Market

NEW YORK: The Federal Reserve's US$3 trillion bid to stave off an economic crisis in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak is fuelling excesses across US capital markets. The US central bank has pledged unlimited financial asset purchases to sustain market liquidity, increasing its balance sheet from US$4.2 trillion in February to US$7 trillion today. While the vast majority of these purchases have been limited to US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, the Fed's pledge to bolster the corporate bond market has been enough to spur a frenzy among investors for bonds and stocks. "COVID-19 is now inversely related to the markets. The worse that COVID-19 gets, the better the markets do because the Fed will bring in stimulus. That is what has been driving markets," said Andrew Brenne...

Wells Fargo chief financial officer John Shrewsberry said on "Closing Bell" that the asset cap imposed on the bank by the Federal Reserve is potentially costing the firm billions in revenue and earnings. He said working to satisfy the central bank enough to have the cap lifted is "the most important work that we're doing." "We've had to do a few things that have definitely cost us interest income at the margins to be able to navigate through that, and we'll continue to as long as the cap is in place," Shrewsberry said. "It's hard to put a number on it, but if our balance sheet as 10% bigger — call it $2.2 trillion versus of just under $2 trillion — there's a few billion dollars worth of revenue, most of which probably falls to the bottom line." Shrewsberry also said that the credit lines...

NYSE President Stacey Cunningham said Friday that individual investors have participated in a big way during the market's record rally that's seen the S&P 500 jump 48% from its March 23 low. "The retail investor has been a big part of the market over the past several months for a variety of reasons," Cunningham said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." She pointed to several reasons for the spike, including zero-commission trading platforms, as well as consumers having more time on their hands amid stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic. "They're engaging in this tremendous rebound from the market," she said. Her comments come after e-brokers TD Ameritrade and Interactive Brokers reported record retail trading volumes in the second quarter. Some, including Social Capital's Chamath Palih...

(This story is for CNBC Pro subscribers only.) Wall Street strategist James Paulsen said Thursday that the recent economic reports are pointing to a recovery that could send stocks on an extended climb. "They're all telling a similar story. You can argue about whether they're stronger or weaker or whether they're overstated or not, but the direction of the economy is certainly north, and I think that's all it has to do to continue to provide confidence not only to investors but also to companies and to consumers," Paulsen, the chief investment strategist for the Leuthold Group, said on "Squawk Box."

SHANGHAI: Low standards of hygiene in China's wholesale food markets and vulnerabilities in its food supply chain need to be urgently addressed after a new COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing, a leading body of the ruling Communist Party said. The resurgence of COVID-19 in the country's capital over the past week, infecting more than 100 people and raising fears of wider contagion, has been linked to the city's massive Xinfadi food centre. The Communist Party's top disciplinary body said the outbreak underlined the urgent need to improve sanitation standards and minimise health risks at markets. "The epidemic is a mirror that not only reflects the dirty and messy aspects of wholesale markets but also their low-level management conditions," the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (...

ZURICH: Business conditions are improving after a tough start to the year, Credit Suisse Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein said in a presentation released on Wednesday (Jun 10). "Those early indications that we have seen now in the last couple of weeks have been actually quite promising and going in the right direction. We clearly had a lot of stress in the system in the second half of March but things really calmed down in April and they continue to be quite robust in May and June," he said in an audiocast for a Goldman Sachs conference. "So far, so good. Clearly we expect very bad economic data for Europe and the US for Q2 but overall actually if I speak to my colleagues on the corporate banking side in Switzerland, to my colleagues in investment banking, we actually see high engage...