2024-02-21 11:21

PARIS, Feb 21 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal tried to ease tensions with farmers on Wednesday by outlining the implementation of measures announced this month and promising a new law to better safeguard their income. Attal made the announcement in a speech before this weekend's annual Salon de l'Agriculture farming trade fair. While some local grievances vary, farmers' protests also seen in other European countries including Belgium, Greece and Germany have exposed tensions over the impact on farming of a European Union drive to fight climate change and the opening of the door to cheap Ukrainian imports to help Kyiv's war effort. In France, farmers largely suspended weeks of protests that included blocking highways after Attal on Feb. 1 promised new measures. But the farmers say they are not being paid enough and are choked by taxes, green rules and face unfair competition from abroad, and have been pressing the government to show the first results of the emergency measures before the trade fair. "We heard the farmers' call, we made commitments, we are keeping them," Attal told reporters. President Emmanuel Macron and his government are wary of farmers' growing support for the far right ahead of European Parliament elections in June. The new Egalim law, designed to guarantee fair prices at the farm gate and strengthen the position of farmers in negotiations with retailers and consumer goods makers, will be ready by the summer, Attal said. It will aim at ensuring the price-fixing system starts from farmers, improve production cost indicators and ensure European purchasing bodies comply, he said. Controls on the application of the current Egalim law showed two European purchasing bodies had not complied and were facing sanctions of tens of millions of euros, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said. Attal announced an exemption from this year of contributions for nearly all seasonal agricultural workers, mainly used in grape and fruit picking, and said it would be easier for them to get temporary visas. A specific plan for livestock breeders, who are particularly suffering from a drop in income, will be presented at the farm show, he said. A government source said the budget for the agriculture relief plan remained 400 million euros ($431.88 million), despite new measures. ($1 = 0.9262 euros) https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-attal-promises-new-price-law-appease-angry-farmers-2024-02-21/

2024-02-21 11:19

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Chipmaker Astera Labs filed for an initial public offering in the United States on Wednesday. The U.S. IPO market is expected to rebound this year after a two-year lull fueled by the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes and geopolitical uncertainty, amid growing expectations of a soft landing. Santa Clara, California-based Astera will list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan Securities are the lead underwriters for the offering. https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/chipmaker-astera-labs-files-us-ipo-2024-02-21/

2024-02-21 11:19

WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative justices on Wednesday appeared sympathetic to a bid by three Republican-led states and several energy companies to block an Environmental Protection Agency regulation aimed at reducing ozone emissions that may worsen air pollution in neighboring states. Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia, as well as pipeline operators including Kinder Morgan (KMI.N) , opens new tab, power producers and U.S. Steel Corp (X.N) , opens new tab, are seeking to avoid complying with the EPA's "Good Neighbor" plan restricting ozone pollution from upwind states, while they contest its legality in a lower court. During arguments in the case on Wednesday, some justices expressed concern about whether the Supreme Court intervention was warranted at this time. The questions posed by some of the conservative justices focused on whether the EPA's rule should be enforceable against the challengers given that the regulation no longer regulates 23 upwind states as intended, but only 11 because of lower court actions pausing it in 12 states. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. "The problem is we're not sure if the requirements would be the same with 11 states as with 23, and it's just not explained," conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh told Malcolm Stewart, a Justice Department lawyer defending the EPA. Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern that the EPA has not explained how the regulation is viable for 11 states when it was devised for 23, given the huge costs that industry players have said they will incur to comply. "In terms of why it's necessary to look at this here ... it's because EPA will not look at it until after the hundreds of millions of dollars of costs are incurred," Roberts told Stewart. The Supreme Court did not immediately act on emergency requests filed in October by the challengers to halt enforcement, opting instead to hear arguments first, including on whether the EPA rule's emissions controls are reasonable. The challenge comes after a major 2022 ruling , opens new tab powered by the court's conservative majority imposing limits on the EPA's authority to issue sweeping regulations to reduce carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act anti-pollution law. At issue in the current dispute is an EPA rule, finalized last June by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration, regulating ozone, a key component of smog, in 23 upwind states. The EPA said these states' own plans did not satisfy the "Good Neighbor" provision of the Clean Air Act requiring steps to reduce pollution that drifts into states downwind. The agency implemented a federal program to reduce emissions from large industrial polluters in those states - although separate challenges in lower courts have already paused enforcement in 12 of them, including West Virginia. The case now before the justices involves litigation brought by Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia - all targeted by the rule - as well as pipeline operators, U.S. Steel, regional electricity generators and energy trade associations. In their suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, they argued that the EPA violated a federal law aimed at ensuring agency actions are reasonable. Some of the industry requests were specific. Kinder Morgan asked the justices to block the regulation as it applies to natural gas pipeline engines. U.S. Steel sought to prevent its enforcement against iron and steel mill reheating furnaces and boilers. Some of the justices raised questions about whether it was the role of the Supreme Court to intervene on behalf of the challengers at this time, when a lower court has yet to resolve the underlying litigation. "I'm trying to understand what the emergency is that warrants Supreme Court intervention at this point," liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked an attorney for Ohio, Mathura Sridharan. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed Catherine Stetson, a lawyer representing Kinder Morgan and other industry challengers, to spell out the actual, as opposed to projected, costs of compliance. "Why haven't you talked about that?" Barrett asked. "Have you incurred significant financial costs that are unreasonable?" The Justice Department, defending the EPA, told the Supreme Court that blocking the rule for these challengers would "seriously harm downwind states that suffer from their upwind neighbors' emissions" and expose their residents to public health risks. On Jan. 16, the EPA issued a proposed rule to enforce the "Good Neighbor" plan in five more states: Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico and Tennessee. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-considers-challenge-epas-good-neighbor-ozone-rule-2024-02-21/

2024-02-21 11:06

A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan It's a measure of sheer scale of tech-sector dominance that Wednesday's results from the most valuable chipmaker probably overshadows a readout on the Federal Reserve's most recent deliberations. Either way, the keenly awaited quarterly update from artificial intelligence darling Nvidia (NVDA.O) , opens new tab and the minutes of the Fed's Jan 30-31 meeting will vie for most market attention later. As the AI-infused trebling of Nvidia's stock price over the past year now makes it a top five market cap, jitters about whether its latest results can continued to meet a sky-high bar of expectations were largely responsible for the sharp retreat of Wall St benchmarks this week. The S&P500 (.SPX) , opens new tab dropped 0.6% and the Nasdaq (.IXIC) , opens new tab lost almost 1% on Tuesday and futures on both remain in the red premarket today. Nvidia tumbled 4.35%, its biggest percentage fall since October, while the broader Philadelphia semiconductor index (.SOX) , opens new tab declined 1.56% as other chip stocks followed. And Nvidia is down another 2% premarket on Wednesday. The retreat has been enough to whip-away the firm's newly-found third place ranking in top Wall St market caps, seeing slip back below Amazon and Alphabet again into fifth position. In a most mixed blessing, it has replaced Tesla as the Street's most-traded stock. Investors seem concerned that Nvidia's results, expected after markets close on Wednesday, can justify its expensive valuation of a forward price-to-earnings ratio just above 32 - although that's not isolated, given the 'Magnificent 7' top caps as a whole are trading close to 35 times. Nevertheless, it's a tough gallery to 'wow' after a 225% stock price increase over 12 months. Analysts expect earnings of $4.56 a share and revenue to rise to $20.378 billion from $6.05 billion a year earlier, according to LSEG estimates. And the sudden cloud over the tech sector seems to go beyond Nvidia. Cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks (PANW.O) , opens new tab plunged more than 20% overnight after it forecast third-quarter billings below Wall Street estimates, signalling more cautious spending by businesses in an uncertain economy. It seemed better for big retailers, however. Despite a downbeat update from Home Depot, Walmart's (WMT.N) , opens new tab beat sent its stock up more than 3% to record highs as the U.S. retail giant forecast fiscal 2025 sales above expectations and raised its annual dividend by 9%. And smart-TV maker Vizio (VZIO.N) , opens new tab jumped 16.26% after Walmart said it would buy the company for $2.3 billion. How do Fed minutes match up to all that? With auctions of 20-year Treasury bonds and 2-year floating rate notes later on Wednesday, the rates market seems calmer going into the Fed readout and 10-year Treasury yields ticked down to 4.26%. Helping the bond market mood was a sharp retreat in crude oil prices from 3-month highs and Tuesday's surprisingly soft January inflation report in Canada - which casts some questions over the hotter U.S. reading for the same month. While chances of a first Fed rate cut as soon as next month have all but disappeared in favor of a June move, investors will watch the minutes today for details on the thinking and also for more signs of when the Fed's balance sheet rundown may start to slow. The dollar (.DXY) , opens new tab was a little firmer going into the open. In contrast to the tech sector swoon and bucking recent trends, U.S.-listed shares of Chinese firms climbed premarket as China's benchmark stock indexes (.CSI300) , opens new tab notched a seventh straight day of gains amid some rekindled hopes the authorities were finally getting some grip on the property crisis there. China's housing authority said on Wednesday that 123.6 billion yuan ($17.20 billion) of development loans have been approved and 29.4 billion yuan have been issued under a special mechanism aimed at injecting liquidity into the crisis-hit property sector. And foreign investors bought a net 13.6 billion yuan of A-shares on Wednesday via northbound trading, the biggest daily inflow since July 2023. To keep the recent moves in context, however, the CSI300's one-year underperformance against the S&P500 has been reduced to 33% from 37%. In related news, HSBC (HSBA.L) , opens new tab reported a $3 billion charge on its stake in a Chinese bank amid mounting bad loans in the world's second-largest economy, taking the shine off a record annual profit and sending shares in the British lender down as much as 7%. Key diary items that may provide direction to U.S. markets later on Wednesday: * Federal Open Market Committee issues minutes from its Jan 30-31 meeting; Federal Reserve Board Governor Michelle Bowmanand Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic both speak. Bank of England policymaker Swati Dhingra speaks * U.S. corp earnings: NVIDIA, Marathon Oil, Nordson, Mosaic, Verisk, ETSY, Garmin, Analog Devices, APA, Synopsys, ANSYS, Exelon, NiSource, Host Hotels, * G20 foreign ministers meet in Rio de Janeiro to prepare for November summit * U.S. Treasury auctions $16 billion of 20-year bonds, $28 billion of 2-year floating rate notes https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/global-markets-view-usa-2024-02-21/

2024-02-21 10:55

Focus on Nvidia results due after the closing bell Palo Alto craters after Q3 billings forecast misses estimates Fed minutes show concerns about early rate cuts Indexes: S&P 500 up 0.13%, Nasdaq off 0.32%, Dow up 0.13% NEW YORK, Feb 21 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and Dow Jones industrials eked out small gains on Wednesday, while the Nasdaq closed lower for a third straight session as investors awaited the release of Nvidia's earnings that could determine near-term momentum for equities. After the closing bell, Nvidia shares surged 6% after it forecast fiscal first-quarter revenue above estimates on robust demand for its chips that dominate the market for artificial intelligence (AI). During the session, Nvidia (NVDA.O) , opens new tab shares fell 2.85%, adding to the previous day's decline of more than 4% for the chip designer. Nvidia shares have soared nearly 40% this year, making it the biggest gainer on the S&P 500 after a leap of almost 240% in 2023. Analysts had cautioned that its lofty valuation could make the stock vulnerable to a sharp pullback if the company delivered anything short of a blowout report. "It's been driven by excitement and enthusiasm around AI and of course the AI darling in the room is Nvidia," said Jason Ware, chief investment officer at Albion Financial Group in Salt Lake City, Utah. "Markets are looking at Nvidia with a little bit of anxiety, maybe ... we need to see a good report from the leader in the space and that leader is Nvidia." The S&P 500 climbed 0.13% to end the session at 4,981.80 points. The Nasdaq declined 0.32% to 15,580.87 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.13% to 38,612.24 points. Minutes from the Federal Reserve's January meeting showed most policymakers were concerned about risks of cutting interest rates too soon, with broad uncertainty about how long borrowing costs should remain at their current level. After the release of the minutes, traders of U.S. short-term interest-rate futures stuck to bets the Fed will begin cutting interest rates no earlier than June. Despite the modest advance, nearly all of the 11 major S&P sectors advanced, with only the heavily weighted technology index (.SPLRCT) , opens new tab lower with a decline of 0.76%. Energy shares (.SPNY) , opens new tab led gainers with a rise of 1.86%. Wall Street's 2024 rally ran into turbulence last week after data hinted at sticky inflation, raising concerns the Fed would be in no hurry to cut interest rates. The January inflation data complicates upcoming rate decisions, Richmond Fed president Thomas Barkin said. Palo Alto Networks (PANW.O) , opens new tab plunged 28.44% after the cybersecurity firm forecast third-quarter billings below analyst estimates. Shares of other cybersecurity companies such as Fortinet (FTNT.O) , opens new tab, Zscaler (ZS.O) , opens new tab and Crowdstrike Holdings (CRWD.O) , opens new tab were also weaker. Amazon.com (AMZN.O) , opens new tab edged up, with the company set to join the Dow Jones Industrial Average effective next week, replacing Walgreens Boots Alliance , which saw its shares decline. Advancing issues were roughly even with decliners by on the NYSE. Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.73-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P 500 posted 25 new highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 47 new highs and 96 new lows. Volume on U.S. exchanges was relatively light, with 10.5 billion shares traded, compared to an average of 11.7 billion shares over the previous 20 sessions. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/futures-dip-ahead-high-stakes-nvidia-results-fed-minutes-2024-02-21/

2024-02-21 09:31

TOKYO, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Japan's government downgraded its view on the economy in February for the first time in three months on sluggish consumer spending, suggesting a bumpy path out of a recession in the face of slow wage recovery and lackluster industrial output. The government also slashed its assessment on consumer spending for the first time in two years, saying a pickup seems to be "stalling", underlining the challenge for the Bank of Japan as it looks to exit its ultra-easy policy this year. The downbeat assessment comes after data last week showed Japan's economy unexpectedly slipped into recession in the fourth quarter on weak domestic demand, losing its position as the world's third-largest economy to Germany. "The economy is recovering moderately though it appears to be stalling recently", the Cabinet Office said in its report on Wednesday. It was the first downgrade since November 2023. The lower assessment on consumer spending was due to a pause in recovery in service spending and a fall in spending on non-durable goods because of factors such as price hikes. The nation's real wages fell for 21 straight months in December as inflation outpaced wage recovery and continued to weigh on household spending. The suspension of some auto production and shipments prompted the government to cut its view on industrial output for the first time since March 2023. It said while industrial output was expected to pick up "production activity fell recently". The production stoppage at Toyota Motor's (7203.T) , opens new tab small-car unit Daihatsu over safety issues have dented the auto output. Toyota also suspended shipments of some models after finding irregularities in certification tests for diesel engines developed by affiliate Toyota Industries (6201.T) , opens new tab. Recovery in capital spending also appears to be "stalling", the report said, maintaining the same view from the previous month. Firms' capital spending plans were solid but their investment has not been realized partly due to labour shortage, an official at the Cabinet Office said. The government repeated it needed to pay "full attention" to an impact from the earthquake that killed about 240 in Japan's Noto peninsula on New Year's Day. Analysts have said the earthquake will have only a small impact on the economy in the short term. https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/japan-downgrades-view-economy-sluggish-consumer-spending-2024-02-21/