Trading Ideas

(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia showed no sign of bowing to pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to dial back its oil-price war with Russia. Instead, the kingdom pushed crude supply to record levels.Trump said Tuesday night that he’d spoken to both President Vladimir Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an effort to broker a truce between the world’s two largest oil exporters.Saudi Arabia started the month by boosting supply to more than 12 million barrels a day, the largest on record, according to an industry official familiar with the kingdom’s operations. Aramco declined to comment.So far, Riyadh has …read more […]

The external fund manager backed by Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger, Li Lu, makes no bones about it when he says… …read more […]

Top news and what to watch in the markets on Wednesday, April 1, 2020. …read more […]

BP cut its 2020 spending plan by 25% and will reduce output from its U.S. shale oil and gas business in the face of the collapse in oil prices triggered by the corononavirus outbreak, it said on Wednesday. “This may be the most brutal environment for oil and gas businesses in decades,” CEO Bernard Looney said in a statement. The London-based company said it plans to spend $12 billion this year, joining its peers that have announced cuts of around 20% in annual spending on average. …read more […]

Ex-Obama official says President Trump should take more of a military approach to the outbreak. …read more […]

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(Bloomberg Opinion) — Here’s another factor to add to the gyrations in the gold price over the past few weeks: The biggest players in the market may be losing their buying appetite.Russia’s central bank, one of the world’s largest gold buyers in recent years, is halting all purchases of the metal. It’s not alone: Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, whose central banks have also been reliable consumers of late, have also slowed down. Rolling three-month additions to official sector gold holdings (those held by central banks and international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund) in January amounted to just 67 metric …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — The British banking regulator pressed firms including HSBC Holdings Plc to scrap dividends and cash payouts for its top staff as the coronavirus pandemic upends the industry.HSBC and Standard Chartered Plc shares tumbled after they and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Barclays Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc canceled outstanding dividends and buybacks and said there would be no payments in 2020.The move comes as the Prudential Regulation Authority wrote to lenders asking them to cancel payments, adding that it “expects banks not to pay any cash bonuses to senior staff, including all material risk takers.” The …read more […]

Popular video-conferencing company Zoom Video Communications (ZM) is facing a privacy suit for allegedly disclosing personal data to third parties without full user consent. Shares pulled back 3.6% in trading on March 31. The complaint states that Zoom’s “wholly inadequate program design and security measures have resulted, and will continue to result, in unauthorized disclosure of its users’ personal information.” Robert Cullen of Sacramento alleges that Zoom violated California’s Consumer Privacy Act. He is looking to represent a class of users harmed by the breach, and is seeking damages under the act and punitive damages.Indeed, tech publication Motherboard recently disclosed …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said the U.S. would meet with Saudi Arabia and Russia with the goal of staunching an historic plunge in oil prices.Trump, speaking at the White House Tuesday, said he’s raised the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “They’re going to get together and we’re all going to get together and we’re going to see what we can do,” he said. “The two countries are discussing it. And I am joining at the appropriate time, if need be.”If it happens, it would be the first meeting between Saudi Arabia …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stock futures declined as investors assessed worsening American coronavirus figures as a new quarter begins. Asian shares traded mixed.Futures on the S&P 500 Index slid more than 1.5% after President Donald Trump warned of a “painful” two weeks ahead, with the country grappling to get the outbreak under control. Cases in New York state surged by 9,000. Stocks in Japan pared losses, while Australia’s outperformed. Hong Kong shares had a modest retreat even as two of the city’s largest lenders, Standard Chartered Plc and HSBC Holdings Plc, both suspended dividend payments because of the virus. In China, …read more […]

The Trump administration plans to lease out space for energy companies to store oil in the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, after a previous effort to buy millions of barrels for the emergency stockpile was canceled over a lack of funding, according to two people briefed on the matter. The new plan could help the United States deal with a growing glut of crude oil that risks overwhelming commercial storage tanks and sending world energy prices deeper into a tailspin as the coronavirus pandemic slashes demand for fuel. The plan is a change of tack from the initial scheme, …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Oil is entering a period of unparalleled demand destruction this month that promises to transform the industry for years to come.Daily consumption will plummet by 15 million to 22 million barrels in April from a year earlier, according to estimates from some of the world’s most influential energy analysts. The crash has already led to refiners slashing processing, drillers halting output and storage tanks swelling across the world.“This will likely be a game-changer for the industry,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts including Jeffrey Currie and Damien Courvalin said in a March 30 note. “It is impossible to shut …read more […]

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