Week of May 23 2015 Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“We want to perceive ourselves as winners, but successful traders are always focusing on their losses” – Peter Borish”
1. ECB Pledges to Boost Bond Buying — ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure declared that the central bank would increase purchases under its QE program (from €60B in May and June) before an expected period of low liquidity in the summer.
2. Apple Shelved Plans to Launch a TV Set — WSJ, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) “quietly shelved plans” to launch a TV set more than a year ago, sources told WSJ. Apple reportedly planned to make a 4K (Ultra HD) set, and considered including sensor-equipped cameras for making video calls. But it ultimately decided the TV’s features wouldn’t be “compelling enough” to enter a highly competitive market.
3. A June Rate Hike is ‘unlikely,’ Fed Minutes Suggest — according to the summary of the Fed discussions on April 29-30, only a “few” Fed officials thought that the economy would show enough strength to justify a Chances of a rate hike in June. “Most Fed policy members, however, thought it unlikely that the data available in June would provide sufficient confirmation that the conditions for raising the target range for the federal funds rate had been satisfied, although they generally did not rule out this possibility,” the minutes show.
4. Five Banks Agree to Plead Guilty to Currency Rigging — JP Morgan (JPM), CitiGroup (C), Barclay (BCS), and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) agreed to plead guilty to felony antitrust violations for conspiring to manipulate the price of dollars and euros from 2007 to 2013. UBS (UBS) agreed to plead guilty to rigging the Libor rate.
5. Greece Says That It Will Default On June 5th, And Moody’s Warns Of A ‘Deposit Freeze’ — the Greek government says that their lenders agree to give them more money by June 5th, or Greece will default on a 300 million euro loan payment to the IMF. Talks between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel broke up without agreements. “open issues” such as pensions, sales-tax rates and targets for a primary budget surplus remained.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:
