Stainless steel prices in China declined over the past week amid poor demand from both downstream industries within the country and overseas buyers. Market participants said that stainless steelmakers were limited in their ability to slash prices any further because of the recent stability in the price of nickel. The three-month nickel contract on the London Metal Exchange has remained rangebound...Read More

The Dow finished the the week up 12.7%The Dow finished the last day of the holiday-shorted week up over 280 points, losing some of its midday rally after Democrats in congress blocked McConnell's bid to unanimously add $250 billion in small-business aid. However, the Fed announced new programs directed at small and medium-sized business, totaling up to $2.3 trillion. This news was enough to out...Read More

Stocks chugged higher as the government responded to the coronavirus crisis with more funding While the first full trading week of April was a short one, it was jam-packed with market-moving headlines, which, for the most part, kept the major indexes chugging higher. On Monday, the Dow extended its Friday rally as news over slowing coronavirus cases in New York and Europe encouraged investors. Som...Read More

The Federal Reserve proposed an additional $2.3 worth of financial aidThe Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) is heading into the holiday weekend on a hot streak, up almost 400 points at midday. Today's rise comes after the Federal Reserve pumped another $2.3 trillion into businesses and revenue-pinched local governments. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, in a video press conference earlier, acknowledged...Read More

Bank stocks will kick off earnings season next week Investors will return from a long weekend to the start of yet another earnings season, with bank stocks taking center stage this week. Blue chips JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Goldman Sachs (GS) will start it off, while sector peers Morgan Stanley (MS) and Wells Fargo (WFC) will also attract investor's attention. Dow component and healthcare issue Uni...Read More

BlackRock's massive Aladdin software will be hosted on Microsoft's platformLast night BlackRock, Inc (NYSE:BLK) announced Aladdin, its investment management and operations platform, will be hosted on Microsoft's (MSFT)Azure cloud network. In response, Deutsche Bank hiked its price target to $478 from $462, and Jefferies moved to $525 from $514. At last check, BLKis up 6.1% to trade at $478.24.BLK...Read More

The company pulled their quarterly and full-year outlookStitch Fix Inc (NASDAQ:SFIX) is up 23% to trade at $16.68, despite at least three analysts cutting their price targets today, including one to $11 from $15 from Piper Sandler. This surge came after SFIX became the latest company to pull its third quarter and full-year outlook due to the coronavirus outbreak. However, the e-tailer stated thei...Read More

Rio Tinto's 40-day moving average has had bearish implications in the past Copper prices have taken a backseat to gold amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. That hasn't stopped mining stockRio Tinto plc (ADR) (NYSE:RIO) however, from joining in on the broad-market rally. RIO is up 31% since its March 23 bottom of $35.35, but this rally has taken the copper name to a trendline that, if history is any...Read More

Thedebt-to-GDP ratio is an important metric economists use for comparing acountry’s total debt to its gross domestic product (GDP). The percentagearrived at by dividing the country’s total GDP by its total debt indicates thecountry’s ability to pay back its loans. The higher the percentage, the higherthe risk of a country being unable to pay the interest on its debt, andtherefore...Read More

Deutsche Bank cut its price target to $295 from $300Costco Wholesale Corp (NASDAQ:COST) is down 2% to trade at $299.76, after a price-target cut from Deutsche Bank to $295 from $300. The analyst stated that Costco's core same-store sales and U.S. comp sales for March fell short of their expectations, as stock-up strength faded and customers stayed home. COST has taken a number of volatile swings...Read More

The U.S. Senate just warned its members against using Zoom as a video chat platform The U.S. Senate just advised its members against using popular video chat platform Zoom Video (NASDAQ:ZM) due to security concerns, asking them to find an alternative platform while working remotely. Zoom has addressed some of these security concerns by hiring Facebook's (FB) former security head Alex Stamos. Despi...Read More

Jefferies downgraded Anthem stock to "hold" from "buy," and cut its price target to $257After yesterday's pop for insurance providers, traders are pulling back from Anthem Inc (NYSE:ANTM) this morning. The stock is trading down 0.8% at $244.99 on a downgrade from Jefferies to "hold" from "buy." The analyst also cut its price target to $257 from $354, adding that the insurance stock is the most ex...Read More

By: Ira EpsteinGold daily chart shows the massive move from $1450-1740's within a 5 week period, wow!Read More

The Fed announced a $2.3 trillion lending plan for the economyIn the wake of yesterday's outsized gains, Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) futures fought their way into the black, after paring triple-digit losses from earlier this morning.Futures on the Nasdaq-100 Index (NDX) and S&P 500 Index (SPX) are sitting just below fair value, as investors unpack the 6.6 million rise in weekly jobless...Read More

With his portfolio "solidly anchored" in silver and gold, sector expert Michael Ballanger opines on how bankers and politicians can manipulate markets.As a child, I used to get quite excited at the prospect of having my English "Gran" read me the Hans Christian Andersen book "The Emperor's New Clothes." I found the tale fiendishly amusing, as the charlatan tailor uses lethal doses of fla...Read More

Prices for imported steel billet in Egypt increased in the week to Thursday April 9, however, market activity was very weak because of the Covid-19 pandemic, sources told Fastmarkets.Domestic demand is weak, but even then steel billet stocks were low, so buyers booked some material, sources told Fastmarkets.Local rebar prices have not changed in the country since late February, when some Egyptian...Read More

Turkey produced 5.865 million tonnes of crude steel in January-February 2020, up by 12.7% from 5.203 million tonnes produced in the corresponding period the year before, according to the Turkish Steel Producers Association (T???oeD). The rise in output was largely attributed to the significant decrease in production in Turkey in the second half of 2018 and all of 2019. The decline in Turkey's crud...Read More

The European Commission has imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of hot-rolled stainless steel products originating in China, Taiwan and Indonesia into the European Union, it announced on Tuesday April 7.The provisional duties relate to an investigation started on August 12, 2019, following the European Steel Association Eurofer's complaint lodged two months earlier.The investigation applies to,...Read More

Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Thursday April 9 that are worth another look.South American flat steel import prices were mostly stable week on week as market liquidity dipped in the continent amid lockdowns and weakened demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic.The aerospace industry has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, with companies in the sector forced to take drast...Read More

APRIL 2020In a recent essay published at Project Syndicate, Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff sets an ominous tone. Humanity, he says "is facing something akin to alien invasion" - an apt analogy, we thought. "With each passing day," he goes on, "the 2008 global financial crisis increasingly looks like a mere dry run for today's economic catastrophe. The short-term collapse in global ou...Read More