Business

Last week, when BofA reported that its "smart money" clients had sold stocks fora record 17th week, the bank offered the following silver lining.

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via 720Global.com,

In the aftermath of the bizarre SWIFT hack that supposedly allowed brazen Asian hackers to steal $81 million from the account of the Bangladesh central bank held at the Fed, attention has predictably shifted to the question of whether there was just "one cockroach." As it turns out there were at least 50. As Reuters reports, citing Fed records, "the U.S. Federal Reserve detected more than 50 cyber breaches between 2011 and 2015, with several incidents described internally as "espionage."

Submitted by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

As Venezuela drowns in debt and takes its state-run oil company, PDVSA, down with it, Reuters is reporting that BP has over 2 million barrels of oil stuck at a terminal in the Caribbean over unpaid bills.

The cargo of 2 million barrels of U.S. light sweet crude sold by BP cannot be discharged at the PDVSA terminal in Curacao until it’s paid for, according to the news agency, which is relying on unnamed sources and Thomson Reuters vessel tracking data.

With one after another bank issuing downgrade reports on global stocks, including such stalwarts as JPM and, most recently, Goldman, overnight a far more important market entity - the world's largest asset manager - joined the club when BlackRock downgraded U.S. and European stocks to neutral, citing elevated U.S. valuations and the higher probability of a midyear interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve.