft earnings underway – which pulled the Nasdaq index lower.
Oil prices joined precious metals’ extravaganza and rose, reaching the highest levels since March. West Texas Intermediate crude gained more than 3%, to 41 dollar 88 cents per barrel. Brent crude, in its turn, rose almost 3%, to 44 dollars 30 cents per barrel, at the U.S. market close.
Most investors wait as a savior for more financial stimuli from big governments and central banks to prop up stocks and bonds that are slowly losing steam.
Seemingly in response to that urge, many governments have already announced large amounts of additional fiscal support to keep tackling the pandemic. But S&P Global Ratings suggests that some countries, including the U.S., have shown “a degree of fiscal fatigue”. The problem is that additional spending will worsen the governments’ balance sheets, but they are still necessary to “prevent things from getting even worse.”
S&P Global Ratings earlier this month downgraded its forecast for the global economy. The agency now expects global GDP to shrink by 3.8% this year — worse than the 2.4% contraction it previously projected. So the central banks and governments really have little choice but to move on.
The end of the coronavirus pandemic could bring a large number of new asset managers. Recently published data from a research firm called eVestment showed that the number of new investment firm launches substituting some less lucky rivals tends to spike following economic crises.
Here’s why, according to data firm: As markets contract, asset management employees may be laid off. Instead of seeking out a new job, they start their own firms. Additionally, some of these employees leave their jobs voluntarily, with the goal of taking a new investment approach presented by market turmoil.
Conclusion: in order to survive hard times, one needs to be open to new trends and must possess the skill of distinguishing between winning and losing assets.
Trading ideas
Silver futures logged the highest finish in nearly 4 years at the beginning of the week, buoyed by expectations for further central bank stimulation that destroy the value of world major currencies and as the rise in global COVID-19 cases continues to threaten the economic recovery. September silver added almost a dollar, or 4.9% since July 17, to settle at $20.21 an ounce, the highest front-month contract finish since August 2016. Silver is known to be more choppy and volatile precious metal as compared to gold. But this year its uncharacteristic trade smoothness since mid-March leaves its older sister gold’s parameters derailed.
Alibaba’s affiliate company Ant Group, operating the mobile payment service Alipay, reportedly started the process of its initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style STAR market simultaneously. In China Alipay is much more prominent than the namesake portal (alibaba.com) of Alibaba Group. Ant was previously valued at $150 billion after its last funding round in 2018, making it the world’s most valuable start-up.
Reportedly, Ant generated about 120 billion yuan or $17.1 billion dollars in revenue and nearly 17 billion yuan or $2.4 billion dollars in net profit last year. This is very good news for Alibaba stock which rose over 50% since April. Its earnings reporting day is scheduled for August 13, so there is plenty of time to judge this event keeping the stock in the portfolio.
Boeing’s reputation remains under siege even after the much-advertised test flight of Boeing 737 MAX couple of weeks ago. The company was forced to release a catastrophically damning set of documents to congressional investigators last week that included “conversations among Boeing pilots and other employees about software issues and other problems with flight simulators” for the 737 Max, the plane involved in two fatal crashes. The messages further complicate Boeing’s tense relationship with the Federal Aviation Administration, which can’t be satisfied to read the disdain with which Boeing treated the civil aviation regulators.
After the undisclosed outcome test flight, the Boeing share edged up almost 6.5% to $176, but its quarterly earnings date of July 29 will be Boeing’s judgement day, because there is nothing to cheer up its shareholders with. The company reported net loss of $5.72 a share in the previous quarter, which is expected to further deepen this time around, so Boeing is a definite short, which will be easy to cover at a profit thereafter.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out our economic calendar.
By Vladimir Rojankovski, Grand Capital Chief Analyst
This article was originally posted on FX Empire
