Finance

OMICRON MOVES fast. That makes it difficult to contain—even for China, which tries to stomp promptly on any outbreak. A cluster of infections in Shanghai, for example, has shattered the city’s reputation for deft handling of the pandemic, forcing the government to impose a staggered lockdown, of uncertain duration, for which it seems surprisingly ill prepared.The variant’s speed also means that China’s economic prospects are unusually hard to track. A lot can happen in the time between a data point’s release and its reference period. The most recent hard numbers on China’s economy refer to the two months of January and February. Those (surprisingly good) figures already look dated, even quaint. For much of that period, there was no war in Europe. And new covid-19 cases in mainland China averaged fewer than 200 per day, compared with the 13,267 infections reported on April 4th. Relying on these official economic figures is like using a rear-view mirror to steer through a chicane.For a more timely take on China’s fast-deteriorating economy, some analysts are turning to less conventional indicators. For example, Baidu, a popular search engine and mapping tool, provides a daily mobility index, based on tracking the movement of smartphones. Over the seven days to April 3rd, this index was more than 48% below its level a year ago.The Baidu index is best suited to tracking movement between cities, says Ting Lu of Nomura, a bank. To gauge the hustle and bustle within cities, he uses other indicators, such as subway trips. Over the week ending April 2nd, the number of metro journeys in eight big Chinese cities was nearly 34% below its level from a year ago. In locked-down Shanghai, where many subway lines are now closed, the number of trips was down by nearly 93%, a worse drop than the city suffered in early 2020.The two numbers that worry Mr Lu the most track the economy’s distribution system, specifically couriers and lorries. In the week ending April 1st, an index of express deliveries by courier companies was nearly 27% below its level at a similar point last year. Over the same period, an index of road freight compiled by Wind, a data provider, shows a fall of 12.8%. The decline looks especially stark because this indicator was increasing by more than 7% at the end of last year.Unconventional indicators are all the more valuable in China because of doubts about the official data. The strong figures for January and February, for example, are not only old but odd. They suggest that investment in “fixed” assets, like infrastructure, manufacturing facilities and property, grew by 12.2% in nominal terms, compared with a year earlier. But that is hard to square with double-digit declines in the output of steel and cement. The recovery in property investment also looks peculiar alongside the fall in housing sales, starts and land purchases. When local governments in the provinces of Shanxi, Guizhou and Inner Mongolia said that they were double-checking their figures at the behest of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) it became clear that the official statistics look odd even to the official statisticians.China’s high-frequency indicators proved their worth in the spring of 2020, during the fog of the early pandemic. Although everyone knew the economy would suffer, forecasters were at first timid in cutting their growth forecasts. No one knew exactly how the economy would react or what the NBS would be prepared to report. With the accumulation of evidence from high-frequency data, forecasters were eventually brave enough to predict negative growth for the first quarter of 2020. Indeed, GDP shrank by 6.8%, according to even the official figures.The timeliness of these indicators makes them valuable in periods of flux. But they must still be interpreted with care. “There are many traps in those numbers,” says Mr Lu. Any short period of seven days can be distorted by idiosyncratic events, such as bad weather or holidays. And annual growth rates can be skewed by similar idiosyncrasies a year ago. Moreover, many of these indicators have a history of only a couple of years. Interpreting them is therefore more art than science. What does a dramatic weekly decline in road freight mean for quarterly GDP growth? It is impossible to say with any precision. Mr Lu was heavily trained in econometrics when he was a phd student at the University of California, Berkeley. “But with only one or two years of data, if I used the kind of techniques I learned at school, people would laugh at me.”To help avoid some of the traps lurking in these unconventional indicators, Mr Lu and his team watch “a bunch of numbers, instead of just one”. In a recent report he highlighted 20 indicators, ranging from asphalt production to movie-ticket sales. “If seven or eight out of ten indicators are worsening, then we can be confident that GDP growth is getting worse,” he says. Right now, he thinks, the direction is clear. “Something must be going very wrong.”For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter.Dig deeperAll our stories relating to the pandemic can be found on our coronavirus hub. More

Traders on the floor of the NYSE, March 25, 2022.
Source: NYSE

U.S. stock index futures were flat during overnight trading Sunday, after the S&P 500 posted a third straight week of gains.
Futures contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 14 points. S&P 500 futures were flat, while Nasdaq 100 futures declined 0.14%.

Stocks advanced on Friday — the first day of the second quarter — with the Dow and S&P gaining 0.4% and 0.34%, respectively. The Nasdaq Composite added 0.29% and also finished the week in the green.
The Dow, meantime, snapped a two-week winning streak, falling 0.12%.
Friday’s positive session came despite March’s employment report, which fell short of economists’ estimates. The U.S. economy added 431,000 jobs during the month, while estimates from Dow Jones called for 490,000.

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“Strong gains on the employment front continue to signal a green light for investors despite multi-decade highs in inflation and concerns over higher rates and Fed tightening,” noted Peter Essele, head of portfolio management for Commonwealth Financial Network. “The economy appears to be in exit velocity mode, with the only concern being the amount of labor supply available to fuel the robust recovery,” he added.
An often-cited recession signal was triggered Thursday evening when the the 2-year and 10-year treasury yields inverted for the first time since 2019.

“We think the current flattening is due to the concern that the Fed is behind the curve on hikes and will tighten policy beyond neutral, which will hurt growth,” TD Securities said in a note to clients.
Investors are also monitoring the latest developments in Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Sunday that Western nations will impost additional sanctions on Russia in the coming days.
“Equity and bond markets continued to send conflicting signals about the economic outlook,” UBS said in a recent note to clients. “We caution against over-interpreting either signal. Yield curve inversions have historically predicted recessions with a long and uncertain lag, while hopes over cease-fire talks have ebbed and flowed,” the firm added.
On Wednesday the Federal Open Market Committee will publish the minutes from the central bank’s March meeting, giving investors a deeper understanding into how the Fed views market conditions.

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Major banks are building out teams dedicated to cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology.
Start-ups are looking to compete for talent by offering faster-paced environments, equity and less red tape, courting talent from Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and others.
“You’re taking brand risk — Goldman is one of the storied institutions of Wall Street,” said Justin Schmidt, former head of digital asset markets at Goldman Sachs.

Wall Street has been beefing up hiring for digital asset teams. But some employees are walking away from name-brand institutions in search of more risk, and potentially, more reward.
JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are among the firms with dedicated groups for cryptocurrency and its underlying blockchain technology. JPMorgan has one of the largest crypto teams, with more than 200 employees working in its Onyx division. The JPM Coin digital currency is being used commercially to send payments around the world.

Umar Farooq, the CEO of Onyx by JPMorgan, said the team has to worry about compliance and protecting the bank’s brand and often moves slower than your average crypto start-up. But when products are launched, they reach “a scale that a fintech can only dream of.”
“There aren’t many places where you can roll out a new platform and that platform can go from literally nothing to transacting a billion dollars of trade a day in a few months,” Farooq told CNBC. “That sort of scale can only be possible when you operate at a company like JPMorgan Chase. The upside of that scale is way more important than whatever downsides might exist by virtue of more regulations or controls.”
When it comes to hiring, Farooq said it’s a mix of current JPMorgan employees and competing for talent with start-ups and bigger tech companies. From first-year analysts to senior management and managing directors, there’s a greater interest in making the move to crypto, he said.

A ‘Wall St’ sign is seen above two ‘One Way’ signs in New York.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters

Financial services firms added three times as many crypto jobs last year than in 2015, according to recent data from LinkedIn. In the first half of 2021, that pace jumped by 40%. Banks on a crypto hiring spree included Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Capital One, Barclays, Credit Suisse, UBS, Bank of America and BNY Mellon.
The crypto boom on Wall Street coincides with more funding and hiring in the start-up world. Crypto and blockchain companies raised a record $25 billion last year, an eightfold increase from a year earlier, according to CB Insights data.

Farooq said that even with the start-up boom, JPMorgan has seen “limited attrition.” Those leaving have been people “wanting to start their own company versus wanting to leave and go do something similar.”
However, JPMorgan did lose one of its highest-profile crypto deputies last year. Christine Moy is on garden leave after departing her role as managing director and global head of crypto and metaverse at Onyx. She has yet to announce her next move.
“After over a half-decade laying the foundations for blockchain-based infrastructure across financial markets and cross-border payments, creating new businesses that have already scaled into the $USD billions at J.P. Morgan, I am looking to challenge myself further by finding new opportunities to create value and drive impact for the Web3/crypto ecosystem from a new angle,” Moy told CNBC in an email.

Leaving Wall Street

Other top crypto executives who left Wall Street recently expressed some frustration at how long it takes to get projects moving within a large financial institution.
Mary Catherine Lader, chief operating officer at Uniswap Labs, left her job as a managing director at BlackRock last year. Her foray into crypto started as a side project within the asset management company.
“It certainly wasn’t my primary job,” Lader said. “It was kind of a hobby, as it is for so many people on Wall Street, and it definitely wasn’t something that at the time I was thinking about, because it was early stages of adoption.”
At Uniswap, Lader is now working on an emerging decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. She said she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work on the next wave of innovation.
“This technology is so critical to the future of finance that it didn’t feel like a risk at all,” Lader said. “I was sad to leave the people I had loved working with for many years. I have tremendous respect for the firm, but it didn’t feel like a risk. That’s a great thing about where we are in Web3.”
Justin Schmidt, former head of digital asset markets at Goldman Sachs, made a similar career change last year. He joined institutional crypto trading platform Talos and described the risk in a similar way, calling the decision “multidimensional.”
“Inherently, you’re taking a brand risk — Goldman is one of the storied institutions of Wall Street,” Schmidt said. “You are also taking a risk by staying someplace more traditional, and I very firmly believe that this is a generational change and there’s a generational opportunity here.”
Cryptocurrency start-ups and banks describe a shift in the hunt for top talent. Many are looking beyond top candidates with MBAs, and instead considering those with less conventional resumes. Lader and Schmidt said some of their best crypto hires have been self-taught engineers or crypto influencers they first interacted with on Twitter.
“I constantly am meeting people who are 23 years old, who are as smart about markets as people I worked with on Wall Street for years,” Lader said. “People who frankly had no interest in financial services, who would never really explore or consider working on Wall Street, are excited to work at UniSwap Labs and companies like us.” More

Stocks were modestly higher on Friday as investors assessed a new quarter of trading and a troublesome bond market recession indicator.
The S&P 500 rose 0.34% to 4,545.86, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.29% to 14,261.50. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 139.92 points, or 0.40%, to close at 34,818.27 after being down more than 100 points earlier in the session. Stocks closed near session highs.

The gains for stocks came on the first trading day of April and the second quarter. Wall Street is fresh off its first negative quarter in two years, but there were positive signs for investors on Friday.
The price of U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate fell below $100 per barrel as the Biden administration pledged to release more strategic oil reserves. Energy prices surged earlier this year as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted global supply, leading to some worry that the high prices could hurt economic growth.
Investors were also digesting the official jobs report for March, which showed the U.S. economy adding 431,000 payrolls. The result was below the composite estimate of 490,000 from Dow Jones but above some of the lower-end estimates.

“With some sentiment indicators in the U.S. pointing in the wrong direction, the jobs data also came in weaker than expected, but not as bad as many would have feared given the backdrop,” said Neil Birrell, chief investment officer at Premier Miton Investors. “Job vacancies are still being filled and wage growth remains robust, suggesting that the economy is in good shape. That is the case for now; the key will be the impact on the jobs market and broad economy as rates jump higher and growth slows.”
Materials stocks moved higher, with Freeport-McMoRan rising more than 2% and gold miner Newmont rising nearly 4.2%. Health care, utility and energy stocks also outperformed. Edwards Life Sciences and Illumina rose more than 4%, making them two of the top performers in the S&P 500. Walmart rose more than 1%.

U.S.-listed Chinese stocks jumped on Friday after a report that China was considering sharing company audits with foreign regulators.
Investors appeared to largely shake off a recession signal from the bond market that was triggered after the closing bell Thursday and again on Friday morning. The 2-year and 10-year Treasury yields inverted for the first time since 2019.
For some investors, it’s a signal that the economy is headed for a possible recession, though the inverted yield curve does not predict exactly when it will happen, and history shows it could be more than a year away or longer.
“It is a warning about whether the Fed is going to be able to land this thing properly. And I think that’s a valid concern,” said Keith Lerner, co-CIO and chief market strategist at Truist Advisory Services. “But most of the data by itself suggests that the yield curve itself is not a short-term sell signal.”
Lerner added that the market appeared to be shifting toward leadership by more defensive stocks in recent days.

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Bank stocks struggled on Friday after the inversion, with Citigroup losing 2%. Chip stocks fell again on Friday, with Intel dropping nearly 3% and Advanced Micro Devices losing about 1%, amid growing concern about personal computer demand.
There were some more negative economic readings on Friday, with February construction spending data and March manufacturing data from ISM coming in below expectations.
The three major averages slumped on Thursday to close out the first negative quarter for stocks in two years, with losses accelerating in the final hour of trading. The Dow and S&P 500 ended the quarter down nearly 4.6% and 4.9%, respectively, during the period. The Nasdaq dropped more than 9%.
The start of the Fed’s rate hiking cycle, persistently high inflation and the ongoing war in Ukraine contributed to the rough quarter for stocks.
For the week, the S&P 500 squeaked out a slight gain while the Dow declined 0.12%. The Nasdaq added 0.65%.
Correction: This article was updated to accurately reflect trading in U.S. futures that started Thursday evening. An earlier version misstated the session. Shannon Saccocia is chief investment officer at SVB Private Bank. An earlier version misstated her firm.

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Water from a fountain sprays into the air in front of signage for the Wynn Macau casino resort.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading Friday:
Tellurian —  The liquified natural gas company (LNG) surged 19.4% after Credit Suisse upgraded Tellurian to outperform, saying LNG prices are high and may continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Wynn Resorts — Shares of the casino and resort operator’s shares advanced 1.1% after an upgrade from Citi to buy from neutral. The bank cited increasing clarity around regulation and Wynn’s licenses in Macao, along with its attractive valuation.
GameStop — GameStop shares gained more than 4% before inching into red after the company said it will seek stockholder approval at its next shareholder meeting to implement a stock split. The company is proposing an increase to 1 billion shares from 300 million.
BlackBerry — BlackBerry shares fell 9.5% after the communications software company reported disappointing cybersecurity revenues for the previous quarter. The company said Thursday that revenues for its cyber came in at $122 million, below a StreetAccount estimate of $126 million.
Snap — The social media giant’s shares rose 3.8% after Piper Sandler reiterated its overweight rating on Snap, saying it sees a “compelling pocket of user growth opportunity” in Mexico, Brazil, Italy and Spain.
Walgreens Boots Alliance — Walgreens dipped 2% after Baird downgraded the stock to neutral from outperform and cuts it price target on the drug store chain. The downgrade comes after the company reported second-quarter earnings that beat consensus estimates, but said it will take time for its health-care investments to pay-off. Investors are also concerned that Walgreens is losing momentum from pandemic traffic.

Chinese EV makers — Chinese electric vehicle makers’ shares were higher after reporting a March surge in car deliveries despite a rise in Covid cases and raw materials costs. Shares of Li Auto and Xpeng each increased about 5%, while Nio added 4%.
Dell — Dell shares fell 2.7% after Goldman Sachs downgraded the computer builder to neutral from buy amid mounting pressure on the PC market. Dell “remains inexpensive compared to its peers, but we see increasing fundamental headwinds hindering this value unlock,” the firm said.
Qualcomm — Shares of the chip stock fell 3.8% after JPMorgan removed Qualcomm from its Analyst Focus list for the month of April. The Wall Street firm cited “near-term challenges relative to consumer spending.”
— CNBC’s Maggie Fitzgerald, Sarah Min, Samantha Subin and Michael Bloom contributed reporting

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As more cutting-edge investment products work their way into the marketplace, there’s growing fear retail investors and even professional brokers are getting in over their heads.
Former SEC attorney David Gorman, who’s now a partner at Dorsey & Whitney, contends complex products designed for profits are creating unprecedented risks and U.S. regulators are taking notice.

“It’s just starting to emerge in their enforcement cases,” Gorman told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “These products are incredibility complicated.” 
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, considers leveraged and inverse ETFs, equity indexed annuities and reverse convertibles as complex products.
It may not be enough to even have a Ph.D. in economics to understand the sophisticated instruments, according to Gorman.

‘This is classic Warren Buffett’

“This is classic Warren Buffett. If you don’t understand it, you can’t invest in it. And, that’s what’s happening here,” he said. “The first line of defense here is the broker-dealer. The broker-dealer is supposed to have policies and procedures in place that say this is how you teach people about this stuff. This is what this stuff is. And in the cases the SEC brought, those weren’t being followed.”
Main Management CEO Kim Arthur highlights the wide availability of alternative investments on trading platforms as problematic. His firm caters to institutional clients and high net worth individuals.

“We do use complex products, mostly options. And, they’re mostly covered call options. So, the big difference with that is you’re using that to dampen volatility. Create another stream of income or hedge against larger swings,” said Arthur in the same segment.
He believes it’s key to have regulators enforce the disclosures in the products.
“In the meantime, you just continue to do increased education alongside the regulation,” noted Arthur. “You don’t need a complex product to go broke day trading on Robinhood.”
If there’s a broad federal crackdown, Dave Nadig, CIO and director of research at ETF Trends, warns it could have serious consequences for the industry.
“[It] could have a pretty chilling effect on the sales of those products and investor portfolios,” Nadig said in the same segment. “These are really powerful tools that investors have come to rely on.”
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Long-term unemployment declined by 274,000 in March, according to the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report published Friday.
About 24% of all jobless individuals are long-term unemployed. A year ago, that share hit a pandemic-era high over 43%.
A hot job market is providing ample opportunity for workers, as employers recruit outside their traditional labor pool.

A job seeker receives information from a recruiter during a job fair in Miami on Dec. 16, 2021.
Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The ranks of the long-term unemployed fell again in March, edging closer to prepandemic levels as the job market offers ample opportunity for workers.
Long-term unemployment is a period of joblessness that lasts 27 weeks or more (or, at least six months). It’s generally a financially precarious period for households in which it’s harder to find a job and unemployment benefits are unavailable.

The number of long-term unemployed declined by 274,000 in March, to 1.4 million, according to the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report issued Friday.

In March 2021, the long-term jobless accounted for 43.2% of all unemployed individuals, a pandemic-era high and just shy of the all-time record 45.5%, which was set in April 2010 in the wake of the Great Recession.
By March 2022, the share had nearly halved to 23.9% and was approaching its prepandemic level of roughly 19% to 20%.

Strong job market

The improvement comes amid a labor market that has been particularly strong for workers.
Job openings (an indicator of employer demand for workers) are near record highs and layoffs near record lows as businesses aim to hold onto the workers they have.

Annual wage growth is higher than at any point in over 20 years, according to economists at job site Indeed. Employees, enticed by higher pay and ample opportunity, have been quitting their jobs at near-record levels.
“As the labor market continues to expand and more options are available, that helps workers who are traditionally the last to return to the workforce, which includes workers who are unemployed for long periods of time,” according to Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at career site Glassdoor.
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The long-term unemployed often have a difficult time finding a job, due to factors like lost connections to work networks or frayed on-the-job skills, Zhao said. Employers also tend to prefer candidates without long gaps in employment history.
“But employers are competing fiercely for talent right now,” Zhao said. “They’re willing to overlook some of these concerns.”

The March jobs report painted a rosy picture of overall employment.
The U.S. unemployment rate edged down to 3.6% in March from 3.8% the prior month, almost hitting its 3.5% level in February 2020 — which, in turn, was the lowest unemployment rate since December 1969.
The U.S. has added 562,000 new jobs per month in 2022, on average. That’s almost exactly the same pace as average monthly job creation in 2021, according to Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University and former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration.
If the pace continues, the economy will recover all its lost pandemic-era jobs (22 million total) in June, Zhao said.

“It’s remarkable how quickly the economy has recovered given how deep the crisis was,” Zhao said.
It’s unclear how long the worker-friendly labor market will persist. The Federal Reserve started raising interest rates to cool down the economy and reduce inflation, which is running at its fastest pace in 40 years. The war in Ukraine and any unforeseen Covid-19 curveballs pose potential headwinds to the U.S. economy, too.

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The bank expects to add one million customers a year to its budding Marcus retail division through the acquisition of GreenSky, announced in September at a $2.2 billion price tag, Goldman executives said in their first interview after the deal closed Tuesday.
Goldman will start originating GreenSky’s loans using its own $1.5 trillion balance sheet in the next few months, according to Bhatia, replacing the bank partners GreenSky had leaned on when it was independent.
The integration of GreenSky systems into Goldman will take through the rest of the year and possibly into 2023, Goldman said.

David Zalik, founder and CEO of GreenSky.
Chris Hamilton | GreenSky

Goldman Sachs, the 153-year old investment bank, is now officially in the home improvement loan business as it continues a push into the finances of ordinary Americans.
The bank expects to add one million customers a year to its budding Marcus retail division through the acquisition of GreenSky, announced in September at a $2.2 billion price tag, Goldman executives said in their first interview after the deal closed Tuesday. GreenSky is an Atlanta-based buy-now, pay-later fintech firm that focuses on construction loans with an average $10,000 size.

“It a great acquisition engine because we expect to bring a million new customers annually through this distribution we’re adding to the Marcus ecosystem,” said Swati Bhatia, a Goldman partner and former Stripe executive. These customers will be able to use the firm’s Marcus app, where they will be offered the bank’s other products, including savings, personal loans and an expected digital checking account later this year, she said.
The move has broad implications for Goldman investors as it ramps up its ambitions in consumer finance, bringing increased opportunities — and risk. Goldman will start originating GreenSky’s loans using its own $1.5 trillion balance sheet in the next few months, according to Bhatia, replacing the bank partners GreenSky had leaned on when it was independent.
That will add potentially billions of dollars of new loans onto its balance sheet, which should serve as an engine for generating the type of interest income that powers larger retail rivals like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
As a result, Goldman — which typically touts it ability to manage risk as it added products like the Apple Card to its portfolio — will be more exposed to the creditworthiness of ordinary Americans. While GreenSky naturally caters to homeowners, the loans are unsecured, meaning customers’ houses aren’t used as collateral if the borrower falls behind.
GreenSky had been originating roughly $7 billion in loans a year before it was acquired, although Goldman may choose to securitize some of the loans, depending on market conditions, Bhatia said.

Home improvement

Thanks to a shortage of new construction homes and remote-work trends accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, demand for home improvement loans has been robust, according to GreenSky founder David Zalik, who is joining Goldman at the partner level.
“It’s amazing how resilient that business is, even with a pandemic, with supply chain challenges, rising interest rates; the demand has been tremendous,” Zalik said. “There was two months in the pandemic where we didn’t grow, and then it went through the roof. People want to invest in their homes.”
Customers typically come to GreenSky through the fintech’s network of 10,000 merchants, which range from small businesses to some of the biggest U.S. home improvement brands. Users choose the length of repayment periods that may vary from 36 to 84 months and can repay loans early “at any time,” according to Zalik.
“The consumer appreciates that if the total project is $15,000, I can buy it for $90 a month at a low single-digit interest rate,” Zalik said. “It helps the consumer afford and manage their cash and helps the business sell their product, no different than Toyota sells a lot more cars because financing is available.”
The integration of GreenSky systems into Goldman will take through the rest of the year and possibly into 2023, Bhatia said. With that, the bank will be closer to its vision as a provider of multiple digital products, both directly to consumers as well as via partners.
“Eventually as we complete the integration, we will be able to offer products across the spectrum to all of our customers,” Bhatia said. “We are working on creating one seamless digital experience for our customers.”

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