Welcome to Black Swan Street!

Welcome back!! It’s @JohnWetter here with another edition of Black Swan Street…

This week was a hoot-and-a-hollar, so let’s dive in:

• Rates… Rates… Rates…⁉️

• The Swan’s Selections🦢

• In Other News🗞

• Next Week In The Stock Market🔮

Read time: 6 minutes

Rates… Rates… Rates…⁉️

What is that? Above you can see the Federal Reserve’s ‘Dot Plot’. It’s a graphical representation of policymaker’s interest rate projections over time.

What does it say? In the plot, each policymaker’s projection of the future path of the federal funds rate is represented by a dot - aka each dot represents the individual forecast of a member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).

And as you can see, the dot plot shows a median federal funds rate of 4.6% in 2024. With the current fed funds rate being in a range of 5.25% to 5.5%, this implies three rate cuts of 0.25% in 2024.

Read the rest of the economic projections here.

Also to note: 

This week:

• The Bank of Japan raised interest rates for the first time in 17 years, ending the world’s only negative rates regime. Japan’s central bank raised its short-term interest rates to 0% to 0.1% from -0.1%.

• The Swiss National Bank became the first advanced economy to cut interest rates. Switzerland surprised the market with a decision to lower its main policy rate by 0.25 percentage points to 1.5%. Economists had expected the Swiss central bank to hold rates steady at 1.75%.

• The Bank of England held its key rate steady at 5.25%, aka a 16-year high.

Recommended Reading📚

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The Swan’s Selections🦢

🇷🇺Guess Who’s Back… Back Again? That’s right, Putin’s extending his reign. Russian President, Vladamir Putin, was elected to serve his fifth term as president of Russia. This means we’ll be seeing more of Putin until at least 2030.

📱Apple and Google Partnership? Apple is in talks with Google to build Google’s ‘Gemini’ artificial intelligence engine into the iPhone. It’s reported the two companies are in active negotiations to let Apple license Gemini.

🍦Billion Dollar Ice Cream Spinoff. One of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, Unilever, announced the spinoff of its ice cream unit. This unit is home to popular brands such as Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s. Along with this, they announced the layoff of 7,500 employees (5.9% of workforce) in a new cost-savings initiative.

⚽77-Year Partnership Gone. The German national football (aka soccer) team has decided to switch from Adidas kits to Nike kits after 77 years. It’s rumored Nike will be paying ~$108 million per year to supply the kits (doubling Adidas $50 million per year).

In Other News🗞

• Lyft and Uber will cease operations in Minneapolis - AP

• Honda and Nissan will partner on EV development - AP

• Treasury ETF hit by record losing streak, $2 billion of outflows - BBG

• Evergrande accused of falsifying revenue by $78 billion - BBG

• Elon Musk defends his ketamine use as beneficial for investors - RT

• Edtech and publishing firm ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ is seeking a $1 billion valuation in its potential June IPO - BBG

• JPMorgan to set up a dedicated sports IB team - RT

• PepsiCo to replace Coca-Cola at Subway’s U.S. locations - BBG

• AstraZeneca will acquire Canadian drug developer ‘Fusion Pharmaceuticals’ in a $2 billion cash deal - RT

• Pfizer reduced its stake in UK consumer healthcare firm ‘Haleon’ by $3.5 billion to 22.6% - RT

• Short sellers up wagers against CRE again - BBG

• Target will double employee bonuses this year - BBG

• LVMH deputy CEO Antonio Belloni will step down after 23 years - FT

Next Week in the Stock Market🔮

Earnings To Watch Next Week:

What the Swan is watching:

Monday: PVH Corp

Tuesday: TD Synnex, McCormick & Company, GameStop, Dave & Buster’s

Wednesday: Carnival Corp, Cintas, Paychex, H.B. Fuller, Jefferies Financial Group

Thursday: Walgreens Boots Alliance, BRP Inc, P3 Health Partners

Economic Calendar Next Week:

The Wrap-Up🔄

🎊🎉 That’s it for this week 🎉🎊

We love to hear your comments, critiques, and suggestions, so as always, let us know what you thought about this week’s edition of Black Swan Street!!!

Black Swan Street Review of the Week🖤