“The goal of a successful trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary.” – Alexander Elder

1. Islamic State Claimed Deadly Brussels Explosions — Islamic State has claimed responsibility for three explosions that rocked Brussels on last Tuesday morning, leaving 34 people dead and 136 wounded. The jihadist group said it was behind the attacks at the city’s international airport and metro system, according to media reports. The blasts are believed to be retaliation for the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris terror killings, who was captured in Brussels.
2. Hawkish Fed Comments Send Dollar Higher, Gold to Lowest in Nearly a Month — St. Louis Fed Jim Bullard suggesting April could work for the next boost in interest rates even as the Fed may have slashed its expectation for rate hikes this year by 50 basis points last week. The dollar moved nicely higher, and gold sharply lower, with the metal falling to about its worst price in a month.
3. Electronic Payments Pick up Steam — Apple Pay will be available later this year on sites accessed via the Safari browser on iPhones/iPads containing a TouchID fingerprint sensor as reported by Re/code. Apple Pay already supports payments carried out via mobile apps, to go with its well-known support for NFC-based in-store payments. Current online payments leader PayPal handled $20B worth of mobile transactions last year (+45% Y/Y, and 25% of total volume).
4. S&P500 Enters Overbought Territory — the equity markets are pretty extended on a trading basis, with all but one (healthcare) of the S&P macro sectors overbought. Charts below courtesy of Bespoke Investment Group.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:

Tags: Electronic Payment

This entry was posted on Monday, March 28th, 2016 at 1:36 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.