Week of July 18 2014- Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“The secret to being successful from a trading perspective is to have an indefatigable and an undying and unquenchable thirst for information and knowledge.” — Paul Tudor Jones
1. June Retail Sales Weaken due to Soft Auto Sales — CNBC, U.S. retail sales increased less than expected in June as receipts at automobiles dealerships surprisingly fell. The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.2 percent last month after an upwardly revised 0.5 percent advance in May. “Core sales”, which strip out automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services, and correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of gross domestic product, increased a solid 0.6 percent in June.
2. More U.S. Condensate Producers Seen Seeking to Export — Bloomberg, less than a month after Enterprise (EPD) and Pioneer (PXD) said they received approval to export processed condensate, others are seeking the same permission. Condensates are ultra-light hydrocarbons that are gaseous when extracted from oil and natural gas reservoirs. The Commerce Department confirmed that condensate, “once distilled, is no longer crude oil” and can be exported at the 2014 EIA Energy Conference in Washington last week.
3. Samsung to Join Forces with Under Armour (UA) for Wearables — a meeting was stated to have taken place between Lee Jay-yong, the heir of Samsung (OTC:SSNLF) Group, and Under Armour (NYSE:UA) CEO Kelvin Plank earlier this month discussing ways to combat Apple-Nike’s wearable device market share. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Nike (NYSE:NKE) have been connecting sports wear with smart devices since 2006.
4. BRICS Set Up Bank to Counter Western Hold on Global Finances — Reuters, Leaders of the BRICS emerging market nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, S. Africa) launched a $100 billion development bank and a currency reserve pool last week in their first concrete step toward reshaping the Western-dominated international financial system. The new bank will be called the New Development Bank to hold $100 billion currency reserves pool to help countries forestall short-term liquidity pressures.
5. Cumulative Net Buys of US Equities by BofAML — courtesy of Bank of America, the chart below shows Net Buys of US Equities by Institution versus Retails.
6. Twitter Acquires CardSpring To Power In-Tweet Commerce And Offers — Twitter has purchased CardSpring, an e-commerce platform that allows retailers and publishers to offer online promotions (linked to credit/debit cards) for offline goods and services. The company has also launched an analytics service that tracks the impact of its promotions on offline sales. The purchase adds to an e-commerce push that has seen Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) partner with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and reportedly explore a payments partnership with PayPal (NASDAQ:EBAY) rival Stripe.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:
Tags: Institution vs Retails