While not surprising - her departure had been floated previously - moments ago ReCode confirmed that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer "will not be continuing with the new company that was announced today prematurely in a tweet by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong today."
Perhaps what is more surprising is the name of said pro forma company, which according to Kara Swisher will be called "Oath", and will be headed by Armstrong.
With an otherwise stellar Q1 ending with a whimper, traders expected that Monday would bring a return if not the "animal spirits", then at least the Reflation trade. That, however did not happen, for various reasons as profiled earlier by RBC, among which:
Having confessed to the fact that Fed "forecasts" are as useless as any other guess (and not commitments), NY Fed's Bill Dudley admitted this morning that the Fed-inspired student-loan bubble is a debt overhang that both inhibits home ownership and is a headwind to economic growth.
“If you look at the Summary of Economic Projections, it’s a forecast” and not a commitment, New York Fed President William Dudley says in New York at press conference on trends in household borrowing and student debt.
Despite continued heavy incentive spending, every auto OEM, with the exception of Nissan, missed their sales forecasts for the month of March. The "D3" were the biggest losers of the month with GM sales up 1.6% YoY vs. estimates of +7.0% while Ford sales dropped -7.2% and Fiat Chrysler declined -5.0%. Car sales were even worse with industry volumes down 10.6% overall versus light truck sales that were up 5.2% according to Autodata.
Earlier we showed that when looking at asset returns in the first quarter, there were hardly any underperformers while positive returns were generous across virtuall all asset classes. What drove this outsized performance, which once again left most hedge funds and asset managers seeking to generate alpha in the dust? The answer: a continuation of the capital reallocation euphoria launched with the Trump election in November, which continued for the second consecutive quarter.