Opening Bell: 6.29.17
Fed gives nod to ‘payout party time’ for banks (FT)
Across the 34 banks which took this year’s exam, payouts to shareholders will come close to 100 per cent of projected profits over the next year, according to senior Fed officials, up from about 65 per cent for the class of 2016. At JPMorgan Chase, for example, the payout ratio will be $27bn, or 110 per cent of profits over the next 12 months. That is 24 percentage points higher than the market’s expectations, according to Jefferies.
NYSE President Calls Short Sellers ‘Icky’ (BBG)
“It feels kind of icky and un-American, betting against a company,” NYSE Group President Tom Farley told lawmakers in Washington Tuesday. He added that because short-selling can actually improve markets, public companies don’t necessarily want to ban it outright -- instead they want to see more stringent disclosure. “They say, ‘Let’s have a little more transparency,”’ said Farley, who runs the NYSE division of Intercontinental Exchange Inc.
Millennials are flocking towards some of the most speculative ways to invest (BI)
"Trades from mobile tend to be more futures-based," [TD Ameritrade's Victor] Jones said. "More people are gravitating towards derivatives like options and futures....When you have your phone on you, you're available to look at the markets 24/7, but the markets aren't open 24/7," Jones said. "Futures give millennials or any investor the opportunity to participate in the market 24/7."
Illinois Is in a $6 Billion Budget Hole and Flirting With Junk (Businessweek)
Two years ago, Illinois’s budget impasse meant that the state’s lottery winners had to wait for months to get their winnings. Now, with $15 billion in unpaid bills, Illinois is on the brink of being unable to even sell Powerball tickets. For the third year in a row, the state is poised to begin its fiscal year on July 1 with no state budget and billions of dollars in the red. If that happens, S&P Global Ratings says Illinois will probably lose its investment-grade status and become the first U.S. state on record to have its general obligation debt rated as junk.
Global Demography: Birth Dearth & Urbanization (Yardeni)
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) was founded in 1991 by Les U. Knight, a high-school substitute teacher who lives in Portland, Oregon. He and his followers believe that human extinction is the best solution to the problems facing the Earth’s biosphere and humanity. The VHEMT website shows that the group’s motto is “May we live long and die out.” Their Facebook page sells tee-shirts declaring: “When You Breed, the Planet Bleeds.” Another declares: “Thank You for Not Breeding.” Sure enough, the pace of human breeding has slowed, but for reasons that have nothing to do with VHEMT.
Investors Say Beijing Enabled Unfair Trading by Chinese Banks (WSJ)
By asking banks to examine the borrowings of a few high-profile conglomerates earlier this month, Beijing flagged its worries about these companies’ overseas outreach, giving banks information the rest of the market didn’t have...The way the order was communicated quickly drew complaints from investors and academics, who said it enabled unfair trading as banks were in a position to pare holdings of Dalian Wanda and the other four groups before the rest of the market knew their loans were under scrutiny.
Convicted Barclays Traders Target SFO Expert in Libor Appeal (BBG)
Former Barclays Plc traders convicted of rigging Libor are attacking the credibility of an expert witness for the prosecution who texted friends during breaks in his testimony for help to describe banking terms. Lawyers for convicted traders Jonathan Mathew and Alex Pabon said statements by the witness, Saul Haydon Rowe, on how Libor works were crucial to the jury’s understanding of the case.
That Time the TSA Found a Scientist’s 3-D-Printed Mouse Penis (Atlantic)
Scientists, as it happens, are full of tales like this because as a group, they’re likely to (a) travel frequently, and (b) carry really weird shit in their bags. Just last month, Diane Kelly from the University of Massachusetts, who studies the evolution of animal genitals, was stopped by the TSA because she was carrying what is roughly the opposite of Cohn’s item: a 3-D-printed mold of a dolphin vagina. “Technically it’s not even my dolphin vagina mold,” she says. “I was carrying it for someone.”
Czech power plant apologizes for using bikini photos to choose interns (UPI)
A since-deleted Facebook post by CEZ's Temelin station included photos of 10 recent high school graduates wearing bikinis and hard hats and asked visitors to the social media page to help choose "Miss Energy 2017," who would be awarded a two-week internship with the company. "We think photographs are very tasteful," CNN quoted the deleted post as saying. "The combination of beauty and the industrial environment gives an interesting result."