2024-05-29 22:26

Dow falls more than 1% Airlines fall after American Airlines cuts profit forecast Fed's Beige Book shows continued economic expansion Indexes down: Dow 1.06%, S&P 500 0.74%, Nasdaq 0.58% NEW YORK, May 29 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday amid further gains in Treasury yields and concern over the timing and scale of possible interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. The Dow fell more than 1% and hit its lowest level in nearly a month. All of the S&P 500 sectors ended lower as well, with rate-sensitive utilities (.SPLRCU) New Tab, opens new tab among sectors with the biggest declines. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note hit four-week highs at 4.6%, extending Tuesday's gains, after weak debt auctions. “You continue to see this rise in bond yields, which is pressuring equities... It’s a continuation of this unstable, uneven recovery,” said James Abate, fund manager of the Centre American Select Equity fund. Conflicting expectations on the size and the timing of potential interest rate cuts have kept the market on edge since the start of this year. Sticky inflation and hawkish comments from central bankers have forced traders to temper down rate cut expectations to only one by November or December, per the CME FedWatch Tool, from multiple cuts expected at the start of the year. Stocks held their losses following the release of the Beige Book, a U.S. Fed survey. It showed U.S. economic activity continued to expand from early April through mid-May, but firms grew more pessimistic about the future while inflation increased at a modest pace. The S&P 500 (.SPX) New Tab, opens new tab lost 39.09 points, or 0.74%, to 5,266.95 while the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) New Tab, opens new tab lost 99.30 points, or 0.58%, to 16,920.58. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) New Tab, opens new tab fell 411.32 points, or 1.06%, to 38,441.54. The main focus this week will be on Friday's release of April's Personal Consumption Expenditure data - the Fed's preferred inflation gauge. The Nasdaq retreated after closing above the 17,000 mark for the first time on Tuesday, while the small-caps Russell 2000 index (.RUT) New Tab, opens new tab fell 1.5%. After the closing bell, shares of Salesforce (CRM.N) New Tab, opens new tab were down more than 15% as the company reported results and forecast second quarter revenue below estimates. Salesforce shares ended the regular session up 0.7%. During the regular session, shares of Marathon Oil (MRO.N) New Tab, opens new tab advanced 8.4% after ConocoPhillips (COP.N) New Tab, opens new tab said it would buy the company in an all-stock deal for a little over its $15 billion market value. ConocoPhillips fell 3.1%. The energy sector (.SPNY) New Tab, opens new tab dropped 1.8%. Airline stocks declined, led by American Airlines (AAL.O) New Tab, opens new tab, which declined 13.5% after the company cut its second-quarter profit forecast. Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS.N) New Tab, opens new tab rose 15.9% after lifting forecasts for annual sales and profit, while Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF.N) New Tab, opens new tab shot up 24.3% on raised annual sales growth forecast. On the Nasdaq, declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 2.78-to-1 ratio and a 5.25-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. The S&P 500 posted 7 new 52-week highs and 16 new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 45 new highs and 149 new lows. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 12.24 billion shares, compared with the 12.38 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/futures-fall-rate-worries-push-bond-yields-higher-2024-05-29/

2024-05-29 22:25

CHICAGO, May 29 (Reuters) - Meat processor JBS (JBSS3.SA) New Tab, opens new tab said on Wednesday that Beijing blocked U.S. beef shipments from the company's plant in Greeley, Colorado, because traces of the feed additive ractopamine were identified in beef destined for China. Brazil-based JBS, the world's largest beef producer, said in a statement it is working with U.S. and Chinese authorities to resolve the situation and that no other JBS beef facilities in the U.S. have been impacted. The suspension was effective Monday, according to a notice posted on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) website. Ractopamine is a feed additive used to boost animal weights. Its use has been banned or restricted in at least 160 countries, including the European Union, Russia and China. In addition, China has suspended exports of meat and poultry products coming from Cool Port Oakland in Oakland, California, effective the same date, according to a spokesperson from USDA FSIS. Cool Port Oakland is a cold storage facility used for perishable or other sensitive goods like food or medicine. The company did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. "China customs detected ractopamine in a batch of frozen beef omasum products exported to China from these establishments and destroyed this batch of products in accordance with their regulations," the USDA FSIS spokesperson said in an email statement. USDA FSIS is conducting an investigation, the spokesperson said. Earlier this year, major food safety, environmental and animal rights groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, seeking to force it to reconsider approvals of ractopamine, which they say is putting human health at risk and causing stress in farm animals prior to slaughter. The restrictions sent Chicago Mercantile Exchange cattle futures slumping on Wednesday, analysts said, with the most-active August live cattle contract posting its biggest percentage drop since May 1. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/jbs-says-china-blocks-beef-us-plant-over-detection-ractopamine-2024-05-29/

2024-05-29 22:06

WELLINGTON, May 30 (Reuters) - Protesters delayed traffic in New Zealand's largest city Auckland on Thursday, a transport agency said, following calls by activist groups and opposition party Te Pati Maori to take to the streets to protest the release of the government's budget. Traffic was also delayed in Tauranga, on the east coast of the country's North Island, local media reported, as protesters drive slowly on the motorways as a form of protest. Organisers have asked that New Zealand's Indigenous Maori people and those who support Maori to go on strike and attend rallies on foot and in cars to protest the government’s policies that affect the country's Indigenous population. Further marches are planned throughout the country later in the day on Thursday, with protesters expected to rally at parliament at lunchtime. The centre-right National-led government is due to release the budget at 2 p.m. NZST (0200 GMT), with lower taxes expected to be the centrepiece of a budget that is also expected to show worsening forecasts and falling revenue, underscoring challenges ahead. Te Pati Maori party has raised concerns about a number of policies being passed by the government, which was elected last October, and the impact they have on the Maori community, their rights under the country's founding document and to make up for the wrongs of colonisation. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indigenous-led-protests-stall-traffic-ahead-new-zealand-budget-2024-05-29/

2024-05-29 22:05

May 29 - Gold smuggling out of Africa, mainly to the United Arab Emirates, has surged over the last decade, with hundreds of tonnes of gold worth tens of billions of dollars illegally leaving the continent every year, according to a report published on Thursday. Analysis by Swissaid, an organisation that focuses on development aid and advocacy, found that a total of 435 tonnes of gold, mostly mined by small-scale miners and worth more than $30 billion, was smuggled out of Africa in 2022. Swissaid said the UAE was the main destination for Africa’s smuggled gold and took in 405 tonnes in 2022. Over the previous decade, UAE accepted more than 2,500 tonnes of smuggled gold with a total value of over $115 billion, the organisation said. Asked to comment on the findings, a UAE official said that the country had taken significant steps to address concerns about gold smuggling and implemented new regulations on gold and other precious metals. The scale of the flow underscores how small scale, or artisanal, mining has mushroomed into an industry involving millions of people producing volumes of gold on a par with or even bigger than industrial mining. In 2019, a Reuters investigation found that billions of dollars’ worth of gold was being smuggled out of Africa every year through the UAE, which served a gateway to markets in Europe, the United States and beyond. Aside from the loss in tax revenues, experts and governments have warned that smuggling on this scale indicates a vast parallel illicit economy vulnerable to potential money laundering, terrorist finance and sanctions evasion. Marc Ummel, the commodities lead at Swissaid and one of the authors of the report, said the UAE contributes to gold laundering because large quantities of smuggled gold acquire a legal existence by transiting through the UAE. "If we keep on seeing more than 400 tonnes of illegal gold entering the UAE every year, this is a clear sign that the implementation of the regulations in the UAE is seriously lacking." DISCREPANCIES For its analysis, Swissaid compared total gold exports from all African countries with gold imports into non-African countries. The organisation filled gaps in UN Comtrade data with individual country statistics and identified errors by comparing the data with figures reported by trade associations and speaking with governments and refineries. These discrepancies between declared exports and declared imports do not exist for Switzerland and India, the other two major gold importing countries for African gold. The Swissaid report found that there were 12 countries in Africa involved in smuggling 20 tonnes or more per year. In response to accusations that it was not doing enough to enforce regulations on the sector, a UAE Ministry of Economy spokesperson said the UAE cannot be held accountable for other government’s export records. "Only our own, where we have sophisticated technologies and systems to track and verify the data." ARTISANAL MINING With the gold price having doubled since 2009, the number of people turning to artisanal mining has surged. Swissaid estimates that artisanal and small-scale gold mining in African countries produced between 443 and 596 tonnes of gold in 2022. Of this, more than 70 percent is not declared. By comparison, industrial miners have produced around 500 tonnes of gold a year. The report found that the majority of African gold imported into the UAE each year comes from informal artisanal and small-scale mining. These methods provide a livelihood to millions of Africans but often come at a high cost to local communities and to the environment. "There's a certain hypocrisy with some of the Swiss refineries," said Ummel. "They don't want to source African artisanal gold directly but at the same time import very high quantities of gold from the UAE, which is the main hub for African artisanal gold." Between 80% and 85% of Africa's artisanal gold in 2022 was exported to the UAE, according to the researchers. A UAE official said the country recognises the importance of artisanal and small-scale gold mining to the sector and that its "inclusive approach" has allowed artisanal miners to realise more value for their extracted gold. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gold-worth-tens-billions-smuggled-uae-each-year-report-says-2024-05-29/

2024-05-29 21:46

May 30 (Reuters) - A look at the day ahead in Asian markets. A remarkably light economic data and events calendar in Asia on Thursday will allow investors to chew over the rise in U.S. and global bond yields that appears to be gathering pace, strengthening the dollar and tightening financial conditions. Unsurprisingly, risk appetite is suffering. The MSCI World equity index fell 1% on Wednesday and the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index slumped 1.6%, its biggest fall in six weeks. Hopes of a rebound on Thursday will have been tempered by Wall Street's slide deep into the red too. Thursday's regional calendar offers few major market-moving signals. Reserve Bank of Australia's deputy governor Sarah Hunter is scheduled to speak, Australian home building approvals data will be released and Taiwan revises first quarter GDP. Friday's calendar, by contrast, is packed with top-tier releases including Chinese PMIs, Tokyo inflation and India's Q4 GDP, all of which precedes the main event of the week - U.S. PCE inflation for April. Investors have to navigate Thursday first though, and market waters are getting increasingly choppy. The 10-year Japanese Government Bond yield is now at 1.075%, the highest since late 2011 and up eight days out of the last nine. But these juicier yields aren't doing much for the yen, which is sliding closer to 158.00 per dollar, where Japanese authorities are suspected to have intervened on May 1 selling dollars to support the domestic currency. Global yields, already significantly higher than Japan's, are also rising. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield jumped another seven basis points on Wednesday to 4.64%, the highest in a month, and the two-year yield briefly topped 5.00% again. U.S. yield spreads over other jurisdictions may not be widening much in the dollar's favor, but they are staying wide enough to ensure the dollar remains investors' currency of choice. The dollar index rose 0.5% on Wednesday, its biggest rise in a month. China bulls, meanwhile, might have been encouraged by the International Monetary Fund's assessment on Wednesday of Asia's largest economy. The IMF upgraded its 2024 and 2025 GDP growth outlooks by 0.4 percentage points to 5% and 4.5%, respectively. But the IMF was more cautious on the longer term outlook, warning that growth could slow to 3.3% by 2029 due to an aging population and slower expansion in productivity. More immediately, the economy's strong performance in Q1 might have set the bar of expectations too high - China's economic surprises index continues to fall and is now on the brink of turning negative. If China's economic surprises index is grinding lower, however, Japan's has fallen off a cliff. At the start of May it was +35.2, and on Wednesday it was -36.8, the lowest since January last year. Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Thursday: - RBA deputy governor Sarah Hunter speaks - Australia home building approvals (April) - Taiwan GDP (Q1, revised estimate) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/global-markets-view-asia-graphic-pix-2024-05-29/

2024-05-29 21:11

HOUSTON, May 29 (Reuters) - U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter Venture Global LNG must refile emissions data for its Calcasieu Pass 2 plant construction permits, regulators said on Wednesday. The Alexandria, Virginia-based LNG developer had not included the impact of tanker and support vessel emissions in its recently revised filing, the Federal Energy Regulator Commission (FERC) said. Venture Global LNG has been pushing FERC for a decision on its planned construction of a 20 million metric tonnes per annum (MTPA) expansion next to its present 10 MTPA Calcasieu Pass 1 export facility. "Your projected increased emission rates for CP1 as well as the ship and support vessel emissions need to be included in order for the Commission to continue processing your application," FERC wrote. It gave the company three days to respond to its request. Venture Global LNG is the fourth largest U.S. exporter of the superchilled gas and with its proposed new plants has laid out plans to produce more than 100 MTPA plans in the future. Regulators had asked Venture Global to update its environmental impact after learning the company provided different emissions information to state regulators on its CP1 project, FERC said. A recently updated assessment did not include the emissions from shipping, FERC said. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/us-regulator-seeks-new-emissions-data-venture-global-lng-2024-05-29/