Aurelia Butler

(Reuters) -Gap raised its annual sales forecast and its first-quarter results beat market expectations, boosted by strength in its Old Navy and Gap brands as Americans snap up its trendy denims and limited edition apparel. Shares of the company surged 23% after the bell as the Banana Republic owner saw strong spring shopping, similar to mall-based retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch, which had also hiked its annual sales goal.Gap’s quarterly store sales jumped 3% from a year ago as it has been expanding its store presence, while online sales rose 5% to account for 38% of the total sales.The company’s turnaround strategy to lower promotions and focus on improved product assortment is yielding results after weak growth last year due to low demand and supply chain issues. “Shoppers are willing and able to spend if they see value in an on-trend, well-made dress from Gap or a burrito bowl from Chipotle (NYSE:CMG),” Zak Stambor, a senior analyst at Emarketer said.Gap also lifted its fiscal 2024 margin forecast to at least 150 basis points growth compared with a prior target of as much as 50 bps expansion. It now sees annual sales to be up slightly from last year and compared with prior expectations of roughly flat sales. First-quarter gross margin jumped 410 basis points to 41.2%.At Old Navy, comparable sales grew 3% compared with 1% decline a year ago, while Gap logged 3% growth.Its net sales for the quarter ended May 4 rose to $3.39 billion, edging past analysts’ average estimate of $3.29 billion. It earned 41 cents per share compared to estimates of 14 cents.In contrast, American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO) missed quarterly revenue estimates, while Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS) posted a surprise quarterly loss. “Brands with a strong aesthetic or sharp brand positioning are thriving,” Stambor said. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The rate of U.S. failed trades stood at 1.90% on Wednesday, a big test day for the recently implemented faster settlement cycle, roughly stable from Friday’s number, Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) showed this morning.The average fail rate in May for the period prior to the faster settlement was 2.01%, DTCC said in a statement. Market participants were expecting it to increase to 4.1% after T+1 implementation, from 2.9%, according to research firm ValueExchange. The affirmation rate, another indicator the industry closely watches to show trades participants have verified and agreed on details, also went up to 94.55% on Wednesday, almost two percentage points higher than on Friday.The higher the affirmation rate, the more likely trades are to be successfully settled.Brian Steele, managing director at DTCC, said it has been a “smooth transition” for a project the industry has worked on for over three years.DTCC said the clearing fund also decreased by $3.1 billion from the past month to $9.1 billion. This fund holds clearing requirements to cover potential defaults. On Tuesday, U.S. trading of equities, corporate and municipal bonds and other securities moved to a one-day settlement cycle (T+1) from two days (T+2), to comply with a rule change adopted in February by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.Wednesday was the first big test for Wall Street as it settled trades executed last Friday, when T+2 was still in place, and trades from Tuesday, the first day of T+1. This was expected to lead to a rise in volume.Despite smooth first days of the so-called T+1, market participants say it is still early to predict if rates will remain at those levels. A more comprehensive analysis would take at least a couple of weeks.”It’s at least going to take 30 days for everyone to kind of be comfortable with the new settlement cycle,” said Kaisha Schnoll, assistant vice president at STP Investment Services, which provides services to investment managers. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets.An Asian economic calendar on Friday overflowing with top-tier indicators awaits investors, who look set to close out the week and the month on a downbeat note as worries grow over the strength of the U.S. and global economies.Investors often cheer ‘bad news’ on the U.S. economy by bidding up risk assets on the view that the Fed will be forced to ease policy. Equally, ‘good news’ often drags stocks and bonds lower because rates may have to stay higher for longer.Investors’ reaction to revised U.S. GDP figures on Thursday followed neither play book – bad news was bad news. Slower GDP growth in Q1 pushed stocks, the dollar and bond yields lower, and relatively dovish comments from New York Fed president John Williams failed to provide much comfort.The MSCI World, MSCI Asia ex-Japan, MSCI emerging market and Japan’s Nikkei 225 indexes are all poised for their second weekly loss in a row. Rising bond yields, and now U.S. growth concerns, are taking their toll. And could the U.S. tech fairy tale be starting to fade too?Financial conditions certainly seem to be biting. According to Goldman Sachs, emerging market, Chinese and global financial conditions are the tightest in a month. Little wonder, perhaps, that investors are taking some chips off the table as the month end approaches.It may be month-end on Friday, but there will be no rest for Asian markets. Not if the economic calendar is anything to go by.China’s official purchasing managers’ index reports for May, a raft of top-tier indicators from Japan including retail sales, industrial production and Tokyo inflation, and first quarter GDP from India and Taiwan are all on tap.China’s PMIs are expected to show that manufacturing activity in May grew at a similar pace to the previous month when it barely managed to stay expansionary, reinforcing the fragile nature of the recovery in the world’s No.2 economy.China’s economy blew past expectations to post growth of 5.3% in the first quarter, and a string of April indicators including factory output, trade and consumer prices suggest it has successfully navigated some near-term downside risks.But the crisis-hit property sector remains a major drag, deflationary pressures persist, and capital is just as liable to be flowing out of the country than in.Core inflation in Japan’s capital, meanwhile, is expected to have picked up in May to 1.9% from a two-year low of 1.6% in April, and India’s economy likely grew at a 6.5% rate in the January-March quarter – its slowest pace in a year – due to weak demand. Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Friday:- China official PMIs (May)- Tokyo inflation (May)- India GDP (Q1) More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In their opening statement at Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the prosecutors seeking to win the first-ever criminal conviction of a sitting or former U.S. president made a bold prediction: they would have hard evidence to back up testimony from Michael Cohen, the star witness branded a liar by the defense. Over the next several weeks, jurors heard testimony from insiders at Trump’s real estate company, his 2016 presidential campaign, and his White House that methodically backed up the two core elements of Manhattan District Alvin Bragg’s case: that Trump was aware of a “catch-and-kill” conspiracy to buy the silence of people with negative information before the election, and that he was involved in a cover-up of Cohen’s hush money payment to a porn star. That testimony – coupled with evidence such as bank records, emails and a surreptitious recording of Trump speaking about a hush money payment – culminated in the 12-member jury finding Trump guilty of criminal charges.Its verdict: He illegally falsified business records to hide his reimbursement to Cohen for the $130,000 Cohen paid to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.To be sure, jury deliberations are secret and the reasoning behind the decision to convict will not be clear unless any jurors decide to speak publicly. Trump is almost certain to appeal his conviction.Cohen testified at the trial in New York state criminal court in Manhattan that the reimbursement payments were falsely labeled as legal retainer fees in Trump’s family real estate company’s books. Cohen said Trump directed him to pay off Daniels, and that he would not have done so without getting paid back. “He stated to me that he had spoken to some friends, some individuals, very smart people, and that: ‘It’s $130,000. You’re like a billionaire. Just pay it,’” Cohen said on May 13. “And he expressed to me: ‘Just do it.’”The verdict vindicated Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who was criticized by both Trump’s fellow Republicans and some of Bragg’s fellow Democrats for bringing a case involving well-known allegations of sexual impropriety, even if the transaction that mattered was financial.Bragg argued the case was truly about an effort to corrupt the 2016 election – not sex.”It was the subversion of democracy,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said in his May 28 closing statement. The “catch-and-kill” conspiracy, he said, was meant “to manipulate and defraud the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion.”The case is widely viewed as less consequential than the other three criminal cases Trump faces on charges over efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden and his retention of sensitive government documents after leaving the White House in 2021. Trump has pleaded not guilty in the other three cases, which are unlikely to reach juries before his Nov. 5 election rematch with Biden.’OUT OF CHARACTER’One challenge for Bragg’s case was Cohen’s credibility. Cohen went to prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to violating campaign finance law with the payment to Daniels and lying to Congress in 2017 about a Trump Organization real estate project in Russia. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche hounded Cohen on cross-examination about his lies to journalists and an instance in which he stole from Trump’s company.So prosecutors needed plenty of evidence backing up Cohen’s testimony that Trump was aware of Cohen’s payment to Daniels, which they argued was part of a broader conspiracy to buy the silence of people with potentially negative information about Trump in violation of campaign finance laws.Jurors did not have to rely solely on Cohen’s testimony to accept that Trump intended to conceal that alleged conspiracy by labeling his 2017 payments to Cohen as legal retainer fees.David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, testified that he agreed at an August 2015 meeting with Trump and Cohen to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” for women coming forward with unflattering stories about Trump. Jurors heard a tape Cohen surreptitiously recorded of Trump on Sept. 6, 2016, discussing a hush money payment Pecker’s company made to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who says she had a year-long affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. Trump denied having ever had a sexual relationship with her or with Daniels. Jurors saw phone records showing Cohen had several calls with Trump and his bodyguard Keith Schiller – whom Cohen said would hand his phone to Trump – around the time of frantic negotiations with Daniels’ lawyer over the payment in October 2016. In some of his most damning testimony, Cohen said he, Trump and then-Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg discussed the repayment plan in a January 2017 meeting shortly before Trump’s inauguration as president. Weisselberg, who is serving a five-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to perjury in a separate case, did not testify for either side at the trial. But jurors saw Weisselberg’s handwritten notes – jotted down on a copy of the wire transfer receipt for Cohen’s payment to Daniels’ lawyer – with instructions as to how Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney should pay Cohen. McConney testified that he understood the payments to be a reimbursement for Cohen, not legal fees. Hope Hicks, a former communications aide of Trump’s, recalled Trump telling her that Cohen paid Daniels “out of the kindness of his own heart” – consistent with the defense’s efforts to distance Trump himself from the hush money deals. But Hicks expressed skepticism of that claim.“That,” Hicks testified on May 3, “would be out of character for Michael.” More