BETWEEN THE HEDGES: Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

U.S. Stocks Resilient in Week of Surprises as VIX Stays Quiet. A week marked by surprises, from a U.S. missile strike in Syria to a jobs report that was the weakest in almost a year, did little to rattle U.S. equities sitting near record levels. Against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions and uncertainty over the Donald Trump administration’s approach to financial regulation, volatility remained muted in the stock market. The VIX tallied its 103rd session below 15, the longest streak since February 2007, according to Bloomberg data. The S&P 500 Index fluctuated between gains and losses throughout the week before ending 0.3 percent lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the five days virtually unchanged, while small-cap shares in the Russell 2000 Index posted their third weekly loss of at least 1 percent in the past month.

Trump's Syria Missile Strike Ratchets Up Tensions With Moscow. (video) The Trump administration warned that it’s ready to take further military action if the regime of Bashar al-Assad wages another chemical attack, even as this week’s missile strike ratcheted up tensions with Russia. The White House gave no indication the U.S. intended to intervene more broadly in Syria’s civil war after Thursday night’s bombing. Yet the contours of the west’s response may be changing. On Saturday, U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson canceled a planned trip to Moscow for high-level meetings on Monday after coordinating with the U.S., saying he would meet instead with his Group of Seven peers in Italy to discuss the Syrian crisis and “Russia’s support for Assad.”

Swedish Police Confident They've Caught Terrorist Behind Rampage. Swedish prosecutors arrested a man on terror charges after a hijacked beer truck plowed through Stockholm’s main pedestrian shopping street on Friday and then slammed into a department store, killing at least four people. The suspect, who’s believed to have driven the truck, is a 39-year-old man originally from Uzbekistan, the police said at a press conference Saturday in Stockholm. The investigation is continuing and more people are being questioned. They are also investigating a “technical device” that was found in the cabin of the truck, but can’t confirm that it was bomb.

Low U.S. Jobless Rate May Tempt Fed to Rethink Wage-Gain Trigger. The U.S. jobs report on Friday provided Federal Reserve officials with a surprise. Unemployment in March had already declined to the level they’d expected it to hit by the end of 2017. That combined with what some economists viewed as another head-scratcher. Even as unemployment fell to 4.5 percent, its lowest level in almost 10 years, wages remained on just a gentle upward path. Average hourly earnings rose 2.7 percent year-on-year, essentially the same as the average over the previous 12 months.

Wall Street Journal:

Stockholm Truck Attack Suspect Was Previously Investigated Over Extremism. Man suspected of ramming truck into pedestrians in Swedish capital was detained overnight.

Obama WMD Intelligence Failure. Susan Rice said Assad had given up all his chemical weapons.

Iran Seeks Stronger Russia Alliance After U.S. Strikes in Syria. Tehran looks to fortify alliance supporting Syrian President Assad ahead of potential deeper U.S. involvement in conflict.