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Opening Bell: 3.15.22

Opening Bell: 3.15.22

A taste of normalcy; how Ken Griffin spends his day; nickel to be allowed to rise, fall by a nickel; and more!

Алексей Дружинин / Администрация Президента России, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

A taste of normalcy; how Ken Griffin spends his day; nickel to be allowed to rise, fall by a nickel; and more!

Stocks Rise as Oil Prices Slide Below $100 [WSJ]
“You have this negative correlation right now where when oil goes up, the market goes down, and when oil is down the market goes up,” said Jack Janasiewicz, lead portfolio strategist for Natixis Investment Managers Solutions. “If you can get oil to calm down to preinvasion levels, it gives us a little more confidence that inflation is not running away and making things more difficult for the Fed.”
Oil prices fell as investors weighed what Beijing’s sweeping Covid-19 lockdowns will mean for demand.

Russian Prosecutors Warn Western Companies of Arrests, Asset Seizures [WSJ]
The calls, letters and visits included threats to sue the companies and seize assets including trademarks, the people said…. The prosecutors’ warnings were directed at companies across sectors, including technology, food, apparel and banking, the people familiar with the matter said.

Citadel Securities Opens Up After Record $7 Billion Windfall [Bloomberg]
The business Griffin built from a small group adjacent to his hedge fund has expanded into one of the biggest trading houses in the world, handling about 40% of all U.S. retail trading volume and one in every four U.S. equities trades./But even that isn’t enough for the ultra-ambitious Griffin, who is said to frequently check that Citadel Securities remains atop a ranking of market-making rivals like Virtu Financial Inc. and Susquehanna International Group, people familiar with the matter said.

Berkshire Hathaway stock price reaches $500,000 [Reuters via Nasdaq]
Berkshire's Class A shares have risen 10% in 2022, outpacing the Standard & Poor's 500 index .SPX, which has fallen 12%.... "They're big and they're not a tech stock, and investors get comfort from that."

London Nickel Trading to Restart Wednesday, With Caps on Price Moves [WSJ]
The LME said it would allow nickel to rise or fall “at least 5%” daily, and would keep the price limits under review, given market conditions. Nickel trading on Wednesday will start at 8 a.m. London time, meaning a shorter-than-normal session…. The exchange decided to reopen the market after Tsingshan on Monday reached a provisional deal with banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Standard Chartered PLC and BNP Paribas SA, which have agreed not to close out Tsingshan’s trading positions or impose further margin calls on the company.

Biden Fed nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin in peril after Manchin reveals opposition [USA Today]
[Sen. Joe] Manchin, D-W.Va., pointed to Raskin's position on energy amid soaring inflation, saying her past statements have "failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation’s critical energy needs.

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Clock Ticks On Cyprus (WSJ) Cyprus, in an 11th-hour bid to unlock international aid, reopen the nation's banking system and preserve membership in the euro, readied a plan that would restructure its second-largest lender and enforce unprecedented restrictions on financial transactions. The proposals, if they take effect, would allow authorities to restrict noncash transactions, curtail check cashing, limit withdrawals and even convert checking accounts into fixed-term deposits when banks reopen. They have been closed since March 16. Parliament is set to debate the measures on Friday. If Cyprus can't pass them, it could find itself with little choice but to leave the euro zone—opening a Pandora's box that could threaten Spain and Italy. Time is short: The European Central Bank on Thursday threatened to cut off a financial lifeline if Cyprus's banks aren't stabilized by Monday. Credit Suisse Chief Gets 34% Raise (WSJ) Credit Suisse rewarded Chief Executive Brady Dougan for repositioning the bank in 2012 with a 34% pay rise, despite a fall in net profit for the year and a backdrop of growing criticism of executive remuneration. Mr. Dougan earned 7.77 million Swiss francs ($8.21 million), up from 5.8 million francs in 2011, when he took a pay cut as Switzerland's No. 2 bank by assets slogged through a difficult year in which its stock price fell 41%. Europe’s Bonus Clampdown Hits Two-Thirds of Fund Managers (Bloomberg) The European Parliament’s vote to cap bonuses in the asset-management industry could affect two- thirds of senior fund managers in the U.K., U.S. funds in Europe and hedge funds open to small investors. Bonuses should not exceed base salaries for managers of mutual funds regulated by the European Union, known as UCITS, European lawmakers in the economic and monetary affairs committee voted yesterday. The rules would cover 5 trillion euros ($6.5 trillion) of assets in UCITS, which include funds managed outside Europe and some linked to hedge-fund strategies such as John Paulson’s New York-based Paulson & Co. and Och-Ziff Capital Management Group. “If the final rules are even close to what has been agreed today, then this will fundamentally change the way asset managers are paid,” said Jon Terry, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC. Asset managers “are now facing the toughest pay rules across the whole of the financial-services sector.” Boaz Says Dimon Should Have Known (NYP) The buck stops with Jamie Dimon. That’s the view of Boaz Weinstein, the hedge-fund manager who first speared the “London Whale” that led to $6.2 billion in trading losses for Dimon’s JPMorgan. Despite making a bundle by taking the other side of the bank’s bad bet, Boaz says that requiring bank CEOs to sign off on such trades is the only way to prevent debacles. As the “ultimate boss” of JPMorgan, Dimon should have had to approve the complicated trade, he said. “If you had a rule that anytime, anyone wants to make an investment in any one thing greater than $10 billion or $20 billion, the boss has to sign off on it,” then those types of disasters wouldn’t happen, Boaz said yesterday at the Absolute Return Symposium in Manhattan. Long Island Man Accepts Plea Deal in Fake Drowning (AP) The man, Raymond Roth, 48, of Massapequa, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree conspiracy. “The restitution Mr. Roth is ordered to pay ensures that the taxpayers won’t foot the bill for this scam,” said Kathleen M. Rice, the Nassau County district attorney. Prosecutors said Mr. Roth and his son, Jonathan Roth, 22, had plotted to collect about $400,000 in life insurance. The younger man’s case is pending. On July 28, Jonathan Roth told the authorities that his father had gone for a swim at Jones Beach and never came back. Responders searched for Raymond Roth for several days, while he was actually on his way to Orlando, Fla., prosecutors said. Raymond Roth’s wife found e-mails discussing the plot, and the authorities were alerted. Raymond Roth’s lawyer, Brian Davis, said on Thursday that he believed the plea bargain was fair, adding, “At this point, he wants to put it behind him.” Mood Sours In Northern Europe (WSJ) A worsening mood among businesses largely predated fraught negotiations over a Cypriot bailout, which economists say could stoke tensions surrounding the euro zone's debt crisis. Poorer sentiment among businesses lessens the chances of a rise in corporate investment, crucial for an economic recovery in the bloc at a time when most of its member states are cutting spending to control their debts. Economists See No Crisis With U.S. Debt as Economy Gains (Bloomberg) Three years after a government spending surge in response to the recession drove the U.S. past that red line -- the nation’s $16.7 trillion total debt is now 106 percent of the $15.8 trillion economy -- key indicators reflect gathering strength. Businesses have increased spending by 27 percent since the end of 2009. The annual rate of new home construction jumped about 60 percent. Employers have created almost 6 million jobs. And with borrowing costs near record lows, the cost of paying off the debt is lower now than in the year Ronald Reagan left the White House, as a percentage of the economy. BP to return $8 billion to shareholders from TNK-BP sale (Reuters) BP, which completed the sale of the half-owned TNK-BP to Russian state oil firm Rosneft on Thursday, said the move, designed to increase the value of remaining shares, was an amount equivalent to the value of the company's original investment in TNK-BP in 2003. Man finds knife blade in his back three years after stabbing (TS) A Northwest Territories man was just scratching what he thought was an annoying old itch earlier this week when it turned out to be a knife blade that had been buried in his flesh for almost three years. “I jumped in a cab and went straight to emergency,” said Billy McNeely, 32. The story goes back to an April 2010 birthday party in McNeely’s home town of Fort Good Hope, N.W.T. McNeely said a fight broke out between himself and another man over an arm-wrestling contest that ended up with McNeely being stabbed five times. “They stitched me up and bandaged me up,” said McNeely. “They never took X-rays.” Ever since, McNeely has had a lump in his back where the knife went in. Doctors and nurses told him nerves had been damaged in the stabbing. But the old wound never stopped nagging. “I always had back pains. There was always a burning feeling with it.” The injury was constantly itchy and irritated. It set off metal detectors. That was explained away as a metal fragment that had lodged in his bone. On Monday, while McNeely and his girlfriend were asleep in bed, the pain came back. “I sat up, I tried to rub it and scratch it the way I always did, and then the tip of my nail caught a piece of something solid, something sharp. “My girlfriend got up and she started playing around with it and she manoeuvred my back in a certain way and the tip of a blade poked out of my skin.” Doctors dug out a blade measuring about seven centimetres long.

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