Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:    

• ECB QE Boost Can't Save Euro Bonds From Worst Month Since August. The first month of the European Central Bank’s expanded stimulus program has done little to aid the region’s government bonds. Even as the ECB increased its asset-purchase program to 80 billion euros ($92 billion) in April, from 60 billion euros, sovereign securities headed for their biggest monthly decline since August, according to Bloomberg World Bond Indexes. “The whole notion of the ECB stepping up their purchases in April and May has already been front run,” said Martin van Vliet, senior interest-rate strategist at ING Groep NV in Amsterdam. “So people are starting to look at new drivers and what is important now is the steady ascent of oil prices and that is starting to feed through into inflation expectations.”
• Iraq Declares State of Emergency as Protesters Storm Parliament. Iraq declared a state of emergency in Baghdad after supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stormed parliament, the Interior Ministry said. Mobile-phone video footage broadcast on Iraqi news channel al-Sharqiya showed hundreds of al-Sadr’s supporters inside the legislature on Saturday. Al-Sadr earlier on Saturday accused lawmakers of sectarianism in their selection of ministers and ordered his bloc to withdraw from the parliament session where members were preparing to finish voting on a new cabinet.
• Dollar Takes Helm of Global Markets After Worst Week Since 2008. The dollar is plunging so far, so fast, its shockwaves are reverberating far beyond the $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market. The greenback plunged the most this week since 2008 versus the yen after economic reports trailed forecasts, damping the outlook for growth as Federal Reserve policy makers await evidence needed to justify more interest-rate increases. The U.S. currency has eroded more than half its 9 percent surge last year, with one measure of dollar momentum approaching a level that indicates to some analysts that it is oversold and set to reverse direction.
• Oil Market Deja Vu Triggers Predictions of a Return to $30. (video) Oil’s climb above $45 a barrel is reassuring influential figures from BP Plc to the International Energy Agency that the industry is finally recovering from the worst slump in a generation. Others say the market is about to fall into the same trap as last year. There’s a sense of deja vu at Commerzbank AG, BNP Paribas SA and UBS Group AG, who say crude’s gain of about 70 percent from a 12-year low in January resembles the recovery that took hold this time last year -- only to sputter out by May as the supply glut endured. Prices will sink back towards $30 a barrel in the coming weeks, BNP and UBS warn.
• Exxon's(XOM) Worrying Lack of Worry.
• Icahn Is the Bear in Apple's China Shop.
• Donald Trump ‘Will Get Crushed in the Fall,’ John Kasich Says. "His best day is going to be the day he walks in, and from there his support will decline,’’ Kasich said of Trump.

Wall Street Journal:

• The Climate Police Escalate. A subpoena hits a think tank that resists progressive orthodoxy. Sometimes we wonder if we’re still living in the land of the free. Witness the subpoena from Claude Walker, attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, demanding that the Competitive Enterprise Institute cough up a decade of emails and policy work, as well as a list of private donors.

Barron's:

• Had bullish commentary on (ENR), (FRGI), (JCP), (FFIV) and (MSG).

Fox News:

• Cruz team attacks Trump for touting Tyson endorsement, while in Indiana. (video) The campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz and one of its PACs are attacking rival Donald Trump for his allegiance to former pro boxing champion Mike Tyson, who was convicted of rape in Indiana, which holds a primary Tuesday. The Trusted Leadership PAC has released an online video pointing out that Trump said Tyson, a Trump supporter, was “railroaded” in the 1991 conviction. “One of the leaders in the effort to keep Tyson out of prison is Donald Trump,” a TV news-reader is heard saying in the 30-second video, over archived moving and still pictures of Trump, including one of him beside Tyson.

CNBC:

• For Trump, why Goldwater history will repeat itself in the fall. (video) Donald Trump supporters and some pundits like to fantasize that the real estate magnate will put blue states like New York, Massachusetts and California in play this fall against Hillary Clinton while also running strong in the industrial Midwest. Trump could win! It's not gonna happen. Trump, should he lock down the nomination next week by winning Indiana, will go into the fall campaign as the most toxic Republican nominee since Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Zero Hedge:

• Chart Of The Day: Speculative Frenzy '101'.
• Deutsche Bank Unveils The Next Step: "QE Has Run Its Course, It's Time To Tax Wealth".
• China Takes Drastic Measures To Save The Regime.
• What Are The Three Signs Of A "Disorderly" Currency Market: Richard Koo Explains.
• UPS(UPS) Braces For $3.8 Billion Charge As Treasury's Pension Benefit Decision Looms.
• Why The Hard-Sell For The "Self-Driving" Car?
• NIRP Has Officially Arrived: Interactive Brokers Starts Charging 0.25% On Yen Cash Balances.
• The Cult Of Central Banking Is Dead In The Water.
• The Real Story Behind The True Magnitude Of The New Home Sales Collapse. (graph)
• "We Want Them Dead" - ISIS Releases "Hit List" Of 3,600 New Yorkers.
•  Italy's Bank Bailout Fund Already One Third Empty After First Bank Rescue. 
• US Treasury Gives Explicit Warning To China, Germany And Japan Not To Devalue Their Currencies.
• In Latest US-China Escalation, Beijing Denies US Aircraft Carrier Access To Hong Kong Port. 
• Oil's Latest Casualty: Saudi Binladin Group Fires 50,000, A Quarter Of Its Workforce.
• The Woodstock Of Crony Capitalism.
• Russia And Saudi Arabia Locked In Relentless Fight Over China's Oil Market. 
• Weekend Reading: Yep... Still Looks Like A Trap. (graph)
• Stock-Drop-alypse Wow - Gold Soars As Kamikaze Kuroda Strikes Again. (graph)

Business Insider:

• The market's most crowded trades could be causing dangerous bubbles. The main culprit is the new reach for yield. With low returns in many asset classes and yields on many bonds in developed markets heading negative, there has been a need to push into risky, higher yielding assets to make up the difference. "People are hiding out in stocks that they think are safe, growing assets and that is looking like it's under pressure," said Bailer. This causes dislocations in the market as certain companies end up with much higher valuations than would be reasonable. Bailer mentioned both dividend paying defensive stocks and high growth names that have exploded higher recently (think FANGs) as areas he sees as particularly pressured.
• Bernie Sanders may care about Hillary's 'damn emails' after all.
• 2 clear signs the stock market 'endgame' is approaching.
• BUFFETT: This is the 'time bomb' in the markets.
• Warren Buffett's 'desert island' indicator of the economy is looking terrible.

The Telegraph:

• Dallas Fed cautions on fresh oil bubble as glut keeps building. The US Federal Reserve has warned that the world is awash with excess oil and starting to run out of places to store the glut, with no sustained recovery in sight for the oil industry until 2017 at the earliest. Robert Kaplan, head of the Dallas Fed, poured cold water over talk of a fresh oil boom this year and said the US shale industry has taken far longer to cut output than many expected. “As we sit here today, Dallas Fed economists estimate that global daily oil production exceeds daily consumption by more than 1m barrels per day,” he told the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum in London. “Excess inventories in the OECD member countries now stand at approximately 440m barrels. This is a record level and has raised concerns about whether there is sufficient storage capacity in certain geographic areas,” he said.
• EU red tape is suffocating UK economy and Brexit can set us free. 

Independent:

• EU Referendum: Poll shows Britain split 50/50 - but higher turnout among older voters could tip country into Brexit. The over-65s are the age group most likely to vote - and most likely to vote to leave the EU. The British public is split 50/50 on whether to leave the EU but a higher turnout among the Outers could tip the balance in favour of Brexit, according to an opinion poll for The Independent. Given a straight choice, 50 per cent of people said Britain should leave and 50 per cent that it should remain. But when the findings were weighted to take account of people’s likelihood to vote, the result changed to 51 per cent for Leave and 49 per cent for Remain. The online survey of 2,000 people by ORB, conducted between Wednesday and Friday (29), suggests that Barack Obama’s intervention in the debate has not been the game-changer the In camp was hoping for. Although 23 per cent said his support for the UK remaining in the EU had made it more likely they would vote to stay in, 66 per cent said it had not. And 45 per cent said they had felt more inclined to vote to leave in the past seven days, while 43 per cent were more inclined to support remaining.