Market ties unravel

Treasury yields tumble the most in a decade as gold soars, stocks sit at two-month highs and credit spreads tighten. It’s a mess out there, and divining a unified signal from markets has rarely been harder. The ties that normally bind asset classes have come loose. Treasuries and equities both gained last month. Treasury turbulence remains well above stock volatility after March saw the widest gap between the two since 2008. Gold neared an all-time high on rate-cut bets even as credit traders showed confidence in company balanced sheets. And investors keep pouring cash into money market funds. Indeed, about $350 billion flowed into them in the four weeks ending April 5—pushing assets to a record $5.25 trillion.

Meanwhile, stocks on Thursday eked out small gains as traders await Friday’s key US jobs report. Big tech led a rebound in equities, which garnered a respite after Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said he didn’t think tight credit conditions stemming from recent banking turmoil will cause a recession. Tomorrow though will bring fresh ammunition on rate-hike bets, in the form of payroll data. “There are two-sided risks to this jobs report for the first time in a long time, and to hold the recent rally, we will need a ‘just right’ number,” said Tom Essaye, a former Merrill Lynch trader who founded The Sevens Report newsletter. “Otherwise, we should prepare for more volatility.” Here’s your markets wrap. —David E. Rovella

Goldman Sachs says the approaching US earnings season is expected to be the gloomiest since the first year of the pandemic. Analyst consensus expectations are for S&P 500 earnings-per-share to fall 7% in the first quarter from a year earlier, marking the sharpest decline since the third quarter of 2020 and a low point in the profit cycle, the bank’s strategists wrote in an investor note.

US banks are pitted against each other as regulators move to strengthen oversight. In particular, regional banks, which are more likely to face new rules, are trying to convince regulators to increase oversight of larger ones—which may have to cover a larger portion of the costs of recent bailouts. Meanwhile, Congress—which loosened regulations in 2018—is less amenable than ever to lobbying pitches for weaker regulation.

Apple’s slowing growth and cash-rich balance sheet are again fueling speculation that, at $165 billion, the world’s most valuable company should make a big acquisition. Entertainment giant Walt Disney recently joined a long list of potential acquisition targets that over the years has grown to include Netflix, Tesla, Peloton and Sonos. But up until now, anyone betting Apple would buy them has usually been disappointed.

The greenback has replaced the Zimbabwean dollar as the most-used currency in the southern African nation for a second time. A government decision in June to officially reintroduce the greenback as legal tender to rein in surging inflation and stabilize the nation’s tumbling exchange rate has hastened the move away from local currency.

As the self-proclaimed Warren Buffett of the SPAC generation, Chamath Palihapitiya had been all in, Ed Hammond writes in Bloomberg Opinion. He was able to launch more blank-check companies than anyone else and talked of building 26, one for every letter of the alphabet. The 10 he managed, however, are now either liquidated, delayed or trading in the basement.

The Biden administration is on track to propose the toughest-ever US curbs on car pollution, while stopping short of an electric-vehicle mandate or ban on gas-powered models. The proposed standards on cars and light trucks are to govern tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide, smog-forming nitrogen oxide and other pollution from vehicles manufactured for model years 2027 through 2032.

Just days after a mass shooting at a Nashville elementary school claimed six lives, including three children, three Democrats took to the state legislature’s floor to protest the state’s loose gun laws. In retaliation, Republicans who control the chamber began the process of expelling them Thursday.

Bloomberg continues to track the global coronavirus pandemic. Click here for daily updates.

There’s a lot of damage being done to the planet in the name of food, but humans have long resisted the strategies that may help turn the tide. In this episode of the Bloomberg Originals series Getting Warmer With Kal Penn, Kal Penn heads to Indonesia to investigate solutions to the problem of palm oil. It’s used in everything from cookies and ice cream to shampoo and even fuel, but its cultivation is a major driver of deforestation. What’s standing in the way of scaling sustainable farming practices?

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