Hacking, a plunge in gold and lots of earnings
The chase by Frances Horodelski:
“How does it feel, how does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home, Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.” – Bob Dylan, released July 20, 1965.
How does it feel? Especially if you are one of the 40 million users of the various Avid Life Media websites (including Ashley Madison) who may have had your private data exposed in a weekend hack.
A top story today. Not just because of the details of who these users are, but again, the implications and risks associated with global hacking.
In other stories we have
a plunge in gold, lots of earnings this week (Hasbro, Halliburton, Morgan Stanley, CNR and IBM today),
Greek banks opening, 9 days in a row of European equity market gains, CF Industries in talks to buy assets from a Dutch fertilizer company,
Lockheed Martin to buy Sikorsky helicopters from United Technologies for about $9 billion, the S&P 500 is four points away from its all-time closing high (the Nasdaq made another new high
Friday with Google’s $60 billion jump).
Items of note from my reading pile –
From RBC: “We have been comfortably out of consensus on CAD for over a year (a few years actually) and expect TSX underperformance for many years. USD/CAD towards 1.4000 remains our minimum target” (71.4 U.S. cents/Canadian dollar).
From Bloomberg on Gold: “Money managers are holding the smallest net-bullish bet on gold since the U.S. government data begins in 2006.”
Also from Bloomberg: “Ontario, the world’s most indebted sub-sovereign borrower”. The province’s population is “about one third of California’s” but “its debt load is more than double that of the biggest U.S. state.”
From Arabian Money: “$2.7bn gold dump in China causes price ‘flash crash” Gold is 41% below its August 2011 high while the XAU (the Philadelphia index of gold stocks) is down 75%. From the February 2001 lows, gold is still up 338% while gold stocks are virtually flat (+14%).
From BMO Capital Markets research on telecom stocks which begin reporting earnings this week (July 23rd start with Rogers): “We expect considerable restructuring among media groups in Canada over the next two years.” With respect to the quarterly numbers, BMO notes “we expect a continuation of recent quarterly trends. That is, another set of earnings reports that favour BCE and Telus over Rogers.”
Also from BMO on Q2 from the energy names: “Lots of noise, little to cheer about.” Encana kicks things off July 24
Noel Biderman’s (CEO of Avid Life Media owner of Ashley Madison) desk sign: “Life is short, have an affair”. .
Kevin Cook, senior stock strategists, Zacks Research: “The most disturbing thing about earnings season so far is that we seem to be looking at another potential ‘revenue recession’. I'm not worried about the stock market making new all-time highs. I think that's on the way this earnings season. But I'm concerned if it's on the back of just a handful of Tech companies like Google and Netflix last week and probably Apple and Amazon this week.
From analysts: Home Capital Group upgraded to outperform at Scotiabank, PayPal initiated at BMO with an outperform (there are now 9 buys, 2 holds and 1 sell as the stock starts trading “regular way” today following its spin-off from EBay under the symbol PYPL). Barclays downgrades Yelp (to equal weight) and Zillow (to underweight). HSBC upgraded at Citi to buy and Schlumberger also a new buy at Wells Fargo. Amazon also upgraded at Wedbush.
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