Opening Bell: 2.20.18

Dow futures drop 200 points as rates rise; Walmart falls after earnings [CNBC]
At around 6:50 a.m. ET, Dow futures were down 200 points, indicating a fall of 173 points at the open. Dow futures were also pressured by a 2.2 percent premarket decline in Walmart shares. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 futures also pointed to a negative open for their respective markets.
The benchmark 10-year note yield rose to 2.908 percent, after hitting its highest level since 2014 last week. The short-term two-year note yield, meanwhile, traded around a nine-year high.

EU warns it will retaliate if hit by U.S. trade curbs [Reuters]
“We have made it clear to the U.S. administration at the highest level that we would be deeply concerned about measures that affect the EU industry,” Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told a news conference.
“We would be taking appropriate measures to defend EU industry and we stand ready to react swiftly and appropriately in case our exports are affected by any restrictive measures by the United States,” he continued before adding: “No, we are not in a trade war.”

How Banks Could Control Gun Sales if Washington Won’t [NYT]
What if the finance industry — credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express; credit card processors like First Data; and banks like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — were to effectively set new rules for the sales of guns in America?
Collectively, they have more leverage over the gun industry than any lawmaker. And it wouldn’t be hard for them to take a stand.
PayPal, Square, Stripe and Apple Pay announced years ago that they would not allow their services to be used for the sale of firearms.

Morgan Stanley Says Stock Slide Was Appetizer for Real Deal [Bloomberg]
“Appetizer, not the main course,” is how the bank’s strategists led by London-based Andrew Sheets described the correction of late January to early February. Although higher bond yields proved tough for equity investors to digest, the key metric of inflation-adjusted yields didn’t break out of their range for the past five years, they said in a note Monday.
While many have warned that faster inflation could hurt stocks, in theory bigger price gains should be at worst neutral, if they boost earnings along the way. Higher real yields, on the other hand, mean a bigger discount rate to value future earnings. Should they break out of the range over the past five years as investors anticipate greater central bank policy normalization, that could hit stocks harder, according to the Morgan Stanley thinking.

South Korean Cryptocurrency Regulator Found Dead at Home [WSJ]
Jung Ki-joon, 52, was head of economic policy at the Office for Government Policy Coordination. He helped coordinate efforts to create new legislation aimed at suppressing cryptocurrency speculation and illicit activity, the spokesman said.
Semiofficial news agency Yonhap reported that Mr. Jung was presumed to have suffered a heart attack and police had opened an investigation into the cause of death. Yonhap also reported that Mr. Jung was found at home. The government spokesman said later that “he died from some unknown cause. He passed away while he was sleeping and [his] heart [had] already stopped beating when he was found dead.”

Goldman Sachs sees red ink everywhere, warns US spending could push up rates and debt levels [CNBC]
Federal deficit spending is headed toward "uncharted territory," the firm said on Sunday, suggesting that the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans may not be able to count on the economic boost of tax reform for very longer.
In the wake of an ambitious infrastructure plan and a budget that drew fire from virtually all sides, Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients that the federal deficit would reach 5.2 percent of U.S. growth by 2019, and would "continue climbing gradually from there."

Farmer believes this massive poster of a porn star in his field has boosted his crops [Mirror]
A farmer has put up a massive poster of a porn star in his field to keep his crops safe.
Chenchu Reddy says his alternative scarecrow works and he even believes the picture to be magic as it's helped his crops.
The 45-year-old is growing crops in 10 acres of farmland in Andhra Pradesh, India, and said they have been attracting the attention from villagers and passersby.
So to ward off "their evil eye" he decided to put up a poster of the erotic actress Sunny Leone.