TopFeatured.com

WTI Extends Intraday Rebound After Bigger Than Expected Crude, Gasoline Draws Oil prices ended relatively unchanged today, despite some significant swings intraday as investors worried that global demand could be dented by surging COVID-19 cases, even though supplies are tightening and vaccination rates rising. “The API inventory data may jolt crude prices back into life,”…

Microsoft Shares Slide Despite Top- & Bottom-Line Beat Microsoft shares are sliding after hours despite a top- and bottom-line beat… *MICROSOFT 4Q REV. $46.15B, EST. $44.26B (up 21%) *MICROSOFT 4Q EPS $2.17, EST. $1.92 (up 49%) Microsoft’s fiscal year total revenues were $168.1 billion, up 18% with diluted EPS up 40%. “We are innovating across…

CDC Imposes New Mask Mandate As Biden Weighs Requiring Federal Workers To Wear Them Update (1600ET): President Biden delivered an address Tuesday to the US intelligence community, but afterwards he was peppered with questions about the national COVID effort by reporters. While he mocked and ridiculed everyone who hasn’t gotten the vaccine yet, he told…

Cascade Of Consequences Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog, “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” – George Orwell 1984 “People will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s…

Tesla Jumps After Beating On Top And Bottom Line Heading into Tesla’s Q2 earnings, in our preview earlier we noted that sentiment is optimstic and the outlook for Q2 is pretty good because despite grappling with the chip shortage, a customer backlash in China, and the same shipping bottlenecks plaguing all global automakers right now,…

Bitcoin Tumbles After Amazon Denies It Will Accept Crypto This Year Update (1600ET): An Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg in an emailed statement that the City A.M. report, citing an insider, claiming it will accept bitcoin in 2022 (and is investigating issuing its own coin) are false. *AMAZON DENIES CITY A.M. REPORT IT WILL ACCEPT BITCOIN…

America Has Lost The Trade War With China, And The Real Pain Has Yet To Begin Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, Corporate America sacrificed national interests in service of greed, and so did the U.S. government. As we all know, the source of Corporate America’s unprecedented explosion in profits in the 21st…

Previewing The Next Crisis: Spending Tumbles Among Households Cut Off From Unemployment Benefits First, the good news. As we first observed one month ago and as we confirmed on Thursday, the debate – inasmuch as one ever existed – is now over: jobless claims, both initial (as Morgan Stanley shows)… … and continuing (as shown…

Cybersecurity Experts Encourage System Of Reporting Workers To Employers For “Online Abuse” Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News, A new initiative launched by cybersecurity experts encourages companies to create a system that makes it easier for people to be reported to their employers for “online abuse.” The new program is called Respect in…

California Is Experiencing A Crime “Tsunami”, DA Says Authored by Vanessa Serna via The Epoch Times, California is experiencing a wave of crime despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claims of a decrease during the past three decades, officials say. “You’ve got violent crime off the charts,” Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert told The Epoch Times. “You’ve got this tsunami…

Colorado Monitoring Literal Plague Activity In At Least 6 Counties After Child Dies State health authorities in Colorado are investigating a potential outbreak of the literal plague across a handful of counties, after it’s believed a 10-year old girl died of the rapidly-acting disease. “The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment noted lab-confirmed reports of…

Progressive Democrats Blast ‘Reckless’ Biden Plan To Allow Evictions To Resume Authored by Julia Conley via CommonDreams.org,  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among several critics on Friday who warned that the Biden administration’s plan to allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium to expire on July 31 would have devastating consequences for millions of…

Life And Death In The Age Of Fear Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com, The general mood presently being fortified by the chattering classes is one of perpetual fear.  The basic stratagem includes continuously implanting the populace with extreme panic.  For a fearful populace is a subservient populace. The current hobgoblin is the delta variant…

Stocks Surge After Monday Mayhem; Bonds, Bullion, Bitcoin, & Black Gold Flat After an ugly Delta-driven growth scare plunge at the open on Monday, “Get Out & Party” stocks soared this week. The Nasdaq outperformed and Dow lagged on the week as Small Caps gave back their mid-week panic-buying (swinging from down over 2.5% to…

How Much Of A Risk Is The Coming Debt Limit With Bloomberg headlines hitting moments ago and reminding us that it’s time for the periodic debt ceiling drama, as Janet Yellen said in a letter to Congress leadership that the Treasury will start special measures due to debt limit, and warning that the now familiar…

Have We Reached “Peak Self-Glorifying Billionaire”? Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, Perhaps we should update Marie Antoinette’s famous quip of cluelessness to: “Let them eat space tourism.” As billionaires squander immense resources on self-glorifying space flights, the corporate media is nothing short of worshipful. Millions of average citizens, on the other hand, wish…

Albert Edwards Notices “Something Shocking” In The “Transitory vs Persistent Inflation” Debate Earlier this week, following the news from NBER that the covid recession lasted all of two months making it the shortest recession in history, we showed that opinions on wall street diverged as to whether the economy was in early cycle (as JPMorgan…

Intel Slides As Earnings Underwhelm Despite Raising Guidance Intel is currently undergoing a dramatic transformation, and as such its just completed quarter is hardly indicative of what to expect as investors will instead be more focused to what the company projects for the future. That said, moments ago INTC reported revenue and earnings which both…

Entering The Worst Seasonal Period Of The Year, And 10 Other Reasons Why Goldman Braces For An August Correction In a stark reversal to its bullish sentiment at the start of the month, when the bank first noted – correctly – that the S&P was entering its best 2-week seasonal period of the year which…

Musk Sparks Major Crypto Spike, Stock Short-Squeeze Continues The Dow and S&P joined Nasdaq and Small Caps in the green for the week after today’s escalation of the rip off the Monday’s lows… Sparked by another major short squeeze (bigger than the PPT inspired bounce in mid-June)… Source: Bloomberg But we do note that after…

Senate Republicans Vote To Block Opening Debate On $1.2 Trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal Update (1558ET): Senate Republicans have voted to block opening debate on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal favored by the Biden administration, according to Reuters. The Republicans said the deal is not ready for floor action because ‘it’s not finished.’ The 49-51…

WTI Tumbles After Surprise Crude Build Oil prices rebounded modestly today but were far from able to reverse yesterday’s bloodbathery as delta variant (demand) scares combined with OPEC+’s production deal (supply) dominated any equity-exuberance spillover affect with WTI unable to get back above $68. “It is hard to see prices staging a comeback unless virus…