Market Week in Review

• S&P 500 1,967.57 -.90%*

 The Weekly Wrap by Briefing.com.

*5-Day Change

Weekly Scoreboard*

Indices

• S&P 500 1,967.57 -.90%

• DJIA 16,943.81 -.73%

• NASDAQ 4,415.49 -1.57%

• Russell 2000 1,159.93 -3.99%

• S&P 500 High Beta 33.28 -2.03%

• Wilshire 5000 20,554.98 -1.27%

• Russell 1000 Growth 913.58 -1.13%

• Russell 1000 Value 992.81 -.99%

• S&P 500 Consumer Staples 465.51 +.30%

• Solactive US Cyclical 136.63 -1.24%

• Morgan Stanley Technology 963.57 -1.39%

• Transports 8,254.31 -.49%

• Utilities 559.43 +.93%

• Bloomberg European Bank/Financial Services 103.59 -3.94%

• MSCI Emerging Markets 43.78 -.31%

• HFRX Equity Hedge 1,175.28 -.79%

• HFRX Equity Market Neutral 967.41 +.16%

Sentiment/Internals

• NYSE Cumulative A/D Line 228,237 -1.01%

• Bloomberg New Highs-Lows Index -70 -608

• Bloomberg Crude Oil % Bulls 42.86 +121.50%

• CFTC Oil Net Speculative Position 424,887 -4.70%

• CFTC Oil Total Open Interest 1,742,131 -.99%

• Total Put/Call .88 unch.

• OEX Put/Call 3.11 +170.43%

• ISE Sentiment 109.0 -3.54%

• NYSE Arms 1.05 +87.50%

• Volatility(VIX) 12.08 +17.05%

• S&P 500 Implied Correlation 50.38 +9.83%

• G7 Currency Volatility (VXY) 5.33 +3.09%

• Emerging Markets Currency Volatility (EM-VXY) 5.82 -.68%

• Smart Money Flow Index 11,669.06 +1.27%

• ICI Money Mkt Mutual Fund Assets $2.575 Trillion +.21%

• ICI US Equity Weekly Net New Cash Flow -$8.887 Billion

• AAII % Bulls 37.6 -2.3%

• AAII % Bears 28.7 +27.8%

Futures Spot Prices

• CRB Index 297.07 -3.15%

• Crude Oil 100.83 -3.13%

• Reformulated Gasoline 290.85 -3.61%

• Natural Gas 4.15 -5.54%

• Heating Oil 286.09 -2.28%

• Gold 1,337.40 +1.29%

• Bloomberg Base Metals Index 201.83 unch.

• Copper 326.90 -.17%

• US No. 1 Heavy Melt Scrap Steel 357.0 USD/Ton unch.

• China Iron Ore Spot 96.90 USD/Ton +.42%

• Lumber 330.90 -1.30

• UBS-Bloomberg Agriculture 1,329.42 -5.25%

Economy

• ECRI Weekly Leading Economic Index Growth Rate 4.3% unch.

• Philly Fed ADS Real-Time Business Conditions Index .2503 -3.25%

• S&P 500 Blended Forward 12 Months Mean EPS Estimate 125.67 +.32%

• Citi US Economic Surprise Index -13.10 -3.4 points

• Citi Emerging Markets Economic Surprise Index -4.40 +4.6 points

• Fed Fund Futures imply 38.0% chance of no change, 62.0% chance of 25 basis point cut on 7/30

• US Dollar Index 80.19 -.10%

• Euro/Yen Carry Return Index 143.98 -.60%

• Yield Curve 207.0 -6.0 basis points

• 10-Year US Treasury Yield 2.52% -12.0 basis points

• Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet $4.340 Trillion +.15%

• U.S. Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap 16.41 -14.6%

• Illinois Municipal Debt Credit Default Swap 170.0 +1.02%

• Western Europe Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap Index 36.89 +18.69%

• Asia Pacific Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap Index 71.96 +2.04%
  

• Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt CDS Index 190.29 -.75%
  

• Israel Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap 86.50 +13.07%

• Iraq Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap 350.03 +4.56%

• Russia Sovereign Debt Credit Default Swap 172.94 -5.65%

• China Blended Corporate Spread Index 303.39 +.97%

• 10-Year TIPS Spread 2.26% unch.

• TED Spread 21.75 -1.0 basis point

• 2-Year Swap Spread 16.75 +3.5 basis points

• 3-Month EUR/USD Cross-Currency Basis Swap -11.50 -.5 basis point

• N. America Investment Grade Credit Default Swap Index 57.96 +4.58%
  

• European Financial Sector Credit Default Swap Index 71.69 +18.81%
  

• Emerging Markets Credit Default Swap Index 225.54 -3.15%
  

• CMBS AAA Super Senior 10-Year Treasury Spread  to Swaps 82.0 -1 basis point

• M1 Money Supply $2.846 Trillion +.7%

• Commercial Paper Outstanding 1,041.80 -1.1%

• 4-Week Moving Average of Jobless Claims 311,500 -3,500

• Continuing Claims Unemployment Rate 2.0% unch.

• Average 30-Year Mortgage Rate 4.15% +3 basis points

• Weekly Mortgage Applications 353.90 +1.90%

• Bloomberg Consumer Comfort 37.6 +1.2 points

• Weekly Retail Sales +3.80% +50 basis points

• Nationwide Gas $3.63/gallon -.03/gallon

• Baltic Dry Index 814.0 -8.85%

• China (Export) Containerized Freight Index 1,092.07 -.46%

• Oil Tanker Rate(Arabian Gulf to U.S. Gulf Coast) 27.50 unch.

• Rail Freight Carloads 227,097 -14.23%

Best Performing Style

• Large-Cap Value -1.0%

Worst Performing Style

• Small-Cap Growth -4.6%

Leading Sectors

• Gold & Silver +2.5%

• REITs +1.0%

• Airlines +.9%

• Utilities +.9%

• Telecom +.4%

Lagging Sectors

• Gaming -4.6% 

• Coal -4.9%

• Social Media -5.1%

• Alt Energy -5.2%

• 3D Printing -5.5%

Weekly High-Volume Stock Gainers (5)

• AMRE, BDSI, TRW, MIC and AVAV

Weekly High-Volume Stock Losers (12)

• ANAC, MBUU, MSM, EROS, MYRG, TCS, TTS, RARE, SRPT, LL, PBPB and GIMO

Weekly Charts
ETFs

• High-Volume Gainers

• High-Volume Losers

Stocks

• High-Volume Gainers

• High-Volume Losers

*5-Day Change

Stocks Slightly Higher into Final Hour on Central Bank Hopes, Short-Covering, Earnings Optimism, Tech/Biotech Sector Strength

Broad Equity Market Tone:

• Advance/Decline Line: Slightly Higher
  

• Sector Performance: Mixed
  

• Volume: Light

• Market Leading Stocks: Outperforming

Equity Investor Angst:

• Volatility(VIX) 12.18 -3.26%

• Euro/Yen Carry Return Index 143.95 -.03%

• Emerging Markets Currency Volatility(VXY) 5.85 -1.02%

• S&P 500 Implied Correlation 50.36 -2.85%

• ISE Sentiment Index 97.0 +2.11%

• Total Put/Call .79 -25.47%

• NYSE Arms 1.11 -3.45% 

Credit Investor Angst:

• North American Investment Grade CDS Index 58.23 +.72%

• European Financial Sector CDS Index 71.69 +.17%

• Western Europe Sovereign Debt CDS Index 36.89 +1.35%

• Asia Pacific Sovereign Debt CDS Index 71.96 +.69%

• Emerging Market CDS Index 225.60 -.31%

• China Blended Corporate Spread Index 303.39 +1.11%

• 2-Year Swap Spread 16.75 unch.

• TED Spread 21.75 unch.

• 3-Month EUR/USD Cross-Currency Basis Swap -11.5 +.25 basis point

Economic Gauges:

• 3-Month T-Bill Yield .02% unch.

• Yield Curve 207.0 -1.0 basis point

• China Import Iron Ore Spot $96.90/Metric Tonne unch.

• Citi US Economic Surprise Index -13.10 -.5 point

• Citi Emerging Markets Economic Surprise Index -4.40 +1.6 points

• 10-Year TIPS Spread 2.27 unch.

Overseas Futures:

• Nikkei Futures: Indicating +56 open in Japan

• DAX Futures: Indicating +2 open in Germany

Portfolio: 

• Slightly Higher: On gains in my biotech/tech/medical sector longs

• Disclosed Trades: Covered some of my (IWM)/(QQQ) hedges

• Market Exposure: Moved to 50% Net Long

Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

• Portugal Smolders as Allianz Says Crisis Isn’t Over. When asking Allianz SE’s chief investment officer about the euro area’s sovereign debt woes, be prepared for an emphatic response. “The fundamental problems are not solved and everybody knows it,” Maximilian Zimmerer said at Bloomberg LP’s London office. The “euro crisis is not over,” he said. While extraordinary stimulus from the European Central Bank has encouraged investors to pile into the region’s government bonds this year, that’s not a sufficient remedy for Zimmerer, who oversees 556 billion euros ($757 billion) at Europe’s largest insurer. Countries are still building up their debt piles, and that’s storing up trouble for the future, he said. 

• Espirito Santo Turmoil Shows ECB's Challenge in Managing Systemic Risk. The Espirito Santo saga is giving believers in the end of the euro-area crisis cause for pause. Although a return to the panic days of the crisis may be unlikely, the case, involving the inability of a parent company of a bank in Portugal to make some short-term debt payments, has sent government bonds of Europe’s most-indebted nations and the stocks of lenders tumbling, showing how fragile investor confidence in the region’s banking recovery is. “This shows that even a bank in a peripheral country can have systemic reach,” said Jerome Forneris, who helps manage $9 billion at Banque Martin Maurel in Marseille. “A solution must be found, but it must be found quickly.”  

• Risk Stirs as Portugal to Puerto Rico Disrupt Complacency. Credit investors lulled into complacency by the largesse of central banks are getting a reminder about risk. The events are triggering turmoil in debt markets from London to New York, renewing concern the financial system remains vulnerable six years after central banks began flooding their economies with cheap cash to break free from the global credit crisis. The same policy makers that helped drive bond yields to unprecedented lows, have warned investors are becoming too complacent about risks.

• Nowotny Says Hungary Must Realize It Needs Solvent Banks. European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny called on Hungary to be mindful of its economy’s needs when inflicting a fresh round of losses on banks including units of Austrian lenders. Nowotny, who also is the governor of the Austrian central bank, identified Hungary as one of the “problem areas” of Austrian banks, which are among the biggest in the former communist part of Europe. The “major exposure” of the lenders, which include Erste Group Bank AG, Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI) and UniCredit Bank Austria AG, make the neighboring country a “more sensitive issue” than even war-torn Ukraine, he said.

• Israel Calls Up 33,000 Reserves as Rockets Bring Its First Civilian Casualty. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said international pressure won’t keep his country from taking action to end a barrage of rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as the death toll in the Palestinian enclave topped 100. “We are weighing all options and preparing all options,” Netanyahu said today in a televised news conference, as the military called up 33,000 reserve soldiers in advance of a possible ground incursion into Gaza. Israeli aircraft so far have led the attack against Gaza rocket squads, which caused the first Israeli civilian casualty of the week's conflict today when a missile struck a gas station in Ashdod, injuring three.

• Rebels Kill 23 Ukraine Troops as EU Widens Sanction List. Separatists killed 23 Ukrainian soldiers and wounded 93 in fighting near the border with Russia as the European Union added 11 names to a list of people it has sanctioned for supporting the insurrection. Some of the soldiers died after being hit by fire from Grad rocket systems near Zelenopillya, a village about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Ukraine’s eastern frontier, military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov said by phone. A day earlier, the ministry said Ukrainian forces killed more than 50 insurgents in air strikes near Donetsk, the country’s largest eastern city. “In the past 24 hours in different areas, 23 Ukrainian troops were killed,” Seleznyov said today. “Ninety-three were wounded among Ukraine’s military and border service. The wounds include shell shock.” 

• European Stocks Are Little Changed, Post Weekly Decline. European stocks were little changed, halting five days of losses, amid increased takeover activity and as investors bet the financial troubles of Banco Espirito Santo SA won’t spiral into an euro-area banking crisis. Imperial Tobacco Group Plc rose to the highest price since at least 1996 after confirming talks with Reynolds American Inc. and Lorillard Inc. to buy some assets and brands. Symrise AG climbed as a report said Japan’s Ajinomoto Co. may be interested in buying the German maker of flavors and fragrances. Indesit Co. added 2.9 percent after Whirlpool Corp. agreed to pay $1 billion for a controlling stake in the Italian appliance maker. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index added 0.2 percent to 336.91 at the close in London after rising as much as 0.5 percent. The benchmark gauge lost 3.2 percent this week, the most since March, as investors weighed valuations near the highest levels since 2009 and as concern resurfaced that the region remains vulnerable to shocks.

• Soybeans Head for Longest Slump Since 1973 on Bigger Supplies. Soybean futures extended declines, heading for the longest slump in 41 years, after a government reported showed supplies will climb in the U.S., the world’s biggest grower. Corn fell to a four-year low. “This is a bearish supply freight-train hitting the market,” Dale Durchholz, the senior market analyst for AgriVisor LLC in Bloomington, Illinois, said in a telephone interview. “Rapidly rising U.S. and global inventories” are coming, he said. Soybean futures for November delivery fell 1.6 percent to $10.755 a bushel at 11:46 a.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade. Prices headed for a 10th straight loss, the longest streak since July 1973.

• China State TV Says IPhone Creates Security Concern. China’s state-owned national television broadcaster said a feature of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone software that tracks user locations poses a security concern.

• Winning Currency War Fails to Deliver Spoils for Japan Business. Japan is missing out on the spoils of victory from fighting a currency war. Despite a 30 percent decline in the yen since 2011 against the currencies of its trading rivals, Japan’s exports of goods fell 0.6 percent in the same period, according to an analysis published on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s blog. By contrast, U.S. exports rose 6 percent during the same timeframe, undermining any argument that Japan’s trade weakness could be based in softness of the global economy. The more likely reason lies in a limited pass-through from exchange rates to export prices, economists Mary Amiti, Oleg Itskhoki and Jozef Konings wrote in the July 7 post. That means a 10 percent decline in the currency doesn’t fully translate into a 10 percent decline in export prices; the less it does the smaller the impact on foreign demand. 

• Plosser Says Rate Increase Closer Thank Many People Think. “We are closer than a lot of people might think,” Plosser said today in a Bloomberg Television interview with Michael McKee in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If the Fed waits too long, “We’ll lose credibility. We may lose control of inflation.”

• Classrooms in U.S. Prepare for Flood as Migrants Become Pupils. The record flood of Central American children crossing the U.S. border is stretching funds and setting off improvisation at public schools. While politicians spend the summer fighting over how to turn back the tide, school leaders across the U.S. are struggling to absorb a new student population the size of Newark, New Jersey’s. More than 40,000 children, many of them fresh from violent, harrowing journeys, have been released since October to stateside relatives as courts process their cases. “These kids were homesick and heartbroken,” said Robin Hamby, a family specialist for Fairfax County Public Schools in suburban Washington, which began feeling the surge almost as soon as it began three years ago.

Wall Street Journal:

• ECB Eyes Risks of Use of Computer-Based Forex Trading. ECB Officials, Currencies Bankers Met at ECB-Hosted Contact Group on July 7.

• Investors Pull Assets from Boaz Weinstein Saba Capital Hedge Fund. Investors Withdraw Nearly 20%, or about $400 Million, from Saba Capital Master Fund.

Fox News:

• Flood of lawsuits to follow wave of illegal immigrants? Illegal immigrants pouring across the border could trigger a wave of lawsuits flooding the U.S. court system for years and costing taxpayers millions, according to legal experts.

CNBC: 

• The costs of Obama’s housing mistakes keep piling up.

• Hedge funds hold line on bullish stock bets. Stocks reaching record highs in early July haven't caused hedge funds to decrease their market exposure. In fact, many are adding to their bullish bets. Hedge funds that practice a "market neutral" strategy—generally keeping their long and short bets in balance—are now 18 percent net long, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch data as of July 2. Market neutral funds average an exposure of zero; the new positioning means they are relatively bullish, with a preference for stocks displaying a potential for growth and those with relatively small market capitalization, according to the firm. By comparison, the same funds were 10 percent net long as of June 18.

ZeroHedge: 

• Banco Espirito Santo: All The Latest News.

• Germany Instructs Its Companies To Limit Cooperation, Procurement Orders With The US.

• UN Demands Europe "Open Its Doors" As Syrian Refugees Reach "Saturation Point".

• WTI Crude Drops Below $101 - Lowest in 2 Months. (graph)

• As The SEC Finally Gets Involved In CYNK, One Short Has A Big Problem.

Business Insider: 

• Retailers Have Given Some Discouraging Commentary About The US Economy To Start Earnings Season.

• LEBRON JAMES IS GOING BACK TO CLEVELAND.

• Hamas Is Well On Its Way To Winning The Latest Conflict In Gaza.

• An Ominous Sign That Heroin Use Is Blowing Up In The US.

Breitbart.com: 

• EXCLUSIVE: TSA Allowing Illegals to Fly Without Verifiable ID, Says Border Patrol Union.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

• German, French Business Lobbies Criticize U.S. Bank Fines. Federation of German industries head Ulrich Grillo says U.S. is weakening Europe's financial system, citing an interview.

Bear Radar

Style Underperformer:

• Small-Cap Value -.51%

Sector Underperformers:

• 1) Oil Service -1.10% 2) Homebuilding -.81% 3) Retail -.65%

Stocks Falling on Unusual Volume:

• PSMT, PCII, CUDA, FAST, RDN, GNW, EOPN, TTS, TNXP, OTEX, ADES, INFY, OII, FINL, ABBV, EAT, BPT, CEO, ASML, CONN, RAI, WATT, SNX, HELE, BTE and RCII

Stocks With Unusual Put Option Activity:

• 1) IBB 2) GPRO 3) WFC 4) OIH 5) PHM
  

Stocks With Most Negative News Mentions:

• 1) QCOM 2) BK 3) INTC 4) ZEP 5) FINL
  

Charts:

• ETFs Falling on Unusual Volume

• Stocks Falling on Unusual Volume

Bull Radar

Style Outperformer:

• Large-Cap Growth -.11%

Sector Outperformers:

• 1) Internet +1.06% 2) Airlines +.44% 3) Gold & Silver +.39%
  

Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume:

• LO, TRW and AMZN

Stocks With Unusual Call Option Activity:

• 1) UUP 2) LO 3) CCE 4) RDN 5) RMD

Stocks With Most Positive News Mentions:

• 1) LMT 2) AAL 3) LO 4) AMZN 5) TWTR
  

Charts:

• ETFs Rising on Unusual Volume 

• Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume