Today, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a May 17 deadline for the Trump administration to submit a proposal NAFTA revision to Congress–if President Trump wants this Congress to vote on a revised agreement. The odds of an agreement emerging from current talks and moving on to Congress on that schedule are just about nil. At the same time news of significant horse trading is coming out of U.S.-China trade talks.
With the Federal Reserve and Apple’s earnings behind us, this week the market has responded by strongly bidding up the prices of Nvidia and SolarEdge Technologies–and their options–strongly ahead of earnings announcements on May 9 and on May 10. I added call options on these stocks to my Volatility Portfolio on April 17 as the first move in my strategy for profiting from the 2018 earnings boom. My gains: 49% and 70%
It feels like panic rather than a plan. Because, I think, it is panic without a plan. The central bank of Argentina raised its benchmark interest rate another 3 percentage points today (that’s not 3 or 30 basis points but 300–a full 3 percentage points.) This comes after the central bank raised interest rates 3 percentage points last Friday. The benchmark rate now stands at 33.25%, the highest in the world
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury climbed to 2.95% today, up 4 basis points on the day. That equals the high yield for 2018 set back in February. The driver this time is an increase in commodity prices that has revived fears of inflation
With the report of first quarter earnings season from Netflix (NFLX) on Monday, April 16, we’ve moved into the heart of earnings season. In most quarters traders began putting on plays for earnings announcements a few weeks before reporting starts. And they’ll keep making new bets over the next three weeks or so. In most quarters buying shares or options on companies about to report makes profitable sense. But this strategy is likely to be even more rewarding this year
If you spend a significant part of your day staring at your computer to watch the markets, you know that, perplexingly, the traditional safe havens for mitigating portfolio risk haven’t been working very well. Now Goldman Sachs has put its computers and data crunchers to work and has reached the same conclusion as the anecdotal evidence suggested. Goldman has tagged this a period of “diversification desperation.”
The Food and Drug Administration today announced that its Arthritis Advisory Committee will meet on April 23 to discuss the application by Incyte (INCY) and Eli Lilly (LLY) for approval of baricitinib for the treatment of adult patients with moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis
