Business

In what is now a weekly tradition for the new bond king, overnight DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach spoke to Reuters' Jenn Ablan following his periodic investor conference call, to discuss such things as the Fed's rate hike, on which he remains understandably skeptical and said the Fed will be "challenged" to raise interest rates this year.  Specifically he said that there appears to be "some (hawkish) rebellion showing up at the Fed." This came following the latest statement by Kansas City Fed President and noted hawk, Esther George, who  said on Thursday that the Fed is keeping interest rates t

• Nerves dominate before U.S. retail numbers (Reuters)
• Stocks Give Up Week’s Gains as Commodities Fall; Yen, Bonds Rise (BBG)
• Apple Invests $1 Billion in Didi, Uber’s Rival in China (WSJ)
• Dollar hits two-week high, posts best fortnight since February (Reuters)
• OPEC Sees Rival Oil Production Declining as Markets Rebalance (WSJ)
• Trump on best behavior as he woos Republicans but differences remain (Reuters)
• Hedge Fund Star: We Are ‘Under Assault’ (WSJ)
• German GDP growth picks up sharply (MW)

One recurring question over the past few weeks has been "who is buying" stocks in a world in which not only the smart money, but everyone else too is selling. The latest Lipper data will not provide the answer because as BofA reports, in the latest week there was another $7.4bn in outflows (the 5th straight week) driven by $4.8bn in mutual fund outflows and $2.7bn ETF outflows, leading to a $44bn equity exodus past 5 weeks, which as Michael Hartnett points out is the "largest redemption period since Aug’11", or when the US downgrade sent US stocks into a bear market tailspin.

Global stocks have started Friday the 13th on the wrong foot, with not only Hong Kong GDP unexpectedly tumbling by 0.4%, the worst print in years while retail sales fell for a thirteenth straight month in March, the longest stretch since 1999 as the Chinese hard landing spreads to the wealthy enclave, but also following a predicted collapse in Chinese new loan creation, which will reverberate not only in China but around the globe in the coming weeks.

Ever since merchants changed out payment terminals last October in order to comply with new rules and accept chip cards, merchants are seeing expenses relating to debit transaction fees increasing, in some cases as much as 20%. The reason stems from transaction terminals being set up to steer transactions in such a way that will generate the most revenue for the data processing company.

As the Chicago Tribune explains