A roundup of Monday’s stock market results from across the Americas
🌎 Argentina’s Merval leads LatAm gains:
Latin America’s markets closed mixed on Monday, with Argentina’s Merval (MERVAL) posting the highest gains, with the shares of Banco BBVA Argentina (BBAR), Banco Macro (BMA) and Transener SA (TRAN) showing the strongest performance.
In the United States, Argentina’s Economy Minister Sergio Massa has been in meetings with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the White House to address issues of debt, drought, lithium, among others.
During his trip to Washington last week, Massa announced that the IDB approved a new line of credit for investment and health projects in Argentina for $600 million and that the World Bank will disburse US$300 million for educational scholarships. The weekend added more announcements of millionaire disbursements by these two organizations, which will help the country to alleviate the effects of the drought: US$950 million from the WB and a total package of close to $1 billion million from the IDB.
On the other hand, Peru’s S&P/BVL (SPBLPGPT) saw the sharpest decline, falling 0.37%, dragged down by the performance of the materials and utilities sectors.
On Sunday, Peruvian authorities reported a new oil spill near a refinery operated by Spain’s Repsol SA during a routine inspection, according to a statement. Peruvian environmental authority OEFA (Organismo de Evaluación y Fiscalización Ambiental) said the oil spill at the port of La Pampilla refinery affected an area of 300 square meters. It was discovered on April 15 at the multiple buoy terminal 2, which is periodically inspected after a major oil spill affected the area last year.
🗽On Wall Street:
Stocks saw small moves as the possibility of further Federal Reserve policy tightening lifted Treasury yields and investors stayed on the sidelines amid bank earnings.
The S&P 500 erased losses in afternoon New York trading. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 underperformed major equity benchmarks. Two-year rates climbed to around 4.2% as investors scaled back expectations for rate cuts later in the year.
The S&P 500 climbed 0.33%, the Nasdaq Composite (CCMPDL) 0.28% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.30%.
Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said he wants to see more evidence that US inflation is easing back to the central bank’s goal of 2%. New York state manufacturing activity unexpectedly expanded in April for the first time in five months as new orders and shipments snapped back.
Charles Schwab Corp. rose as executives said the firm can weather the turmoil roiling US banks, while pausing stock buybacks in response to the industry’s worst crisis since 2008. State Street Corp. fell as it reported clients retreated from its investment products.
“The current season’s earnings profile is rather opaque,” said Peter Kinsella, head of FX strategy at Swiss asset manager UBP. “The banks last week did better than expected, but we have to see what the reporting season will be like from everyone else. But the S&P is expensive at current levels so you have to ask yourself if there is really much material upside from here.”
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.4%, the euro fell 0.6% to $1.0930, the British pound fell 0.3% to $1.2377 and the Japanese yen fell 0.5% to 134.43 per dollar.
🍝 For the dinner table debate:
According to a report Sunday in The New York Times, Microsoft Corp’s. (MSFT) Bing could replace Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOGL) Google as the default search service on Samsung Electronics Co. devices.
The move could jeopardize annual revenue of about $3 billion for Google.
Bing’s threat to Google’s search dominance has recently become more credible with the addition of OpenAI technology, which can provide ChatGPT-like responses to user queries.
Samsung sold 261 million smartphones in 2022, all of them running Google’s Android software, according to IDC data. The Korean company has long-standing partnerships with both Microsoft and Google, and its devices come preloaded with a variety of apps and services from both, such as OneDrive and Google Maps.
The report notes that negotiations are still ongoing and that Samsung could still decide to keep Google as the default vendor.