KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Friday February 19 2016 Housing and Economic stories

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Friday February 19 2016 Housing and Economic stories

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Deutsche Bank leads financial stocks rout - (www.ft.com) Japanese and Australian banks picked up the baton from their European peers, pulling the two bourses — the only two major Asian markets trading on Tuesday morning — sharply lower. Nomura led Japan’s meltdown, dropping 8 per cent within 20 minutes of the market opening. Big commercial banks Sumitomo Mitsui and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial were off 7 and 6.7 per cent respectively. Australian banks also fell sharply. In early morning trading the Nikkei 225 was down 3.9 per cent, having been off by as much as 4.2 per cent, and Australia’s ASX 2 per cent. Asia’s declines came after Deutsche Bank led a rout in global bank stocks on Monday as mounting concerns over the global economy, turbulent markets and sliding energy prices morphed into worries over the health of parts of the financial system.

Tech stock collapse sure looks like bubble popping - (finance.yahoo.com) Almost all technology stocks got hammered yet again on Monday. Salesforce.com (CRM) dropped 8% while Facebook (FB) lost 4% and Microsoft (MSFT) fell 2%. And while many see it as a continuation of Friday's rout sparked by LinkedIn's (LNKD) weak outlook for the rest of the year, the damage has been piling up for weeks. Investors are fleeing almost all tech names over concerns about the slowing global economy in general and a reassessment of the potential growth of online and "cloud" markets more specifically. LinkedIn, pummeled by an unprecedented 44% one-day loss Friday, was one of the few tech stocks rising on Monday, as bargain hunters pushed its shares up almost 2%. Still, the shares have lost more than half of their value since the end of 2015.

Oil industry woes grow as storage levels hit ‘critical level’ - (www.marketwatch.com) The storage tanks at Cushing, Okla., the delivery point for the New York Mercantile Exchange crude contract, are edging closer to their limits, raising a new set of problems for an industry that has already suffered from a 70% drop in prices in the past year and a half. Cushing, which represents about 13% of the nation’s oil storage, has a working capacity of about 73.014 million barrels of crude oil, according to data from Sept. 2015, the latest available from the Energy Information Administration.

'The most miserable country in the world' is slipping toward default - (www.businessinsider.com) Over the last few days the talk among those who watch 'the most miserable country' in the worldhas turned to default. 2016, it seems, is Venezuela's year. "Unless the Chinese pull something out of the bag or PDVSA [Venezuela's state oil company] exercises a voluntary bond swap it's happening," said Brian Dean, a partner at ACG Analytics. "There's going to be a default in my view unless there's some kind of political disruption ... They can sell assets but I don't know what they have left."

Fear Hits Japanese Banks, Nikkei Plunges, 10-Year Yield Negative for First Time Ever - (www.wolfstreet.com) While China, Hong Kong, and some other Asian markets celebrated the lunar New Year and wisely kept their markets closed, all heck is breaking loose in Japan. The Nikkei had risen 1% on Monday and was down “only” 18.8% from its recent high in June 2015, thus dodging not only the rout of most other markets that day but also the ignominious fate of being pushed, like so many other markets, below the blue line in my infamous Global Bear-Market Progress Report. The blue line indicates a decline of 20% or more. But that was like so yesterday. Today, the Nikkei plunged 919 points or 5.4%. It’s now down 23.1% from its recent high, in a solid bear market. Fears about global growth coagulated with fears about a banking crisis radiating out from Europe, and particularly its epicenter, Deutsche Bank.

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