For now, until we get closer to May 7, when we have the [French election] final round, the market is rejoicing.” “This is the third European election where the national populist didn’t win.” “Markets don’t like uncertainty. Financial stocks surged 2.3 percent Monday, while industrial stocks were up 1.3 percent and materials were up 1.2 percent. The euro was up more than 3 percent against the yen overnight, reversing a safe haven trade popular before the French election.

U.S. executives are shrugging off domestic policy concerns as they look to strike M&A deals. Nearly 80 percent of U.S. executives expect their company to actively pursue mergers and acquisitions over the next 12 months, according to an EY survey released Monday. M&A activity in the U.S. got off to a roaring start this year, with $35.7 billion in deals being announced in just the first nine days of the year. However, that puts total M&A activity for the year on track for about $1.2 trillion, belo

Shares of the company once again Monday hit a fresh all-time high of $134.76, just a day ahead of the company’s first-quarter earnings report. McDonald’s stock is up about 4 percent this month and nearly 10.6 percent for the year-to-date. Last year, the chain turned in first-quarter U.S. same-store sales growth of 5.4 percent. This time around, analysts are calling for overall same-store sales growth of 1 percent, and U.S. same-store sales to decline 0.8 percent. “McDonald’s can’t miss on same-s

In both cases, then, the markets were much more ripe for a rally than they are this time around. This all leads us to wonder if the positive news from the French election has already priced in with the market open. What we’re saying is that it’s great that this “initial” reaction to the French vote is a very good one. However, the stock market’s overall setup is not ripe for rally , and valuations are very stretched. Therefore, we think it will be a good idea to hold off for a few days in terms

“This is a credit bubble in autos that is very reminiscent of the subprime mortgage crisis,” Larry McDonald, head of global macro strategy at ACG Analytics, said Friday in an interview on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” and highlighted weak March auto sales as a potential warning sign for the auto sector. Still, Meyer wrote that so far the slowdown in the pace of auto sales is “manageable” for the economy. Still, the concern over autos may not be as pronounced for some experts who track credit. For aut

Top Trump administration officials will hold a rare briefing on Wednesday at the White House for the entire U.S. Senate on the situation in North Korea, senior Senate aides said on Monday. All 100 senators have been asked to the White House for the briefing by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the aides said. While top administration officials routinely

The Nasdaq Composite was up more than 1 percent mid-day Monday, edging close to a record 6,000 points, as the Nasdaq 100 hit another all-time high. And the “big 5” technology companies — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon — were in the lead. Stock indexes have made broad gains since the election, and Nasdaq is no exception. “Are they leading because they are big, or are they big because they are leading? Companies like Google and Facebook are investing aggressively in the what’s nex

The Treasury Department announced “one of the largest sanctions actions in its history,” slapping 271 individuals with punishment in response to an apparent April 4 chemical attack against civilians in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria. In a Monday statement, the Treasury said it was targeting individuals within a Syrian government agency that the department says is responsible for the development and production of chemical weapons. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a Monday statement, “We take Syri

Spring homebuyers are pounding the pavement at a furious pace, but the pickings are getting ever slimmer. “I’ve been selling real estate for 25 years and this is the strongest seller’s market I have ever seen in my entire real estate career,” said David Fogg, a real estate agent with Keller Williams in Burbank, California. “A lot of our sellers are optimistically pricing their homes in today’s market, and I have to say in most cases we’re getting the home sold anyway.” Fogg listed a three-bedroo

Beijing appears to be sending fresh signals about its view on North Korea, in order to convince U.S. President Donald Trump to take less aggressive action against the rogue nuclear state, several political analysts say. “One thing we’re seeing is a tactical adjustment on Beijing’s part to Trump,” said John Delury, associate professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. When you start to look carefully at the military options, they are horrific, just given the economic

U.S. government debt prices were lower on Monday as investors digested the results from the first round of the French election. Early results from the French election showed Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen advancing to a presidential runoff. Far-right candidate Le Pen and centrist Macron were largely expected to pull ahead in the first round of the French contest. The two had led most of the polls leading up to the election. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury notes, which moves invers

European stock markets skyrocketed across the board, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 index popping about 2 percent. The French CAC 40 rose 4.14 percent and hit a nine-year high. Macron “is the prohibitive favorite to win the presidency in two weeks thereby leaving far too little time for his challenger to make up any significant ground,” said Jeremy Klein, chief market strategist at FBN Securities. “We’ve certainly seen the French election give risk assets a boost,” said Chris Gaffney, president

Apple Maps wasn’t very good when it launched, but now it’s full of features that have substantially improved it. On Monday the company added public transit support for Paris, allowing Parisians to get the best route from point A to point B using local transit options. It’s a service already offered to a growing number of other cities, so we thought it was appropriate timing to show you some of the new features Apple Maps offers. Some of these might be old hat to you, some might be new, but all a

KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Monday that the Apple iPhone 8 won’t launch until October or November, blaming “significant hardware upgrades.” A rumor from Apple’s supply chain earlier this month said the iPhone 8, expected to be the most premium of three new iPhones set to launch this year, was delayed by two months. Shortly after, Drexel Hamilton analyst Brian White said the same, arguing that Apple’s 5.8-inch iPhone 8 “will be delayed by several weeks due to challenges around the 3-D sensing t

In the 17 years since Google introduced text-based advertising above search results, the company has allocated more space to ads and created new forms of them. A Google spokeswoman said the company’s goal had always been to quickly give people the best search results. The company has introduced new forms of search advertising for automobiles, hotels and even home services such as plumbing. Alphabet doesn’t break out revenue from search ads, but growth in paid clicks on Google’s web properties —

LinkedIn said Monday that it now has 500 million members. Those half a billion members are spread out across 200 countries. The company also said it has over 10 million active jobs, and around 9 million companies on the platform. Users post 100,000 articles on the platform every week on average, LinkedIn said. The announcement addresses a fear some analysts had after Microsoft bought Linkedin last year for $26.2 billion, namely whether the company could continue to grow.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is here and it’s beautiful Tuesday, 18 Apr 2017 | 10:59 AM ET | 01:58Samsung said on Monday that it will soon issue a software update to fix complaints of Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones with displays that have a red tint. The company did not admit any sort of wrong-doing and said that variation in its AMOLED display color is normal. We didn’t see any such problem on our Galaxy S8 review units, but some owners of the smartphone have taken to various online outlets, inc

Spotify is starting to dabble in hardware, and it has some pretty huge aspirations. It seems safe to assume that, in some fashion, Spotify is interested in making a device that’s capable of playing music. One possibility is something like the Mighty, an iPod shuffle-like media player that streams music from Spotify. The fact that all of this is being revealed from job listings suggests that Spotify isn’t all that far along here. The hardware listing even states that the person who fills the posi

The company is named OnePlus and it offers excellent Android phones for almost $300 less than the Samsung Galaxy S8. It’s built a cult following among Android users. I saw it with my own eyes with the launch of the company’s OnePlus 3 last year. These fans flock to buy a flagship-level smartphone at a price that often costs half as much as what other smartphone makers charge. Pick one up, and you’ll feel like you’re holding an $800 phone, even though it costs several hundred dollars less.

Samsung said on Monday that pre-orders for the Galaxy S8 outpaced pre-orders for the Galaxy S7 by 30 percent, making it the company’s “best ever” launch of a smartphone. Samsung’s Galaxy S8, now available online and in carrier stores, launched in the wake of the Galaxy Note 7, which was recalled due to faulty batteries that were prone to catching fire. “The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are a result of that recommitment and the market has responded – with a more than 30 percent year-over-year growth in pre-