“The market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”– Warren Buffet

1. U.S. Telecoms Prepare for Huawei Ban — paving the way for a ban on doing business with China’s Huawei, President Trump signed an executive order barring American companies from using telecom equipment made by firms posing a national security risk. The order would invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and comes at a delicate time in relations between Beijing and Washington, with the two ratcheting up tariffs over what U.S. officials call China’s unfair trade practices.
2. Trade War Sees U.S. farmers Get $15B in Aid — the Trump administration is planning on providing about $15B in aid to help U.S. farmers whose products may be targeted by the newly unveiled Chinese tariffs. The group has been among the hardest hit in the trade war, with U.S. soybean futures falling to their lowest in a decade on Monday and shipments of the most valuable U.S. farm export to China dropping to a 16-year low in 2018. A new aid program would be the second round of assistance for American farmers, after the Department of Agriculture’s $12B compensation plan last year.
3. Teva, Drugmakers, Accused of Price-Fixing — forty-four U.S. states have filed a lawsuit accusing Teva Pharmaceuticals (NYSE:TEVA) of orchestrating a sweeping scheme with 19 other drugmakers to inflate drug prices – sometimes by more than 1,000% – and stifle competition for generic medicines. “We take these accusations seriously and we are going to defend ourselves,” CFO Mike McClellan declared. Soaring drug prices from both branded and generic manufacturers have sparked outrage across the political spectrum, from Republicans and Democrats alike.
4. AAII Weekly Sentiment — One week after coming in at its highest level since October, bullish sentiment has fallen off of a cliff this week to 29.82% versus 43.12% last week. From a historical perspective, this is not at any kind of extreme, but it did bring optimism to its lowest level of 2019 and by a pretty wide margin at that. Additionally, this was the largest drop in bullish sentiment since December 13th of last year when it fell 17.04% in a week.

Bearish sentiment spiked up to 39.3% from 23.19% last week. While this was a massive spike higher, it is still well off of any sort of extreme, and we actually saw higher readings late last year. Investors Intelligence is echoing the AAII results, as that survey showed the highest percentage of respondents since February (31.1%) expecting a correction. Granted, bearish sentiment in this survey remains muted, as it actually fell to its lowest level since April of last year.

5. Chip Makers Get Caught in Huawei Crossfire — WSJ, following the ban on Huawei, chip companies selling technology to the Chinese communications equipment giant must be granted a special license to do so. Among the hardest-hit chip stocks Thursday were Qualcomm , Broadcom , Qorvo and Skyworks Solutions —key makers of modem and radio-frequency processors used in smartphones. Xilinx is affected as well given its growing business in 5G equipment. Shares of memory suppliers Micron Technology and SanDisk parent Western Digital also slipped in the decision’s aftermath. Below shows a list of US companies effected by the ban.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com: