Aurelia Butler

U.S. inflows from individual traders hit their highest in three months last week, averaging at $1.36 billion per day, Vanda (NASDAQ:VNDA) Research said in a note on Thursday.After buying U.S. stocks at a record pace in the first quarter of 2023, retail investors had retreated to the sidelines amid turmoil in the banking sector, high interest rates and fears of a recession.But the passage of a U.S. debt ceiling deal last week helped stave off a devastating default and empowered markets to break out of a range and move higher. “Following the debt ceiling agreement, risk-on sentiment seemed to have returned to the retail investor base this past week as we witnessed bullish flows across the ETF, single stock, and options space, mainly benefiting technology names,” J.P. Morgan analyst Peng Cheng said.Net retail purchases over the past week were the highest in Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), in that order, Vanda data showed.Retail trading accounted for up to 17% of the U.S. total this week, the highest in a month and up from 14% in the prior week, according to J.P.Morgan data. That coincides with the benchmark S&P 500 climbing 20% above its bear market low in October and Wall Street’s fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility index, slumping to its lowest since before the pandemic.A drastic uptick in retail buying has likely helped fuel a short squeeze in small-caps as well, Vanda Research analysts said.The small-cap index Russell 2000 has advanced 7.5% in June, well ahead of the benchmark S&P 500’s 2.7% gain.”It will take more than just a short squeeze for buying to sustain at these levels, especially as retail investors have only just started to rebuild conviction in the markets,” the Vanda analysts added.In Thursday’s session, Co became the second-most traded stock by retail traders, J.P. Morgan data showed, following the used-car retailer’s upbeat second-quarter forecast.GameStop (NYSE:GME), which was at the heart of the meme-stock frenzy of 2021, slumped 18% on Thursday after the surprise exit of a CEO fanned concerns about the videogame retailer’s turnaround. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States and five of its allies on Friday condemned the use of trade practices that amount to economic coercion in a joint declaration that did not single out other countries but appeared to be aimed at China.Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand jointly released the statement with the United States, emphasizing that “trade-related economic coercion and non-market-oriented policies and practices” threatened the multi-lateral trading system and “harms relations between countries.”The statement comes after the Group of Seven leaders last month agreed to a new initiative to counter economic coercion and pledged action to ensure that any actors attempting to weaponize economic dependence would fail and face consequences.The United States, Britain, Japan and Canada are also members of the G7.The countries expressed concern about “pervasive subsidization,” anti-competitive practices by state-owned enterprises, forced technology transfer, and government interference with corporate decision-making.Washington has regularly raised such concerns about trade practices by Beijing, and an official from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, who spoke to reporters about the joint declaration, cited China for imposing a ban on imports from Lithuania after Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy. China, which regards the democratically-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory, suspended imports of beef, dairy and beer from Lithuania last year.In May, Beijing protested the G7’s declarations, including on economic coercion, saying the U.S. was “pushing hard to weave an anti-China net in the Western world.”In their joint statement on Friday, the U.S. and its five allies also raised concerns about forced labor.”We are also seriously concerned about the use of forced labour, including state-sponsored forced labour, in global supply chains. All forms of forced labour are gross abuses of human rights, as well as economic issues, and it is a moral imperative to end these practices,” they said. More

The budget needs to satisfy the IMF to secure the release of more bailout money for the crisis-struck country, which is due to hold a general election by November.Total spending is expected to be 14.5 trillion rupees ($50.54 billion), with 1.8 trillion rupees going to defence, said the source.Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a televised address to his cabinet on Friday reiterated that he was hopeful that the agreement with the IMF would go to its board for approval this month. He added that the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and China had been “very helpful” in recent months in providing funding to Pakistan. The IMF said earlier this week that it was discussing the budget with Pakistan’s government. Sharif’s government is hoping to persuade the IMF to unlock at least some of the $2.5 billion left in a $6.5 billion programme that Pakistan entered in 2019 and which expires at the end of this month.The budget could target a total tax revenue of 9.2 trillion rupees and pencil in debt servicing of 7.3 trillion rupees, the official source said, highlighting the country’s massive debt burden. Inflation for the next fiscal year is expected to come in at 21%, the source said, as Reuters reported earlier this week. Inflation in May was at a record high of nearly 38%.($1 = 286.9000 Pakistani rupees) More

LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) – Global equities were set for a small weekly gain on Friday following a Wall Street rally overnight, as rising bets the Federal Reserve will skip a rate increase next week overshadowed worries about U.S. markets being drained of cash. MSCI’s broad index of global shares (MIWD00000PUS) edged 0.1% higher, on track for a weekly rise of 0.6%. Europe’s STOXX 600 index fell 0.3%, dragged lower by chemicals stocks after Britain’s Croda International issued a weak profit outlook. U.S. stock futures fell 0.1%, indicating some softness after the S&P 500 entered a technical bull market the day before.Traders now lay 73% odds on the Fed keeping rates steady on June 14, in a range of 5%-5.25%, pausing its most aggressive hiking cycle since the 1980s. Bets for a pause were supported by data on Thursday that showed the number of Americans filing new jobless claims surged to a more than 1 1/2-year high, indicating a loosening labour market that could further quell inflation. Investors also hope the Fed will pause its rate rise campaign as a quirk of the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations has posed a potential a threat to market liquidity. The U.S. government is expected to rush to sell short term debt to replenish its Treasury General Account, potentially at yields so high that banks raise deposit rates to compete for funding, reducing interest in riskier assets like equities. “We’re all worried about liquidity,” said Ben Jones, director of macro research at Invesco. The Fed, he added, “still wants to tighten,” policy and therefore may allow the TGA rebuild to drain liquidity from markets without stepping in to provide other support tools. This fear was not dominating trading on Friday, however. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on May 19 it was still unclear if U.S. interest rates will need to rise further, and the risks of overtightening or undertightening had become more balanced. YIELDS UP Two-year Treasury yields, which are extremely sensitive to monetary policy expectations, rose about 4 basis points (bps) to around 4.56%. The 10-year yield edged up 4 bps to 3.753%.The U.S. dollar index, which measures the performance of the U.S. currency against six others, rebounded 0.2% to 103.52.The euro slipped 0.14% to $1.0765, just below Thursday’s two-week high of $1.0787.Elsewhere, the Turkish lira extended its decline to a new record low of 23.54 per dollar, even as President Tayyip Erdogan’s appointment of a U.S. banker as central bank chief sent a strong signal for a return to more orthodox policy.Erdogan had last week put well-regarded former finance minister Mehmet Simsek back in the post. Simsek said this week that the guiding principles for the economy would be transparency, consistency, accountability and predictability.Leading crypto asset bitcoin briefly dipped before recovering to trade 0.4% firmer at $26,603 after crypto exchange Binance said it was suspending dollar deposits and would soon pause fiat currency withdrawal channels following a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission crackdown.Crude oil edged higher but gains were tempered by a report that the United States and Iran were close to a nuclear deal, although denials from both parties kept it off the previous session’s lows.The prospect of a deal, which reportedly included scope for an additional 1 million barrels per day of Iranian supply, initially dented crude prices. Brent crude futures fell by as much as 0.9% at one point, before reversing course to last trade up 0.3% at $76.20 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was up 0.3% at $71.50 a barrel. More

PARIS (Reuters) -Top food companies in France including Unilever (NYSE:UL) have pledged to cut prices on hundreds of products from next month, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday, threatening financial sanctions if they break the promise.The government is furious that prices consumers pay in supermarkets have hit record levels in recent months even though the prices industry pays for many raw materials have been declining.Le Maire has previously threatened to claw back what he described as “undue” profits from food companies with special taxes if they did not pass on falling raw materials prices to consumers already struggling with high energy bills.”As soon as July, prices of certain products will go down,” Le Maire told BFM TV on Friday after meeting representatives of the food industry the previous day.”There will be checks and there will be sanctions for those who don’t abide by the rules,” Le Maire said, mentioning pasta, poultry and vegetable oil as some of the products on which prices will be cut.While food inflation has become a concern for European governments from Britain to Italy recently, France has been among the most aggressive in pushing price cuts. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has imposed mandatory price cuts on some basic food items.Le Maire said if the 75 food companies that make 80% of what the French eat do not live up to their promise he could name and shame them to the public.”On a certain number of products where wholesale prices have fallen, then the (retail) prices will have to fall too, by 2, 3, 5, maybe even 10%,” he said, adding he would have the list of products concerned next week.Unilever, the maker of Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Knorr soup, said it was one of the 75 companies the government said should cut prices next month.”We confirm our participation in ongoing discussions with the Ministry of the Economy and all stakeholders, including retailers, to identify the best actions to serve the purchasing power of the French, in this context of high inflation,” a Unilever spokesperson told Reuters.Nestle, Danone, Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC) and Pepsico (NASDAQ:PEP) did not have an immediate comment.French annual inflation cooled more than expected in May to its lowest level in a year at 6.0% as energy and food price increases moderated. But food prices still were up 14% last month after a record spike of almost 16% in March.Food prices surged after food companies and big retailers agreed in March to an average 10% increase in prices, responding to a surge in input prices the previous year and wages after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.However, the surge has hit the food-loving French’s appetite as their spending on food, adjusting for inflation, has fallen to its lowest level since March 2009, according to data from the INSEE statistics agency.Meanwhile, the food industry has seen profits surge, largely making up for sharp falls during the pandemic, Le Maire said. The industry’s operating profits were up 15% in the first quarter from the previous quarter, according to data from INSEE. More

The company, and its EV peers have been struggling as access to capital tightens from rising interest rates and economic uncertainty.The cash-strapped EV maker had warned earlier it might be forced to file for bankruptcy, citing uncertainty over a $170 million investment deal with Foxconn through which the Taiwanese company would hold a near-20% stake in the money-losing U.S. firm. It currently holds a little over 8% in the company, as per Refinitiv data. Foxconn has since invested $52.7 million and is balking at purchasing additional shares, citing a breach of their agreement, Lordstown said.On Friday, the U.S. company, named after the town in Ohio where it is based, said in a filing it believed Foxconn was unlikely to complete the promised purchase, citing a letter the contract manufacturer sent Lordstown earlier this month, in which the Taiwanese company did not acknowledge the subsequent common closing.”The company believes that Foxconn’s various breaches of the investment agreement and pattern of bad faith have caused material and irreparable harm to the company,” Lordstown added in the filing.Foxconn did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.Lordstown, whose shares has tumbled more than 80% this year, also said in May it might have to stop making the Endurance pickup truck in the near future unless it finds a partner. More