“The desire for more, the fear of missing out, the tendency to compare against others, the influence of the crowd and the dream of the sure thing—these factors are near universal. Thus they have a profound collective impact on most investors and most markets. The result is mistakes, and those mistakes are frequent, widespread and recurring.”
― Howard Marks

1. Eli Lilly May Be a Big Winner From the FDA’s Alzheimer’s Decision — The company is developing its own Alzheimer’s therapy, called donanemab, which works along the same principles as Aduhelm. Analysts say the details of the FDA’s decision on Aduhelm may allow Lilly to file for approval for donanemab far sooner than expected. Eli lilly’s unveiling of data from a donanemab trial called Trailblazer-ALZ in March was a major event for investors. While the data showed that the drug had rapidly and dramatically cleared amyloid plaque, the brain buildup thought to have a role in Alzheimer’s disease, experts noted that that the slowing of cognitive decline seen in the study was not statistically significant by all measures.
2. U.S. Senate Is Poised to Pass China Bill — The U.S. Senate could soon pass a wide-ranging China bill that has bipartisan support for major investments to boost the country’s technology edge over China. The package focuses on bolstering U.S. leadership in areas like artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and advanced manufacturing. The package also lays out funding to increase chip production domestically.
Other proposals range from trying to secure U.S. research and innovation at academic centers from foreign intervention to calling for a domestic boycott of the Winter 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
The package offers a framework for the evolving U.S.-China relationship on multiple fronts as policy makers try to find a balance between pushing back against China over human rights concerns and technology-related issues while avoiding damaging U.S. companies’ lucrative business in China.
3. Bipartisan Group of Senators Reaches Agreement on Infrastructure Proposal — Members of a bipartisan group of senators said they had reached an agreement on an infrastructure proposal that would be fully paid for without tax increases. While the group of 10 senators didn’t reveal details of the plan in its statement, people familiar with the agreement said it called for $579 billion above expected future federal spending on infrastructure. The overall proposal would spend $974 billion over five years and $1.2 trillion if it continued over eight years, according to some of the people.
4. U.S. Inflation Is Highest in 13 Years as Prices Surge 5% — The Labor Department said last month’s increase in the consumer-price index was the largest since August 2008, when the reading rose 5.4%. The core-price index, which excludes the often-volatile categories of food and energy, jumped 3.8% in May from the year before—the largest increase for that reading since June 1992. May’s jump in prices extends a trend that accelerated this spring amid widespread Covid-19 vaccinations, relaxed business restrictions, trillions of dollars in federal pandemic relief programs and ample household savings—all of which have stoked demand for Americans to spend and travel more.
Overall prices jumped at a 9.7% annualized rate over the three months ended in May. On a month-to-month basis, overall prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6% and core prices rose 0.7%.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2021 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Weekly Summary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.