Business

The levitation continues with S&P futures pointing to - what else - another higher open while European stocks swung between gains and losses on the busiest earnings days of the year (85 of the Stoxx 600 report) which has seen European pharma giant AstraZeneca plunge 15%, the most on record, after its flagship lung cancer trial Mystic failed to show benefits, while Deutsche Bank slumped 4% on a 12% plunge in FICC revenue.

Deutsche Bank shares tumbled 4% on Thursday after reporting better than expected earnings, driven by provisions and dramatic cost-cutting, more than offset however by a sharp drop in overall company revenue which slumped to the lowest in three and a half years, as Investment Banking revenue slumped 16%, while FICC tumbled a whopping 12% Y/Y and 30% Q/Q, with CEO John Cryan taking a page out of the Goldman playbook and blaming "muted client activity."

Literally no one knows the true 'value' of equity research, not even the investment banks that are selling it.  Up until now, equity research has been treated as a 'freebie' given away to institutional clients in return for trading commissions but that is all about to change thanks to the European Union’s MiFID II regulations, which require asset managers to separate trading commissions from investment-research payments.

In just a few short months, companies – many of dubious legitimacy – have raised more than a billion dollars through ICOs. Some of the better-hyped offerings in the field of 900 new coins that have been created this year managed to raise tens of millions of dollars in minutes.  Investors, who were eager to throw money at the new coins, blindly hoping they would land on the next bitcoin or Ethereum.

Last summer we declared that "China's favorite offshore money laundering hub is officially no longer accepting its money" after the city of Vancouver slapped a 15% tax on foreign real estate buyers.  The tax was intended to curb a massive real estate bubble which had resulted from an influx of Chinese money over the preceding years.  The move seemingly worked as it resulted in a staggering and immediate 96% drop in foreign buyers (see: Foreign Buying Plummets In Vancouver: Sales To Foreigners Crash 96%).