Wall Street Breakfast: ECB Minutes Up Next

Economy

Retail sales in the U.K. posted a larger increase than expected in July, as hot weather bolstered sales of clothing and a drop in the pound encouraged tourists to open their wallets. The volume of goods sold in stores and online jumped 1.4% M/M and 5.9% Y/Y. The figures suggest the economy started Q3 on strong footing, despite Brexit prompting the Bank of England to revise down its growth forecasts. Sterling +1% to $1.3171.

Japan’s exports tumbled in July at the fastest pace since the financial crisis, weighed down by a strong yen and sluggish global demand. Exports slid 14% on-year, marking their tenth straight month of decline, while imports sank 24.7%, resulting in a trade balance of $5.15B. The figures are bad news for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government has been struggling to reinvigorate the faltering domestic economy.

In contrast, Chinese housing prices rose 7.9% year on year in July, recording the fastest increase since February 2014. Home prices in Shenzhen and Xiamen soared the most, up around 40% each. Separately, Moody’s raised its forecasts for China’s economic growth in the wake of “significant” fiscal and monetary stimulus policies, cautioning that the “slowdown and rebalancing of China’s economy is likely to be gradual.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected this week to announce a successor to Raghuram Rajan, the country’s departing central bank governor who is returning to academia. The two front-runners for the RBI’s top post are Subir Gokarn, a former deputy governor who’s currently India’s representative at the IMF, and Urjit Patel, a current deputy governor at the central bank.

Despite struggling in two years of recession, Brazil has raised its prediction for economic growth in 2017 because of an increase in business and consumer confidence levels. The country estimates GDP to increase 1.6% next year, compared with a previous forecast for an expansion of 1.2%, and left its forecast for inflation during 2017 unchanged at 4.8%.

Mongolia’s central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate by 4.5 percentage points to 15%, as it struggles to stabilize a currency that has been in free-fall. Elected in a landslide in late June, the country’s new government has been plunged into an economic crisis, with the tugrik losing 8% against the dollar so far this month, making it the world’s poorest performing currency.

Stocks

Cisco has confirmed it will cut up to 5,500 positions, about 7% of its global workforce, beginning in the fiscal first quarter of 2017. “Today’s market requires Cisco and our customers to be decisive, move with greater speed and drive more innovation than we’ve seen in our history,” the company said in a statement. Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) expects to reinvest the cost savings from its restructuring plan into “key priority areas such as security, IoT, collaboration, next generation data center and cloud.”

Tencent has overtaken Alibaba to become China’s most valuable tech company after unveiling a strong set of earnings. The firm posted a 47% climb in net income to a record 10.74B yuan, handily beating estimates on strong growth in mobile gaming and advertising. Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) shares rose 5% on the news to reach a market capitalization of $246B, compared with Alibaba’s (NYSE:BABA) market value of $242B.

Nestle reported its slowest first-half sales growth since 2009, with revenue increasing 3.5% on an organic basis, as the world’s largest food company struggled to raise prices. Net profit fell to 4.1B Swiss francs ($4.2B), missing estimates, due to a one-off non-cash adjustment to deferred taxes. While pricing has reached “historically low levels,” it should rebound “somewhat” in coming months, said Nestle (OTCPK:NSRGY) CEO Paul Bulcke, confirming a 4.2% organic growth target for 2016.

Just six months after it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, American Apparel (OTCPK:APPCQ) has hired investment bank Houlihan Lokey to explore a sale, Reuters reports. Teen clothing retail has been recently hit by the growing popularity of online shopping. At least eight teen apparel retailers filed for bankruptcy this year amid fierce competition and stagnating sales, including Aeropostale (NYSE:ARO), PacSun (NASDAQ:PSUN) and the Wet Seal (OTCPK:WTSLQ).

SolarCity is planning layoffs with its reduced guidance for megawatts installed, and will take restructuring charges of about $3M-$5M as part of its cost-cutting efforts. To go along with that, co-founders CFO Lyndon Rive and CTO Peter Rive are cutting their salaries to $1/year, from $275,000. SolarCity (NASDAQ:SCTY) recently accepted a $2.6B buyout offer from Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA).

Production at Volkswagen’s largest factory has been curtailed in some areas because of a supplies shortage caused by a parts maker refusing to keep to delivery commitments. VW (OTCPK:VLKAY) declined to specify the impact of disruptions on output and staff. The Wolfsburg plant employs about 60K people and churns out as many as 3,800 cars per day during peak times.

The European Commission has adopted a package of measures to make it more difficult to acquire guns in the EU, better track legally held firearms, strengthen cooperation between member states, and ensure that deactivated weapons are rendered inoperable. The proposals presented were foreseen in the European Security Agenda adopted in April 2015, but have been significantly accelerated in light of recent events.

Nokia has been trying to reinvent itself with its high-end, 360-degree OZO virtual reality camera, and it’s opening a major avenue for expansion by bringing the product to China. As part of the deal, Nokia (NYSE:NOK) has announced a new price point. The camera originally sold for $60K, with the company offering $15K discounts to individuals and early adopters. That discounted rate of $45K will now be the new normal.

Sixteen banks, including JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), are being sued by funds in the U.S. for allegedly manipulating a key Australian interest rate benchmark to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits. The class action claims they sought to fix the bank bill swap rate, the local equivalent of Libor, which is used to price floating-rate bonds and syndicated loans.

Target is spending $20M to add a private restroom to each of its stores by next year, following protests against its policy allowing transgender individuals to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. Most of Target’s (NYSE:TGT) 1,797 locations already have single-occupancy or unisex restrooms, but it will add the option to 277 stores by November and to about 20 remaining stores by March 2017.