Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Thursday Watch

Evening Headlines
Bloomberg:
  • Police Don't Yet Know If Ringleader Killed in Paris Terror Raid. The raid on a hideout near Paris on Wednesday was so violent that police fired 5,000 rounds and aren’t even sure how many militants died in explosions that left the building unsteady. What’s more, they don’t know if the presumed ringleader of the Paris attacks is among those killed. The predawn raid was ordered after witnesses, telephone surveillance and a text message found on a discarded mobile phone suggested the presence of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected Belgian architect of last Friday’s murders in Paris that took the lives of 129 people in a series of coordinated assaults at a sports stadium, a concert hall, and restaurants and bars. Seven men and one women were arrested in the raid, and police are still working to identify them, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said in a news conference in the French capital. At least two of the extremists died in the assault and investigators are still studying remains to establish if more were killed. Five policemen were wounded. Neither Abaaoud nor Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the killings, were among those arrested, Molins said. The prosecutor, however, said it was too early to say if they were among those slain.
  • China Developers Back Out of Beijing Land Purchase as Costs Rise. China Resources Land Ltd. and China Merchants Land Ltd. backed out of purchasing a plot in Beijing they won at auction after the final price exceeded their budgets, underscoring rising pressure Chinese developers face from surging land costs. The developers will not buy the site in Beijing’s suburban Fengtai district they won in the auction with co-bidder Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town Co. on Nov. 2, said a Hong Kong-based investor relations officer with China Resources who asked not to be named, citing company policy. The final price for the site “substantially exceeded” China Resources’s budget, the officer added, declining to give the agreed per-square-meter maximum the developer was prepared to pay. Shenzhen Overseas was bidding at the auction on behalf of the other two developers. The investor relations department of China Merchants and the public relations department of Shenzhen Overseas declined to comment.  
  • No Sign China Has Stopped Hacking U.S. Companies, Official Says. The Chinese government hasn’t stopped hacking American companies to steal industrial trade secrets, despite pledges to do so, the top U.S. national counterintelligence official said. "We haven’t seen any indication in the private sector that anything has changed," said William Evanina, who works under U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper, told reporters Wednesday. "We are skeptical at best in the intelligence community that they would be able to do that," Evanina said. "It would be turning off a big faucet in China."
  • Morgan Stanley Sees Euro Falling to Dollar Parity. (video)
  • Euro Parity Flagged by Invesco on View for December Fed Liftoff. The Federal Reserve is certain to raise interest rates in December, lifting the dollar toward parity with the euro, according to Invesco Ltd. Dollar strength will come largely against emerging Asian currencies rather than its developed-market peers, with the yen particularly resilient as the Fed keeps the pace of tightening slow, the Atlanta-based manager of about $790 billion in assets said.
  • Asian Stocks Rise on Fed Minutes as Investors Await BOJ Decision. Asian stocks rose, following a rally in U.S. shares, after minutes from the most recent Federal Reserve meeting showed policy makers’ faith in the world’s biggest economy, with officials saying the pace of any rate increases will be gradual. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index advanced 0.7 percent to 132.47 as of 9:02 a.m. in Tokyo.  
  • Copper May Drop to $3,800 in `16 on Bleak Outlook, Meir Says. Copper could slump to a $3,800 a metric ton next year, hitting fresh six-year lows, and forcing “shell-shocked” producers to make much deeper output cuts as demand growth stalls in China, according to Ed Meir, an analyst at INTL FCStone Inc. Demand in the world’s biggest consumer won’t grow next year, Meir said in an interview Wednesday at an industry conference in Shanghai. “It’s grim-to-bleak, so the onus is on the supply side. The market needs to transition to a lower price point to force more cuts.”A fall to $3,800 would be about an 18 percent drop from current prices, extending declines as investors fret over faltering Chinese demand and a stronger dollar.   
  • Fed Minutes Make a December Liftoff Look More Likely. The hawks are in and the doves are out. At least for the moment. Warning about risks to the labor market, skeptical about the eventual rise of inflation and nervous about global growth, Federal Reserve policy makers who are keen to delay an interest rate hike found themselves out of step with a majority of their colleagues at the Oct. 27-28 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, minutes released Wednesday in Washington showed. “The doves lost,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc. in Chicago. And that defeat came, she added, before the release of a better-than-expected October jobs report that provided more evidence of an economy on solid ground.
  • Allergan(AGN) Drops as Treasury Plans to Deter Inversion Deals. Allergan Plc, the Ireland-based drugmaker in talks to be taken over by Pfizer Inc., dropped in late trading on plans by the U.S. Treasury Department to deter companies from doing deals to move their headquarters abroad for tax purposes. Shares of Allergan slid 4.4 percent to $297 in extended trading. The company’s potential deal with New York-based Pfizer is predicated, in part, on giving the larger drugmaker a way to reduce its tax rate by becoming nominally Irish. Allergan’s principal executive offices are in New Jersey. 
  • Pfizer(PFE) Said Near Agreement to Buy Allergan(AGN) in Biggest Deal. Pfizer Inc. is in advanced talks to buy Botox maker Allergan Plc for as much as $380 per share, according to people familiar with the matter. The companies are aiming to announce a deal as soon as Monday, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private. The price being discussed is $370 to $380 per share, two of the people said. However, the U.S. Treasury Department’s letter on tax inversion deals, released on Wednesday, could delay the final agreement and change the terms of any transaction, another person said.
Wall Street Journal:
  • Paris Attack: Latest Updates.
  • Fed Tipping Toward December Rate Hike, Minutes Show by Jon Hilsenrath. Most officials see economic conditions as possibly warranting liftoff on rates at next meeting. Federal Reserve officials meeting last month anticipated it “could well be” time to raise short-term interest rates at a December policy meeting after keeping them pinned near zero for seven years. Fed officials thus decided to change the wording of their Oct. 28 policy statement to ensure their options were open for a move in December, according to minutes of the...
  • Rising Rates Pose Challenge to Health Law. Higher-cost premiums for 2016 threaten the appeal of the program for the healthy customers it needs.
  • Japanese Deflation Threat Hangs Over China. Political pressure on China not to devalue the yuan could be adding to deflationary pressure, as it once did to Japan.
  • When the College Madness Came to My Campus. The student protests are about power. And now that leftists have it, what good to them is free speech?
  • Mistrusting Obama on ISIS—and Refugees. The president’s refusal to admit a policy error in Syria stirs uneasiness about how he is handling the humanitarian crisis. You must understand: President Obama is accustomed to kid-glove treatment from most of the media most of the time. So when he was asked repeatedly at a Monday news conference in Turkey why he continues to insist that he never underestimated Islamic State (ISIS), and that his strategy against the terrorist outfit is working, it follows that he would become a little touchy.
Fox News: 
  • Obama threatens to veto House GOP bill on Syrian refugee screening. (video) President Obama threatened late Wednesday to veto legislation aimed at improving screening for Syrian refugees, potentially putting the White House and Congress on a collision course in a matter of days. The veto threat came as the House was preparing the bill -- which sets high hurdles for refugee admission including FBI background checks and sign-offs by top officials -- for floor action as early as Thursday. In a committee meeting, Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, accused the president of confusing the public about the intentions of the legislation.
MarketWatch.com: 
Zero Hedge:
Business Insider: 
@Breaking911:
PIX 11:
  • ISIS New York video: Terror group releases warning of Times Square attack. (video) Terror group ISIS released a propaganda video Wednesday that makes threats against New York. The video shows several scenes in Manhattan including Times Square, a Gap in Herald Square, T.G.I. Friday's and yellow taxi cabs on city streets. The new video also features footage from a previously released video mentioning a New York attack.
Reuters: 
  • Sluggish economies weaken business jet sales. Weakening or sluggish economies around the globe are taking a toll on business aircraft sales and prices, forestalling an incipient recovery that had raised the hopes of plane makers and suppliers.
  • Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings off 24.5 pct YTD. Billionaire hedge fund manager William Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings portfolio has lost 24.5 percent this year, extending its fall this week as its biggest holding, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, declined further, the company said on its website.
Telegraph: 
Evening Recommendations 
  • None of note
Night Trading 
  • Asian equity indices are +.25% to +1.25% on average.
  • Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 126.5 -1.25 basis points.
  • Asia Pacific Sovereign CDS Index 68.0 -2.0 basis points.
  • Bloomberg Emerging Markets Currency Index 70.73 +.19%.
  • S&P 500 futures +.12%.
  • NASDAQ 100 futures +.11%.
Morning Preview Links 

Earnings of Note 
Company/Estimate
  • (WMS)/.35
  • (BBY)/.35
  • (BKE)/.79
  • (SJM)/1.51
  • (JKS)/.81
  • (PERY)/.04
  • (SHLD)/-2.84
  • (SSI)/-.19
  • (SMRT)/-.07
  • (CRMT)/.70
  • (ADSK)/.08
  • (GPS)/.63
  • (INTU)/-.04
  • (ROST)/.50
  • (SPLK)/.02
  • (TFM)/.22
  • (WSM)/.72
  • (WDAY)/-.04
  • (ZOES)/.03 
Economic Releases
8:30 am EST
  • Initial Jobless Claims for last week are estimated to fall to 270K versus 276K the prior week.
  • Continuing Claims are estimated to fall to 2169K versus 2174K prior.    
  • Philly Fed Business Outlook for November is estimated to rise to -.3 versus -4.5 in October. 
10:00 am EST
  • Leading Index for October is estimated to rise +.5% versus a -.2% decline in September.
Upcoming Splits
  • None of note
Other Potential Market Movers
  • The Fed's Fischer speaking, Fed's Lockhart speaking, UK retail sales report, Bloomberg Economic Expectations Index for November, weekly Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index, weekly EIA natural gas inventory report, (RF) investor day, (INTC) investor meeting, (CAH) analyst day and the (ROK) investor meeting could also impact trading today.
BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly higher, boosted by technology and commodity shares in the region. I expect US stocks to open modestly higher and to weaken into the afternoon, finishing mixed. The Portfolio is 50% net long heading into the day.

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