Category: Stock Market News

Reversing his previous opinion, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard now says there’s a need for an additional rate hike in 2017, as he also said the central bank should start to consider shrinking its balance sheet. Bullard said his new view is tied to the rise in bond yields. Bullard said, after the election, there’s “more upside risk” to the economy.

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Gold futures on Friday rebounded from a more than 10-month low, but still finished lower for the week–their sixth-consecutive weekly loss. February gold rose $7.60, or 0.7%, for the session to settle at $1,137.40 an ounce. Gold recouped some of its recent losses after dropping Thursday by 2.9% to log its lowest settlement since early February, pressured by the rally in the U.S. dollar that followed the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates. For the week, gold prices declined by roughly 2.1%.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission settled charges against the CEO of broker-dealer Wilson-Davis & Co. Paul Davis, and two of the firm’s traders for making numerous naked short sales in over-the counter equity securities between November 2011 and May 2013. The charges against the Wilson-Davis firm are being contested. Regulation SHO requires that, before a broker-dealer effects a short sale, the trader must “locate” a source of borrowable securities that can be delivered on the date that delivery is due. Wilson-Davis relied on the bona-fide market making exception for all short sales by its proprietary trading group but that was improper, the SEC said, because much of the firm’s proprietary trading activity was not, in fact, bona-fide market making. This is also the first time that the SEC has charged a CEO of a broker-dealer with violating the CEO certification requirement of the Market Access Rule. Davis consented to the order without admitting or denying the findings and agreed to pay a penalty of $25,000. Anthony Kerrigone, a former proprietary trader neither admitted nor denied the findings and agreed to pay back $486,840 in trading profits and penalty and interest of $113,160. Byron Barkley, the head trader, neither admitted nor denied the findings and agreed to pay back $67,710.20, in trading profits and penalty and interest $58,977.

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Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker on Friday said at a panel discussion in Charlotte that an adjustment is needed toward higher interest rates. Speaking just two days after the Fed lifted interest rates and projected three more increases in 2017, Lacker said the central bank will likely need to increase rates more quickly than that. He said there’s increased uncertainty for the economy due to the election outcome, and some prospect that policies will be put in place that promote economic growth. He added it’s hard to find serious examples of overvaluation in markets. Lacker isn’t a voting Federal Open Market Committee member in 2017.

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Data from Baker Hughes Friday revealed that the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil climbed by 12 to 510 rigs this week. That’s the highest level since January, according to Citi Futures’ Tim Evans. The total active U.S. rig count, which includes oil and natural-gas rigs, also rose by 13 to 637, according to Baker Hughes. Prices for oil held onto their earlier gains after the rig data. January crude was up 88 cents, or 1.7%, at $51.78 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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Although two of the Big 3 stock index are declining, market breadth data shows that most stocks are rising. The number of advancing stocks led decliners by a 1,771-to-1,056 score on the NYSE, and by a 1,451-to-1,119 margin on the Nasdaq exchange. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 18 points, or 0.1%, but the S&P 500 slipped 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.2%. The volume of advancing stocks was 58% of total volume on the NYSE, but just 48% on the Nasdaq.

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The New York Fed sliced its estimate for gross domestic product for both the fourth quarter and the first-quarter of 2017 in its “nowcast,” which uses incoming data to estimate growth. The New York Fed’s nowcast now projects fourth-quarter growth at 1.8% and first-quarter growth at 1.7%, each down by 0.7%. The largest negative contributions came from capacity utilization and industrial production data as well as housing data, which were only partly offset by a positive contribution from survey data, the New York Fed said.

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Deutsche Bank [s:db] will pay a total of $37 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Attorney General to settle charges it misled clients about how its automated trade router funneled orders to its dark pools. Deutsche Bank admitted the facts and acknowledged that its conduct violated the federal securities laws. Deutsche Bank made materially misleading statements and omissions about how its order router, known as SuperX+, measured execution quality and the level of liquidity of venues to which it sent orders, according to the SEC. Deutsche Bank used the dark pool ranking model to determine which venues would receive the orders and the sequence in which the bank’s brokers would send them. However, due to a coding error, Deutsche Bank updated the model only once in two years, leading to inflated rankings for two dark pools and non-optimal routing of orders, according to the SEC. Deutsche Bank also ignored the automated rankings in some cases and gave some venues order fill performance statistics that were inconsistent with their actual performance.

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Shares of General Electric Co. rallied 1.4% in morning trade Friday, to pace the gainers in the Dow Jones Industrial Average , after Bernstein returned to its bullish stance on the diversified industrial giant, citing favorable valuation and increased comfort the outlook for earnings growth. Analyst Steven Winoker raised his rating to outperform, after being at market perform the past 14 months. He raised his stock price target to $40, which is 26% above current levels, from $33. Winoker said he was bullish about GE’s plan to simplify its business portfolio, and its potential for earnings growth, but had downgraded it in October 2015 because the stock had gotten ahead of itself. Since then, GE’s stock has underperformed its peers and the broader stock market by a wide margin although the fundamental outlook hasn’t changed, making the stock attractive again. “Yes GE is often unloved, but the changes are big and they have come fast and furious in the last 3 years,” Winoker wrote in a note to clients. “Our discussions with GE leadership across the segments give us increased confidence in their ability to execute from here, including on earnings and cash.” The stock has edged up 1.7% year to date, while the SPDR Industrial Select Sector ETF has soared 19% and the Dow has rallied 14%.

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U.S. stocks opened higher on Friday, trading in record territory as the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed nearer to 20,000, considered an important milestone for the blue-chip index. The Dow gained 61.66 points, or 0.3%, to 12,911. The S&P 500 index advanced 3 points, or 0.1%, to 2,264. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 10 points, or 0.2%, to 5,467.

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