Evening Headlines
Bloomberg:
Bloomberg:
- The Credit Card Loophole That Gets Around China's Capital Curbs. More than 800. That’s how many times Hong Kong insurance agent Raymond Ng swiped the credit cards of a mainland Chinese client buying HK$28 million ($3.6 million) worth of insurance policies in the city earlier this month. Dozens, maybe more. That’s how many other agents are using similar tactics as a way around new restrictions on insurance policy purchases by mainlanders that are often used to evade capital controls and get their money out of China, according to interviews with five Hong Kong agents working for Prudential Plc, AIA Group Ltd. and two smaller insurance companies. “There are always ways around new restrictions,” said Ng, 30, who started selling insurance and investment products to mainland Chinese four years ago, declining to allow his company’s name to be used. "Chinese customers are accelerating the pace of moving assets outside China, especially through insurance products."
- China Pushes Big State Companies to Leave Overcrowded Beijing. Beijing may be pulling in the welcome mat for many of the country’s biggest state-owned companies, including some that have had their headquarters in the capital for decades, setting off a scramble among other cities competing to lure them away. The plan -- part of President Xi Jinping’s blueprint to reinvigorate the economy -- aims to move the main offices of state firms that have no core business in Beijing, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The relocations would help reduce traffic congestion, pollution and overcrowding in the capital as well as reinvigorate other first- and second-tier cities on the receiving end, such as Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan and others, according to the people who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.
- The Most China-Dependent Economy Isn't So Keen on Chinese Money. Australia, the developed world’s most China-reliant economy, offers a natural destination for billions of dollars of investment from its largest trading partner. There’s just one hurdle -- the Australians themselves.
- Central Bank Interventions Are Fraught With Peril: Roach. (video)
- Asia Stocks Fall as Japan Goes Ex-Dividend, Pharma Shares Slide. Asian stocks fell for the first time in three days as health-care companies led losses and more than two-thirds of the companies in Japan’s Topix index traded without the right to the next dividend. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index slipped 0.4 percent to 127.55 as of 9:01 a.m. in Tokyo. The gauge is up 7.1 percent since the start of March, on course for the best month since October. The Topix slid 0.8 percent.
- Oil Trades Near $39 as U.S. Crude Stockpiles Seen Expanding Glut. Oil traded near $39 a barrel before weekly U.S. government data forecast to show increasing crude stockpiles kept supplies at the highest level in more than eight decades. Futures were little changed in New York after slipping 0.2 percent Monday. Inventories probably rose by 3 million barrels last week, according to a Bloomberg survey before an Energy Information Administration report Wednesday.
- Buffett's Wells Fargo(WFC) Stake Hits Level Requiring Fed Review. Warren Buffett’s holding in Wells Fargo & Co. reached 10 percent, a level that triggers a Federal Reserve review and could prevent him from buying more shares until he receives regulatory approval. The billionaire investor’s stake reached that threshold because Wells Fargo has been buying back stock, according to a regulatory filing Monday. The document said the holding is about 506 million shares, the same as on Dec. 31 when it accounted for 9.9 percent.
- FBI Opens San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone; U.S. Drops Demand on Apple(AAPL). Move delays a high stakes showdown between Washington, Silicon Valley. The Justice Department filed court papers Monday saying it had cracked the iPhone of a San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist, seeking to drop its legal case to force Apple Inc. to help them unlock it.
- Chinese Bidder for Starwood Has Mysterious Ownership Structure. Beijing’s Anbang, locked in a bidding war with Marriott over Starwood Hotels, has a complicated web of investors that is difficult to unravel.
- Hillary & Bernie, Tax Fantasists. Soak-the-rich proposals ignore history and wouldn’t raise nearly enough money to fund big spending plans. Here is a question to ask Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: What is the best tax rate to impose on high-income earners to ensure there is enough government revenue to pay for your trillion-dollar promises to voters?
- Bloody tide: Terror deaths increased 8-fold since 2010, says study. (video) The deadly toll of terrorism around the globe has jumped nearly 800 percent in the past five years, according to an exhaustive new report that blames the alarming expansion of Islamist groups across the Middle East and Africa. The nonprofit Investigative Project on Terrorism found that an average of nearly 30,000 people per year have been killed by terrorists since 2010, when terrorism's death toll was 3,284. The authors of the study, which tabulated the numbers through the end of 2015, say that the exponential increase shows two troubling trends: More attacks are happening, and they tend to be deadlier than ever.
- Sanders swings for the fences after caucus sweep, makes play for New York. (video) Bernie Sanders, despite facing persistently long odds to overtake Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary delegate battle, quickly is moving to build on his momentum from a weekend caucus sweep -- looking to take the fight to the front-runner in New York, Wisconsin and beyond.
- ObamaCare may force employers to pull the plug on millions of health plans, CBO report finds. (video) In the latest report to undercut President Obama's "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" promise, the Congressional Budget Office projects millions of workers will leave employer-sponsored health plans over the next decade because of ObamaCare.
CNBC:
- 'Cautious' on Tesla(TSLA) despite Model 3 launch: Expert. (video) Tesla Motors' launch of a cheaper car this week will fail to negate the electric automaker's existing problems, one analyst contended Monday. "I think there are a lot of reasons to be really cautious," said Colin Langan of UBS on CNBC's "Closing Bell."
- Study of Theranos Medical Tests Finds Irregular Results. Finger blood tests from Theranos, the medical start-up, produced more irregular results than conventional tests offered by the nation's two largest clinical laboratories, researchers reported Monday in the first published independent assessment of the company's tests.
Zero Hedge:
Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
9:00 am EST
- Japanese Retail Sales Plunge Most Since 2010. (graph)
- With Hillary Clinton's Email Lies Unravelling, 147 FBI Agents Are On Her Heels.
- Saudis To "Modernize" Economy As Interbank Rates Surge & Money Supply Collapses At Record Pace. (graph)
- US Drops Case Against Apple After FBI Successfully Hacks Terrorist's iPhone.
- U.S. Lifted The Crude Oil Export Ban, And Exports Went... Down.
- 2015 Ends With a Stratospheric P/E Multiple Of 23x. (graph)
- Stocks Shrug Off Dismal Data, Shootings, Bomb Alerts, And Viruses To Close Unchanged. (graph)
- Congress just fired a shot against its next drug-pricing target, and its shares took a hit.
- The global cost of terrorism is at an all-time high.
- Brazil party set to abandon Rousseff, making impeachment more likely. Brazil's largest party will decide on Tuesday to break away from President Dilma Rousseff's floundering coalition, party leaders said, sharply raising the odds that the country's first woman president will be impeached amid a corruption scandal.
- Barclays warns of a "rush for the exits" on commodities. Analysts at Barclays have warned of a “rush for the exits” as investors back away from commodities, resulting in price levels for oil and copper dropping as much as 25pc. A note issued by the bank said that although investors have been attracted to commodities as one of the best performing assets so far in 2016, returns are unlikely to be sustained in the second quarter of the year. “This could make commodities vulnerable to a wave of investor liquidation that we estimate could, in a worst case scenario, knock as much as 20-25% from current price levels,” the note said. This would take the price of oil back to the low $30s and copper to the low $4,000s, the analysts said.
- A 'perfect storm' is brewing over the most important part of the UK economy
- Asian equity indices are -.50% to +.25% on average.
- Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 152.75 -1.0 basis point.
- Asia Pacific Sovereign CDS Index 58.75 +.5 basis point.
- Bloomberg Emerging Markets Currency Index 71.47 +.03%.
- S&P 500 futures +.18%.
- NASDAQ 100 futures +.18%.
Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
- (CONN)/.32
- (LEN)/.52
- (MKC)/.69
- (PLAY)/.43
- (RH)/.18
- (SONC)/.16
- (VNCE)/.00
9:00 am EST
- S&P/CS 20 City MoM SA for January is estimated to rise +.7% versus a +.8% gain in December.
- Consumer Confidence for March is estimated to rise to 94.0 versus 92.2 in February.
- None of note
- The Fed's Yellen speaking, Fed's Williams speaking, Fed's Kaplan speaking, $34B 5Y T-Note auction, US weekly retail sales reports and the (MMM) investor day could also impact trading today.
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