Europe

With 91% of companies in the S&P500 having reported earnings for the first quarter, Q1 2017 earnings season is almost fully in the history books, and is shaping up as the best quarter for annual earnings growth in six years. According to FactSet, the blended earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 in the first quarter is 13.6%, up from 13.5% last week, while revenue is poised to grow 7.8% Y/Y. The rise in profits was a function of both solid sales growth (+7.8%) and a 41 bp expansion in margins to 9.4%.

Less than 24 hours after it first emerged, it has been called the first global, coordinated ransomware attack using hacking tools developed by the NSA, crippling over a dozen hospitals across the UK, mass transit around Europe, car factories in France and the UK, universitied in China, corporations in the US, banks in Russia and countless other mission-critical infrastructure.

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

For the World War II generation there was clarity.

The attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941, united the nation as it had never been before — in the conviction that Japan must be smashed, no matter how long it took or how many lives it cost.

After the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, however, Americans divided.

History of Gold - How the gold industry has changed over 50 years

Thomson Reuters GFMS have compiled an interesting high level history of the gold industry in the last fifty years.

Topics covered and interesting historical facts to note include:

When it comes to infrastructure, BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, has it right. The head of the world’s largest asset management company, and a member of President Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum, is beating the privatization drums. As Fink recently put it: "These [infrastructure] projects must deliver competitive returns and that will often require efficiencies that can only be achieved through private ownership.” Hopefully Fink delivered that message in April at the Strategy and Policy Forum at the White House.