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FX Empire
AUD/USD and NZD/USD Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Aussie Unemployment Rate Should Set Tone
Even though the Aussie and Kiwi were boosted by the news, I don’t think it was particularly bullish because the older tariffs remain in place, and a decision had not been made over additional U.S. tariffs scheduled for December.
Yahoo Finance
Trade war pause, retail sales, bank earnings – What to know in the week ahead
The coming week’s docket of economic reports and earnings releases comes just following the Trump administration’s announcement of a partial trade deal with China late last week.
FX Empire
The Week Ahead – Brexit, Earnings, Stats and the IMF and EU Summit in Focus
It is a big week ahead, with corporate earnings, trade talks, Brexit and economic data in focus. There’s also the IFM meetings and the EU Summit.
Bloomberg
Trump Repeatedly Pressed Tillerson to Intervene in Zarrab Case
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump repeatedly pressed then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for help getting a criminal case dropped against a client of Rudy Giuliani, long after the top U.S. diplomat made clear he felt the idea was inappropriate, said two people familiar with the matter.Tillerson grew increasingly frustrated with the president’s multiple requests in 2017 that he pressure the Justice Department or agree to a broader political bargain being put forward by Giuliani, according to the people.Through much of the year, Giuliani floated a plan to swap Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, for Andrew Brunson, a U.S. evangelical pastor being held in Turkey.Tillerson insisted that the case against Zarrab, which was before the Southern District of New York, was a matter for the courts and should be allowed to run its course. His refusal left Trump increasingly frustrated, and there was deep friction between the two over the issue, one of the people said.Objections RegisteredOn Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported that Trump pressed Tillerson in an Oval Office meeting in the second half of 2017 to help get the case against Zarrab dropped. After the encounter, Tillerson pulled then-Chief of Staff John Kelly aside in a hallway and reiterated his objections, saying the request was illegal.The New York Times later reported that Giuliani and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who were both working for Zarrab, made their case in a prior meeting with Trump and Tillerson in early 2017, months after Trump’s inauguration.Another person familiar with the events at the time said Giuliani even showed up unannounced at the Justice Department and requested a meeting with top officials to discuss the case. The Department never seriously considered the idea of the prisoner swap, the person said.Read More: U.S. Inquiry Into Turkish Bank Inflamed Erdogan, Then Went QuietThe latest reporting shows that the specific episode wasn’t isolated and that the president remained concerned with the Zarrab case, which was a high priority for both Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Swap SoughtIn a phone interview earlier this week, Giuliani -- who became one of Trump’s personal lawyers in April 2018 -- initially denied he’d ever raised Zarrab’s case with the president, but later said he might have done so. He acknowledged he spoke with U.S. officials as part of his effort to arrange a swap of Zarrab for Brunson, who was eventually freed in 2018.Zarrab was being prosecuted on charges of evading U.S. sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. He’d hired Mukasey and Giuliani, who’s said he reached out repeatedly to U.S. officials to seek a diplomatic solution for his client outside the courts.After his arrest in Miami in early 2016, prosecutors alleged Zarrab had “close ties” with Erdogan. They accused him of using his network of companies to move money through the U.S. financial system with the goal of helping Iran evade sanctions as the U.S. was stepping up economic pressure on Tehran.Read More: Trump Urged Top Aide to Help Giuliani Client Facing DOJ ChargesZarrab later pleaded guilty and testified against Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who headed international banking at state-owned Turkiye Halk Bankasii AS, known as Halkbank. Zarrab said Erdogan knew of and supported the laundering effort on behalf of Iran. Erdogan and other senior Turkish officials repeatedly rejected the accusations, saying they were fabrications.Atilla was eventually convicted of helping Iran evade economic sanctions on billions of dollars of oil revenue and served 28 months in U.S. prison.Tillerson, the former chief executive officer of oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp., was fired by Trump in a March 2018 tweet. At a forum with Bob Schieffer of CBS News in December, he said the president frequently asked him to do things that were illegal, adding that “he got really frustrated when we’d have those conversations.”Trump hosted Brunson in the Oval Office in October 2018 when the American returned to the U.S. after almost two years in a Turkish prison. The pair will be together again on Saturday, when Trump attends the “Value Voters Summit” in Washington for a dinner in Brunson’s honor.\--With assistance from Jennifer Jacobs.To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, ;Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Financial Times
US law: damages limitation
A damages award of $8bn against Johnson & Johnson this week proved the point. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, points out that steep awards dished out by US juries are almost always reduced on appeal. A 2003 Supreme Court ruling means punitive damages should usually be no more than 10 times compensatory damages.
Oilprice.com
Oil Jumps on Trade Hopes and Tanker Attack
Oil prices rose on Friday on the back of some positive noises coming out of the trade war negotiations and reports that an Iranian oil tanker had been attacked
Zacks
What to Expect from Q3 Earnings Season with Big Banks Set to Report?
What to Expect from Q3 Earnings Season with Big Banks Set to Report?
FX Empire
AUD/USD Forex Technical Analysis – News Driven Aussie Strengthens Over .6811, Weakens Under .6783
Based on the early price action, the direction of the AUD/USD the rest of the session on Friday is likely to be determined by trader reaction to the resistance cluster at .6809 to .6811.
FX Empire
AUD/USD Weekly Price Forecast – Australian Dollar Rockets Higher
The Australian dollar initially fell for the week but has rallied significantly as Hope has reentered the market for some type of agreement between the United States and China.
FX Empire
AUD/USD Price Forecast – Australian Dollar Testing 50 Day EMA
The Australian dollar rallied nicely during the trading session on Friday, as optimism continues to spread about the US/China trade talks. That being said, nothing has actually happened so it will be interesting to see whether or not there is some type of news that moves this market one way or the other.
FX Empire
AUD/USD and NZD/USD Fundamental Daily Forecast – Strengthen on Hopes of Progress in US-China Talks
Prices could surge further later in the session if the two countries could agree to at least a partial agreement on issues such as currency and agriculture buying. This would leave more controversial issues such as protections against Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property, for later negotiations.
Zacks
Will Chevron (CVX) Sell Its Stake in the ACG Oilfield to MOL?
Chevron (CVX) is set to relinquish its interest in the giant Azerbaijan oilfield to MOL for a consideration of more than $2 billion.
Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Valero, Marathon and Dril-Quip
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Valero, Marathon and Dril-Quip
Zacks
Pharma Stock Roundup: NVS' New Eye Drug Gets FDA Nod, NVO, GSK, PFE Sign Deals
FDA approves Novartis' (NVS) Beovu. J&J (JNJ) files sBLA for Stelara. Pfizer (PFE), Novo Nordisk (NVO) and Glaxo (GSK) announce collaboration deals.
Zacks
Will Q3 Earnings Drive Dow ETF Higher?
With most blue-chip companies earnings scheduled over the coming weeks and sentiments being mixed, investors should closely monitor the movement of the Dow ETF and grab an opportunity that arises from a surge in any of the 30 stocks.
Bloomberg
How a Battery Can Lead a Quiet Revolution
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- This week, the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for their work developing the lithium-ion battery. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in announcing the award, said the three men “created a rechargeable world.” The ubiquitous battery is now found in items as varied as hearing aids and power grids. It is a testament not just to technological revolutions, but also to the power of advancements in performance and decreases in cost. Whittingham began working on the lithium-ion battery in an Exxon Mobil Corp. laboratory in the 1970s, when it was being considered for automotive applications. The lithium-ion battery wasn’t a fit for cars then, but research and development continued and the technology improved, to the point that it became a viable power source in search of an application. But it was Sony Corp., not Exxon Mobil, that would introduce the first lithium-ion battery for consumers. That new device in need of a suitable power source? The handheld 8 mm camcorder. In 1995, camcorders created the biggest source of demand for lithium-ion batteries. By 2000, laptops had become the biggest driver of demand; by 2005, it was feature phones. By 2010, the smartphone was the biggest source of demand for lithium-ion batteries. As this rather dramatic chart shows, passenger electric vehicles have vaulted past consumer electronics to become the single biggest source of demand for lithium-ion batteries, less than 15 years after Martin Eberhard built the first Tesla Roadster battery pack from 6,831 of the lithium-ion cells used in laptop computers.The lithium-ion battery has come a very long way in other ways, too. Battery costs have come down by more than 80% in nine years.And battery manufacturing capacity has increased more than 200-fold in 15 years. There is far more expansion planned. Next year will see more new capacity added than the global manufacturing capacity’s total in 2016. By 2023, total capacity will have more than doubled.The combination of cost, capacity and capability has in itself created a new market for the lithium-ion battery: energy storage within power grids. We need look no further than northern Indiana, where power utility Nipsco plans to replace coal-fired power with wind, solar and solar-plus-storage projects. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences concluded its announcement of this year’s chemistry prize rather poetically: “Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized our lives since they first entered the market in 1991,” the academy said. “They have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society, and are of the greatest benefit to humankind.” Sometimes being good enough is revolutionary, too.Weekend readingSome of 2019’s wackiest investment predictions are coming true. “Firms that align their business models to a net zero world will be rewarded handsomely,” Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said in a speech in Tokyo this week. “Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist.” Carbon Tracker estimates that Japan’s coal-fired power generation fleet could end up as $71 billion of stranded assets. Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte has decided against investing in Saudi Aramco’s initial public offering, in part over environmental concerns. Unilever says that it will reduce its use of virgin plastic by 50% by 2025, and reduce its absolute use of plastic packaging by 100,000 metric tons. A new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study finds that obesity-related diseases will claim more than 90 million lives in the next 30 years, lower life expectancy by three years, and reduce gross domestic product by 3.3% in OECD countries. Three out of 10 low-income Americans do not have access to broadband of any kind. In the latest “Stephanomics” podcast, Bloomberg Economics’ Stephanie Flanders explores why birthrates are so low, and what those low birthrates mean for the global economy. Arkansas’s Ouachita Electric Cooperative Corp. is seeking a 4.5% decrease in its electricity rates, thanks to its solar power assets. Northrop Grumman Corp. has launched the Mission Extension Vehicle-1, the first satellite designed to service and extend the life of other satellites. Dyson Group Plc has pulled the plug on its electric vehicle plans, saying “we simply cannot make it commercially viable.” The most detailed map of U.S. automobile emissions. Get Sparklines delivered to your inbox. Sign up here. And subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.To contact the author of this story: Nathaniel Bullard at nbullard@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Nathaniel Bullard is a BloombergNEF energy analyst, covering technology and business model innovation and system-wide resource transitions.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Zacks
Analysts Estimate Coca-Cola (KO) to Report a Decline in Earnings: What to Look Out for
Coke (KO) doesn't possess the right combination of the two key ingredients for a likely earnings beat in its upcoming report. Get prepared with the key expectations.
Zacks
TOTAL Expands in Brazil With Offshore Exploration License
TOTAL (TOT) further expands operations in Brazil through a new exploration license in the C-M-541 deep offshore block, located in the pre-salt Campos Basin.
Zacks
Keurig's (KDP) Strategies to Bolster Growth: Time to Buy?
Keurig (KDP) gains from acquisition and partnership strategy as well as efforts to launch innovative products and enhance supply-chain facilities. This should support growth.
Zacks
Geron Starts Enrollment in Phase III MDS Study on Imetelstat
Geron enrolls first patient in the late-stage IMerge study to evaluate imetelstat in myelodysplastic syndromes.
Zacks
CCHGY vs. KO: Which Stock Should Value Investors Buy Now?
CCHGY vs. KO: Which Stock Is the Better Value Option?
Zacks
Timken's Acquisition Strategy Bodes Well Amid High Input Costs
Timken's (TKR) fiscal 2019 earnings is likely to benefit from favorable price and mix, higher volumes and improved manufacturing performance, despite higher input costs and interest expenses.
Zacks
Sonoco (SON) Gears Up for Q3 Earnings: A Beat in Store?
Benefits from acquisitions, pricing initiatives and a lower tax rate are likely to have offset the impact of inflated input costs on Sonoco's (SON) third-quarter 2019 results.
Investing.com
Stocks - Roku, Slack Jump, as Oil Companies Gain Premarket
Investing.com - Stocks in focus in premarket trading on Friday:
Bloomberg
From Binge to Bust: A Canadian Oil Town Lines Up at the Food Bank
(Bloomberg) -- Dan Edwards watched Fort McMurray, Alberta, turn into the insolvency capital of Canada from a brown brick warehouse on King Street, home to the Wood Buffalo Food Bank.Ten years ago, about 2,000 people came by every month for jars of peanut butter and cans of soup. Now, he and his staff help feed four times that. Before, the clientele was mostly folks struggling to pay rents that shot up during the oil boom. Today, it’s often men and women who were living high before the bust. Sometimes, they pull up in shiny pickups purchased just a year or two ago. “You never know who’s going to walk through your door,” said Edwards, the food bank’s director. “Individuals that have degrees and education and skills—but the jobs just aren’t what they were.”Once the booming heart of the country’s energy industry, the little city of 75,000 in northeastern Alberta has become a showcase for the debt troubles many Canadians are facing. Fat paychecks and generous overtime earlier this decade fueled big spending on customized pickups and million-dollar homes. With work drying up, the bill has come due.Read More: Drowning in Debt, Freaked-Out Canadians Brace for a ReckoningConsumer insolvency filings in the Fort McMurray district climbed 39% in 2018, the largest percentage increase in Canada, federal data show. Claims against property, the first step in the foreclosure process, surged almost tenfold over the past three years, according to court records. The city’s 90-day delinquency rate on non-mortgage loans climbed to 1.75% in the second quarter, compared with 1.12% nationally, according to Equifax Canada.The five-year slump that’s cut oil prices in half since 2014 has been a driver in the bust. What piled on the pain was a crippling shortage of pipelines out of the McMurray Formation, a massive reserve of crude-laden oil sands. Plans for new lines have been squelched or stalled by court challenges from an array of opponents, including U.S. activists who view the oil sands as a “carbon bomb” that will one day unleash a climate catastrophe.Stewardship of the energy industry has become a central issue of Canada’s federal election later this month. The Conservative Party has portrayed itself as a champion of the sector and pledges to remove regulations Prime Minister Justin Trudeau implemented. The Liberals, meanwhile, are trying to strike a balance between developing Alberta’s energy resources and making Canada a leader in combating climate change.Video: Fort McMurray, Once Booming Oil Town, Is Now the Insolvency CapitalIn May, after five years at Suncor Energy Inc.’s Fort Hills oil-sands mine, Steve Richardson was let go, like many others in the industry.Richardson earned around six figures most years as a heavy equipment operator. For about 10 months, he commuted from Vancouver Island in British Columbia, with Suncor paying for most of his flights and putting him up in a camp near the work site. He’d dig trenches for 14 days, then go home for seven.After the travel reimbursements stopped, he moved his family to a small town about a seven-hour drive from Fort Mac, so he could keep the job. Now he’s doing short-term work and making economies where he can, such as canceling his family’s cable subscription. “I spend a lot of time wondering what the next job is going to be,” Richardson, 42, said. He’s thankful he resisted buying boats or taking vacations on credit, as many of his friends did. “I never got into all the toys. I’m kind of fortunate that way, that I didn’t have to sell everything off like some other people. I’ve seen a lot of that. It’s like a fire sale.”The energy business has long been core to the local economy. Commercial production got off the ground in the 1940s, but the oil was always a devil to recover. It’s mired in a sludge that has to be tediously pumped out or strip-mined in open pits. Either way, the process is technologically challenging.The potential, though, is staggering. With 165.4 billion barrels, these oil sands are the world’s third-largest proven reserve, trailing only those in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. As oil prices were climbing from 2004 to 2014, the industry invested C$210.1 billion ($157.7 billion), more than last year’s combined total capital spending by all of the companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.Over those 10 years, oil-sands output more than doubled, to 2.2 million barrels a day. Canada shot up from the world’s eighth-largest oil-producing nation to the fifth-largest, overtaking Iran, Mexico and Norway.It was a heady time.Tax revenue and corporate sponsorships paid for a revamp of the Fort McMurray International Airport, improvements to schools, top-notch hockey facilities and a gleaming new recreation center, where Carrie Underwood was a recent headliner.The city’s population doubled as workers crowded in from around the country, sending rents and home prices surging and prompting a cascade of typical boomtown challenges, from crazy traffic to crowded schools. Companies, desperate for labor, threw six-figure salaries at low-skill jobs and covered commuting costs for roughnecks and people from as far away as Canada’s Atlantic Coast. Median annual household incomes more than doubled from 2001 to 2011, to about C$181,000. Then oil prices tanked. The pipeline plans stalled. International giants, including Royal Dutch Shell Plc, ConocoPhillips and Total SA sold off their major oil-sands assets. Capital investments are on track to decline for a fifth straight year to an estimated C$12 billion this year, about one-third of the 2014 level, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.Several operators—Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc. and a few others—are still active and generally profitable. But they’ve managed that by cutting costs, including, of course, that of labor.“People aren’t getting the overtime that they used to get, or they’re not getting any overtime at all,” said Sandra Landry, an insolvency trustee at MNP Ltd.If things weren’t bad enough when oil bottomed around $26 a barrel in early 2016, the largest wildfire in recent history swept through the Fort Mac area that May. It forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 people, destroyed almost 2,000 homes and caused about C$3.7 billion in insured losses, making it the country’s costliest natural disaster.“The housing market is down, there’s the economic downturn and there’s still the recovery from the fire,” said Don Scott, mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray. Home prices remain 44% below the recent peak.Sean O’Byrne moved to Fort Mac from Grande Prairie, Alberta, after the fire to open a branch of a friend’s siding business to repair damaged houses. That work dried up in November. Now he’s selling cars, making far less than the C$1,000 a day he could rake in with the siding business; customers at the General Motors dealership are no longer trading in for new models every two years. He and his wife have cut back on travel and moved to a cheaper apartment closer to their children’s school, saving C$900 in rent, he said while sipping coffee in a Tim Hortons doughnut shop facing a forested area, where charred trees stick out among new growth.“People aren’t spending money like they used to,” he said.They likely won’t be in the near future. There are only a few projects on the horizon that would create many new jobs. Teck Resources Ltd.’s proposed C$20 billion Frontier mine is in the early stages of the regulatory-approval process. Imperial Oil Ltd., a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp., has put its long-planned C$2.6 billion Aspen mine on hold, waiting to see if the pipeline situation improves.There aren’t many bets being laid that it will. More than a few folks would rather it not. Since the frenzy died down, traffic has returned to normal, in part because the oil money helped build a new bridge, over the Athabasca river. The unemployment rate, which skyrocketed to around 10% in 2016, has settled down to 6.3%, mostly a function of workers decamping for more promising prospects.“That massive boom and gold-rush mentality that took place—I would rather not relive that,” said Alex Pourbaix, chief executive officer of Cenovus, adding the entire industry has learned the benefits of measured growth.These days, the company will only consider expansion projects that will be profitable with the benchmark U.S. oil price at $45 a barrel, about $10 less than the current level. Some oil-sands projects undertaken a decade ago required $100 a barrel to break even.John Hickey is also content with the slowdown. A mechanic who works on used oil-industry vehicles, he lost his house in the wildfire. Two years ago, a builder quoted him C$500,000. The offers keep moving down, and he’s waiting for one to get to $200,000 or so before going ahead.In the meantime, he’s sharing a one-bedroom condo with a friend, sleeping in a tent in the living room to give himself a bit of privacy. He still has work and has always lived within his means, a lesson for places like Fort Mac that can see the money go as quickly as it came, he said.Too many, he said, “made a lifestyle based on an economy that wasn’t sustainable.” To contact the authors of this story: Kevin Orland in Calgary at korland@bloomberg.netChris Fournier in Ottawa at cfournier3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net, Simon CaseyAnne ReifenbergJacqueline ThorpeFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.