“It’s such a nice change to get to play a wretched, shallow, mergers-and-acquisitions woman. My true colours come out.”
— Sigourney Weaver
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Busy Tuesday morning turbo note …
Listening to FT’s daily podcast “FT News Briefing” this morning I overheard the narrator mentioning USD85 billion of M&A activity announced YESTERDAY in the US ALONE. That’s massive!
I tried to verify that data with help of the MA function on the Bloomberg terminal, but got to USD35.7 Billion ‘only’:
Still, that continues to be massive figure an if we consider the global number of $154 bn over the past week, we can truly say that this M&A wave we all were expecting at the beginning of the year is now well underway:
Here are some of those (US) deals announced:
The other big macro news of yesterday is of course Argentina’s Milei midterm election surprise win over the weekend.
How do we know it was a surprise win? Positioning.
The pain-trade was undoubtedly a Milei win as reactions in the different asset classes show. Here are the intraday reactions of yesterday:
The MERVAL index in USD-terms had even its best days in the past three decades:
Elsewhere, stocks on Monday followed through with additional gains on Friday’s already decent advances. New ATHs were made (again) on the S&P 500, the DJ Industrial, the Nasdaq, the Philadelphia Semiconductor index (SOX), the EuroSTOXX 50, the STOXX 600, etc., etc., etc…. All already discussed in-depth in yesterday’s Quotedian titled “A Silver Lining” (click here).
What was new to yesterday’s session is the US small cap stocks, as measured by the Russell 2000, now also made a new ATH:
A QuiCQ mention also goes to precious metals this morning, where the break of (short-term) key support levels in Gold and Silver are hinting to a more complex correction. Here’s the Gold chart:
With the price of the yellow metal still $150 away from its 50-day moving average and over $600 from its 200-day MA, but everyone calling the end to the rally already, my conviction remains high that the top to this rally is still far away.
Today’s chart of the day goes to the USD/JPY cross. As Trump is meeting newly minced Japanese PM Takaichi today, the super-amicable tone has taken me by a bit of a surprise. I long thought (and still think) that the US will eventually accuse Japan of currency manipulation, but it seems that storyline has develop further on in time…
Nevertheless, did the JPY anyway rebound exactly where it should have versus the USD and hence for now, the currency pair remains stuck in that enormous coil which I believe eventually will resolve to the downside:
Stay tuned …
