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Natural-Gas Prices Plunge as Unseasonably Warm Weather Is Forecast

A sudden thaw across the Northern Hemisphere has melted down natural-gas prices, upending dire forecasts of energy shortages and sinking Vladimir Putin’s plan to squeeze Europe this winter.

It isn’t expected to remain as balmy as it was on Wednesday, when temperatures hit 66-degrees Fahrenheit in New York, but the forecasts that energy traders monitor call for abnormally warm weather extending into February, sapping demand for the heating fuel.

U.S. natural-gas futures for February delivery ended Wednesday at $4.172 per million British thermal units. That is down 57% from the summer highs notwithstanding a 4.6% gain on Wednesday that snapped a four-session losing streak, including an 11% drop on Tuesday. 

The price is now about the same as it was a year ago, when temperatures were also warmer than normal and before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine jolted energy markets.

The plunge is a bad omen for drillers, whose shares were among the stock market’s few winners last year. Cheaper gas is good news for households and manufacturers whose budgets have been busted and profit margins pinched by high fuel prices. Though shocks of cold and problems with pipelines could still push up regional prices, less expensive natural gas should help to cool inflation in the months ahead. 

There are also major geopolitical implications. Mild weather is driving gas prices lower in Europe, too, spelling relief for the region that coming into the winter faced the possibility of rolling blackouts and factory shutdowns. The war threw energy markets into chaos, but benchmark European natural-gas prices are now less than half of what they were a month ago and lower than any point since the February invasion. 

The drop is a welcome surprise for European governments that committed hundreds of billions of dollars to shield consumers and companies from high energy prices. Moscow cut supplies of gas to Europe last year in what European officials described as an attempt to undermine military and financial support for Kyiv.

So far, Russia’s strategy isn’t working. Warm weather is limiting demand, as is a European Union-led effort to curb consumption. But analysts say prices in Europe could shoot up again when the continent tries to refill stores for the 2023-24 winter without much Russian gas.

PHOTOS: How a 102-Year-Old Maritime Law Affects Today’s Home-Heating Prices

Besides being burned to heat roughly half of American homes, natural gas is used for cooking, along with making electricity, plastic, fertilizer, steel and glass. Last year’s high prices were a big driver of the steepest inflation in four decades.

When prices peaked in August, the question was whether there would be enough gas to get through the winter, given record consumption by domestic power producers with few alternatives, as well as demand in Europe, where the race is on to replace Russian gas.

Now the question in the market is how low prices will go.  

They were already falling when the late-December storm brought snow to northern cities and stranded travelers. Frigid temperatures prompted a big draw from U.S. natural-gas stockpiles and froze wells in North Dakota and Oklahoma. At its peak, the storm took nearly 21% of U.S. gas supply offline, according to East Daley Analytics, a gas consulting firm.  

The demand surge and the supply disruptions were fleeting and failed to counteract forecasts for balmy January weather. Prices were also pushed lower by another delay in the restart of a Texas export facility. It has been offline since a June fire left a lot of gas in the domestic market that would have otherwise been shipped overseas. 

Temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit are forecast this week around the Great Lakes and along the Ohio Valley, while highs in the Southeast might reach into the 80s.

As measured in heating-degree days, a population-weighted measure of temperatures below 65 degrees Fahrenheit, this week will be twice as warm relative to normal as the last week of December was cold, said Eli Rubin, senior energy analyst at the gas-trading firm EBW AnalyticsGroup.

The firm estimates that warmer weather over the first half of January will reduce gas demand by about 100 billion cubic feet over that stretch. That is about the volume of gas that the U.S. produces each day. The Energy Information Administration estimates that daily American output hit a record in 2022.

Analysts anticipate similarly strong production in 2023. They expect the year to pass without new LNG export capacity coming online for the first time since 2016, when the U.S. began to ship liquefied natural gas abroad from the Lower 48 States. 

“The market is moving from a mind-set of winter scarcity to looking ahead to exiting winter with more in storage, adding production and not adding any new LNG exports,” Mr. Rubin said. “If anything, the market looks oversupplied.” 

Analysts have been reducing their gas-price assumptions as well as their outlooks for producers as the first weeks of winter pass without sustained periods of cold weather. 

Gabriele Sorbara, an analyst at Siebert Williams Shank, told clients this week that he expected natural gas to average $4.25 in 2023, down from a forecast of $5.50 before the warm spell. As a result, he downgraded shares of

EQT Corp.

, the biggest U.S. producer and one of the top-performing stocks in the S&P 500 last year, from buy to hold. 

“EQT will be dead money until estimates recalibrate and there is visibility of a rebound in natural-gas prices,” he wrote in a note to clients.  

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What price changes are you seeing in your natural-gas bill this winter? Join the conversation below.

Hedge funds and other speculators have, on balance, been bearish on natural-gas prices since the summer, maintaining more wagers on falling prices than on gains, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission data. Analysts said that is probably the safe bet. 

“We continue to caution against any attempts to time a price bottom,” the trading firm Ritterbusch & Associates told clients this week. 

—Joe Wallace contributed to this article.

Write to Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com

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Investors Brace for More Market Tumult as Interest Rates Keep Rising

The stock market just finished a bruising year. Many market players don’t expect things to get better any time soon.  

Analysts at some of the biggest U.S. banks predict the stock market will retest its 2022 lows in the first half of the new year before beginning to rebound. Many investors say the ramifications of the Federal Reserve’s higher rates are just beginning to ripple through markets.

The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to the highest levels since 2007, stoking mammoth swings across global markets and a steep selloff in assets from stocks and bonds to cryptocurrencies. The tumult that erased more than $12 trillion in value from the U.S. stock market—the largest such drawdown since at least 2001—is expected to continue as rates keep rising.

The S&P 500 ended the year down 19% after the conditions evaporated that had paved the way for years of a nearly uninterrupted stock-market rally and a run in some of the most speculative bets. Analysts at Goldman Sachs expect the S&P 500 to end 2023 at 4000, about a 4% rise from where it ended 2022. 

The volatility has been especially punishing for the market’s behemoths. Five big technology stocks accounted for about a quarter of the U.S. stock market’s total declines last year, a bruising selloff reminiscent of the dot-com bust two decades ago. 

Cryptocurrencies tumbled, splashy initial public offerings all but came to a halt and blank-check companies imploded to end the year, a stunning reversal of the mania that swept markets in the previous two years. 

“We are in a world where interest rates exist again,” said

Ben Inker,

co-head of asset allocation at Boston money manager GMO, which oversees $55 billion in assets. 

One of the biggest flip-flops occurred under the market’s surface. Investors abandoned the flashy tech and growth stocks that had propelled that market’s gains over the previous decade. 

And value stocks—traditionally defined as those that trade at a low multiple of their book value, or net worth—staged a revival after years of lackluster returns. 

The Russell 3000 Value index outperformed the Russell 3000 Growth index by almost 20 percentage points, its largest margin in Dow Jones Market Data records going back to 2001. 

Now, Mr. Inker and other investors—hunting for opportunities after an abysmal year for both stocks and bonds—say it is just the beginning of a big stock-market rotation. 

Money managers say they are positioning for an environment that bears little resemblance to the one to which many grew accustomed after the last financial crisis. The era of ultralow bond yields, mild inflation and accommodative Fed policy has ended, they say, likely recalibrating the market’s winners and losers for years to come.  

“A number of investors were trying to justify nosebleed valuation levels,” said

John Linehan,

a portfolio manager at

T. Rowe Price.

Now, “leadership going forward is going to be more diverse.” 

The Fed is set to keep raising interest rates and has indicated that it plans to keep them elevated through the end of 2023. Many economists forecast a recession ahead, while Wall Street remains fixated on whether inflation will recede after repeatedly underestimating its staying power.

Mr. Linehan said he expects the run in value stocks to continue and sees opportunities in shares of financial companies, thanks to higher interest rates. Others say energy stocks’ stellar run isn’t over just yet. Energy stocks within the S&P 500 gained 59% last year, their best stretch in history.

Some investors are positioning for bond yields to keep rising, potentially dealing a bigger blow to tech shares. Those stocks are especially vulnerable to higher rates because in many cases they are expected to earn outsize profits years down the road, a vulnerability in a world that values safe returns now. 

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note ended 2022 at 3.826%, the biggest one-year increase in yields since at least 1977, while bond prices tumbled. From risky corporate bonds to safer municipal debt, yields rose to some of their highest levels of the past decade, giving investors more choices for parking their cash. 

“I don’t think this next decade is going to be led by technology,” said

Mark Luschini,

chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott. “This one-size-fits-all notion that you just buy a broad technology index or the Nasdaq-100 has changed.”

The Fed has indicated that it plans to keep rates elevated through the end of 2023.



Photo:

Ting Shen/Bloomberg News

The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index lost 33% in 2022, underperforming the broader S&P 500 by the widest margin since 2002. 

Investors yanked about $18 billion from mutual and exchange-traded funds tracking tech through November, on track for the biggest annual outflows on record in Morningstar Direct data going back to 1993. Funds tracking growth stocks recorded $94 billion in outflows, the most since 2016.

Meanwhile, investors have taken to bargain-hunting in the stock market, piling into value funds. Such funds recorded more than $30 billion of inflows, drawing money for the second consecutive year.

“Profitability and free cash flow are going to be very important” in the coming year, said Tiffany Wade, senior portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. 

Ms. Wade said she expects the Fed to be more aggressive than many investors currently forecast, leading to another rocky year. If the Fed puts a pause on raising interest rates over the next year, she thinks growth stocks might see a bounce.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What are you expecting in the markets in 2023? Join the conversation below.

Other investors are heeding lessons from the years following the bursting of the tech bubble, when value stocks outperformed their growth counterparts.

Even after last year’s bruising declines, the technology sector trades at a wide premium to the S&P 500. Stocks in the energy, financial, materials and telecommunications sectors still appear cheap compared with the broader benchmark, according to Bespoke Investment Group data going back to 2010. 

Plus, big technology companies face stiffer competition and potentially tougher regulation, a setup that may disappoint investors who have developed lofty expectations for the group. 

Their run of impressive sales growth will likely sputter as well, Goldman Sachs analysts said in a recent note. Aggregate sales growth for megacap technology stocks is forecast to have risen 8% in 2022, below the 13% growth for the broader index. 

“I just don’t think the prior regime’s winners are going to be tomorrow’s winners,” said Eddie Perkin, chief investment officer of Eaton Vance Equity. “They’re still too expensive.”

Write to Gunjan Banerji at gunjan.banerji@wsj.com

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Bankrupt FTX Fires Three of Sam Bankman-Fried’s Top Deputies

FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange launched by

Sam Bankman-Fried,

said it fired three of the founder’s top deputies.

Gary Wang, an FTX co-founder and its chief technology officer; FTX engineering director Nishad Singh; and Caroline Ellison, who ran Mr. Bankman-Fried’s trading arm, Alameda Research, were terminated from those roles after FTX tapped

John J. Ray

to oversee the companies’ bankruptcy, an FTX spokeswoman said late Friday.

Mr. Bankman-Fried resigned on Nov. 11, when FTX filed for bankruptcy. He was replaced by Mr. Ray, a veteran restructuring executive who once oversaw the liquidation of Enron Corp. 

FTX and Alameda sought protection from creditors after executives at both businesses revealed that FTX had lent billions of dollars worth of customer assets to Alameda to plug a funding gap, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. In a Thursday court filing, Mr. Ray highlighted numerous failings, including “the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals.” 

On a Nov. 9 video call with Alameda employees, Ms. Ellison said that she, along with Messrs. Bankman-Fried, Wang and Singh, were aware of the decision to send customer money to the trading firm, the Journal previously reported. 

The four executives also comprised the board of what they called the Future Fund, a philanthropic arm charged with making grants to nonprofits and investments in “socially-impactful companies.”

Messrs. Bankman-Fried, Wang and Singh all owned stakes in at least some of the FTX companies, according to Mr. Ray’s court filing.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried ultimately agreed to resign, resulting in my appointment as the debtors’ CEO,” Mr. Ray wrote in the filing. “I was delegated all corporate powers and authority under applicable law, including the power to appoint independent directors and commence these Chapter 11 cases on an emergency basis.” 

Write to Justin Baer at justin.baer@wsj.com and Hannah Miao at hannah.miao@wsj.com

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Alameda, FTX Executives Are Said to Have Known FTX Was Using Customer Funds

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried appeared at a Senate committee hearing earlier this year on cryptocurrencies.



Photo:

Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg News

Alameda Research’s chief executive and senior FTX officials knew that FTX had lent its customers’ money to Alameda to help it meet its liabilities, according to people familiar with the matter.

Alameda’s troubles helped lead to the bankruptcy of FTX, the crypto exchange founded by

Sam Bankman-Fried.

Alameda is a trading firm also founded and owned by Mr. Bankman-Fried.

In a video meeting with Alameda employees late Wednesday Hong Kong time, Alameda CEO

Caroline Ellison

said that she, Mr. Bankman-Fried and two other FTX executives,

Nishad Singh

and

Gary Wang,

were aware of the decision to send customer funds to Alameda, according to people familiar with the video. Mr. Singh was FTX’s director of engineering and a former Facebook employee. Mr. Wang, who previously worked at Google, was the chief technology officer of FTX and co-founded the exchange with Mr. Bankman-Fried.

Alameda faced a barrage of demands from lenders after crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital collapsed in June, creating losses for crypto brokers such as

Voyager Digital Ltd.

, the people said.

Ms. Ellison said on the call that FTX used customer money to help Alameda meet its liabilities, the people said.

On Friday, FTX, Alameda, FTX US and other FTX affiliates filed for bankruptcy protection.

Bankruptcy means that it could be a long time before individual investors and others owed their funds are able to potentially recover any of them, if ever.

Ms. Ellison didn’t return a phone message and an email seeking comment. Messrs. Singh and Wang didn’t respond to multiple messages seeking comment. Ryne Miller, FTX US’s chief legal officer, declined to comment.

Cryptocurrency platform FTX filed for chapter 11 on Friday and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried resigned. WSJ’s Vicky Ge Huang explains what happened to the company and what this could mean for investors. Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP

Write to Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com, Elaine Yu at elaine.yu@wsj.com and Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com

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FTX Is Investigating a Potential Hack Amid Bankruptcy Filing

FTX said it is investigating abnormalities with wallet movements.



Photo:

DADO RUVIC/REUTERS

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX is probing a potential hack and asked customers to stay off the FTX website, the company said. More than $400 million worth of crypto funds appears to be missing, according to crypto analytics firm Elliptic Enterprises Ltd. 

The potential hack occurred Friday after FTX filed for bankruptcy. Ryne Miller, FTX US’s general counsel, said in a Saturday tweet that FTX and FTX US had started moving all digital assets to cold storage—crypto wallets that aren’t connected to the internet—after the bankruptcy filing. 

FTX is “investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to the consolidation of FTX balances across exchanges,” Mr. Miller said on Twitter. He called the movements unauthorized transactions and said the facts are still unclear. FTX will “share more info as soon as we have it,” he said.

A post in the exchange’s official Telegram channel called the fund flows a hack.

Approximately $473 million in crypto assets appeared to be taken from FTX without permission, according to

Tom Robinson,

co-founder of  Elliptic. The tokens were quickly converted to ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, on so-called decentralized exchanges. 

Such platforms process transactions automatically, making them popular among hackers to prevent funds from being seized, he said.

—Caitlin Ostroff contributed to this article.

Write to Elaine Yu at elaine.yu@wsj.com and Vicky Ge Huang at vicky.huang@wsj.com

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FTX Files for Bankruptcy, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried Resigns

Beleaguered cryptocurrency platform FTX filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, and Chief Executive

Sam Bankman-Fried

resigned.

FTX and a bevy of affiliates said they had more than 100,000 creditors and tens of billions of dollars in assets and liabilities. It is the largest crypto-related bankruptcy ever, and a demise remarkable for its swiftness as well as its size.

Just a week ago, FTX was an industry titan, and Mr. Bankman-Fried its smiling public face. In January, FTX raised money from Silicon Valley’s most sophisticated investors, at a valuation of $32 billion. A few weeks ago, Mr. Bankman-Fried was publicly musing about raising more, to get even bigger.

That is all gone. The bankruptcy will likely wipe out billions of equity value, leaving investors including Sequoia Capital and Thoma Bravo with stiff losses. It will maroon the crypto and cash deposits belonging to a legion of customers. FTX faces investigations or asset freezes from regulators and prosecutors around the world.

It has also rattled the crypto world. Crypto lender BlockFi, which had obtained a financial lifeline from FTX in July—one of several companies FTX had rescued earlier in the year—paused withdrawals Thursday evening.

Among the affiliates filing for bankruptcy protection is FTX US, a smaller unit that operated in the U.S. Most of FTX’s business was offshore. FTX and its affiliates filed in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, where the U.S. unit is registered.

Thursday morning, Mr. Bankman-Fried said the troubles at FTX were confined to its international operations. He tweeted that FTX US “was not financially impacted” and that “every user could fully withdraw.” Later that day, FTX US said it might stop trading. On Friday, FTX US filed for bankruptcy along with the rest of FTX.

Bitcoin slipped after the announcement to trade near $16,500.

At issue in the bankruptcy proceedings and the investigations is to determine what happened to the billions that FTX raised, that its customers deposited, and that it earned from operating what appeared—for a time—to be a successful cryptocurrency exchange.

FTX in 2021 also paid $250 million—a quarter of its revenue that year—to a “related party” for software royalties, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Bankman-Fried wrote on Twitter roughly an hour after the bankruptcy announcement that he was “shocked to see things unravel the way they did earlier this week.”

FTX’s troubles began last weekend, after rival exchange Binance said it would sell its holdings of an FTX equity-like token—spooked by a CoinDesk report showed the depth of the relationship between FTX and Alameda.

John J. Ray

III has been named the new CEO of FTX Group, the company said. The bankruptcy filing includes FTX Trading Ltd., the company presiding over the global trading website FTX.com, and Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Mr. Bankman-Fried, in addition to FTX US.

Mr. Ray was chairman of Enron Corp.’s successor company, Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., and oversaw the energy-trading company’s liquidation after it filed for bankruptcy in late 2001. The recovery rate for Enron creditors as of 2008 was about 52 cents on the dollar, the company said at the time. Mr. Ray’s successes included securing a $1.7 billion settlement with

Citigroup

in 2008. He had accused the bank of helping Enron mislead investors.

Other noteworthy bankruptcy cases in which Mr. Ray served in similar roles include Nortel Networks Inc., Fruit of the Loom and

Overseas Shipholding Group Inc.

In the petition, Mr. Bankman-Fried said that

Stephen Neal

would be appointed as the chairman of the board of FTX Group if he is willing to serve. He also said that he is being advised by the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

FTX is the latest in a string of crypto companies seeking bankruptcy protection this year.



Photo:

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Bankruptcy means that it could be a long time before retail traders and others owed their funds are able to potentially recover any of them, if ever. Creditors to Mt. Gox, the Japanese crypto exchange that failed following a 2014 hack, are still waiting for their funds almost a decade later.

The collapse in digital-currency prices earlier this year triggered a rash of crypto-related bankruptcy filings, including Celsius Network LLC,

Voyager Digital Ltd.

and Three Arrows Capital.

Crypto investors may be confronted with an uphill battle to get their crypto deposits back in bankruptcy proceedings because their investments are likely to be treated as unsecured claims without collateral rights.

FTX’s bankruptcy also calls into question the fate of Voyager Digital. In September, the firm won the auction to buy the bankrupt lender’s assets with a purchase price of about $50 million, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Voyager said Friday that the firm has reopened the bidding process for the company and is in active discussions with potential buyers. Voyager said it didn’t transfer any assets to FTX US, which previously submitted a $5 million good-faith deposit as part of the auction process. The funds are held in escrow, according to Voyager.

Voyager also recalled loans from Alameda Research for 6,500 bitcoin and 50,000 ether. The company currently has no loans outstanding with any borrower, it said. However, Voyager had about $3 million worth of cryptocurrencies stuck on FTX at the time of its bankruptcy filing.

contributed to this article.

Write to Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com and Alexander Gladstone at alexander.gladstone@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Sam Bankman-Fried said he is being advised by the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said FTX was being advised by the law firm. (Corrected on Nov. 11)

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Dow Surges 900 Points in Volatile Trading

U.S. stocks turned sharply higher Thursday, a head-spinning reversal after major indexes spent much of the morning deep in negative territory.

Stocks tumbled in early trading after new data showed that inflation remains persistently high, strengthening expectations for continued large interest-rate increases from the Federal Reserve. At their lows, the Nasdaq Composite had fallen more than 3%, the S&P 500 had dropped more than 2%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had declined nearly 2%, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The morning’s declines followed what had been a dismal stretch for stocks. The S&P 500 on Wednesday fell for the sixth day in a row, hitting its lowest closing level since November 2020.

Traders appeared to decide that the selling had gone too far. Stocks pared their losses throughout the morning, then turned green shortly after 11 a.m. The S&P 500 recently was up 2.8% while the Dow industrials were up about 3%, or about 900 points. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 2.3%.

“What the market is experiencing is the influences of a lot of short-term traders,” said Tom Galvin, chief investment officer at wealth management firm City National Rochdale. While some traders dumped stocks after the inflation data, “once they were done selling, I think markets started to stabilize.”

The turn higher came as a relief after another punishing span in the markets.

The Nasdaq Composite, like the S&P 500, closed lower on Wednesday for a sixth consecutive trading day. On Tuesday those losses tipped the tech-heavy equities gauge into a bear market—Wall Street parlance for a decline of 20% or more from a recent peak—for the second time this year.

Still, such heart-stopping moves—sharp gains as well as steep drops—can be a sign of trouble. Markets were rocked by similar gyrations as they tumbled early in the pandemic.

Investors have been fixated on any signals about the path of inflation and the trajectory of the Federal Reserve’s campaign to tame the price increases by raising interest rates. Rising rates put pressure on the valuations that investors are willing to pay for stocks, while also raising concerns about companies’ future earnings.

Earlier Thursday, new data from the Labor Department showed that a reading of U.S. consumer inflation excluding volatile energy and food prices accelerated to a new four-decade high. The so-called core measure of the consumer-price index gained 6.6% in September from a year earlier, the biggest increase since August 1982.

The overall consumer-price index, meanwhile, increased 8.2% in September from the same month a year ago, down from 8.3% in August and 9.1% in June.

That move lower could be welcome news for investors looking to justify buying back into a stock market that is trading much more cheaply than in the recent past.

“The fact that you’re seeing some peaking out in inflation to where maybe we just don’t have to fight the Fed so much, people will feel comfortable buying in at these levels,” said Dan Genter, chief executive and chief investment officer at Genter Capital Management.

Investors have debated whether signs of stress creeping into some markets might cause the Fed to slow its pace of interest-rate increases. Volatility in U.K. government-bond markets, following government plans for large, debt-funded tax cuts, has sparked margin calls for pension funds and rippled into U.S. junk-debt markets. 

Mortgage rates hit a 20-year high on Thursday, a development that is likely to add to the pressure on the cooling housing market, potentially accelerating the shakeout of this cyclical industry.

Federal Reserve officials expressed concern at their meeting last month over the persistence of high inflation. They revised higher their expectations for rate increases, though some signaled caution about overdoing them amid risks of economic and financial volatility. The International Monetary Fund has warned that global central banks’ moves to quickly raise interest rates have fueled increased risks to the financial system.

A series of interest-rate rises have rippled through the U.S. economy, and more are projected to be on the way. WSJ breaks down the numbers hitting Americans’ wallets this year and beyond. Photo: Elise Amendola/Associated Press

“Market volatility and financial stability is something we’re following closely,” said

Carsten Brzeski,

ING Groep’s

global head of macro research, adding that the fast rise in interest rates “is clearly a potential risk.” 

Additional data from the Labor Department showed that 228,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits in the week ended Oct. 8, up from 219,000 the week prior.

In bond markets, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note rose to 3.939% from 3.901% Wednesday, reversing earlier losses ahead of the inflation data. Yields and prices move inversely. 

In energy markets, Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose 2.3% to $94.57 a barrel. 

Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.8%.

Traders worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange last week.



Photo:

BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS

In Asia, major indexes closed with losses. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.9% and South Korea’s Kospi declined 1.8%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 and China’s Shanghai Composite edged down 0.6% and 0.3%, respectively.

Write to Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com and Karen Langley at karen.langley@wsj.com

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Ernst & Young Leaders Expected to Approve Plan to Split Accounting Company

Ernst & Young’s leaders are expected this week to give the green light to splitting its auditing and consulting businesses, paving the way for the biggest shake-up in the accounting profession in more than 20 years, according to people familiar with the matter.

The accounting giant’s global executive committee, which oversees the firm’s 312,000-person worldwide network, met on Labor Day to put the finishing touches to the plan for a worldwide breakup, the people familiar with the matter said. The committee is expected to approve the plan later this week, which will trigger votes on the deal by EY’s roughly 13,000 partners, who stand to make windfalls averaging more than a million dollars each.

The split, penciled in for late next year, would separate EY’s accountants who check the books of companies such as

Amazon Inc.

from its faster-growing consulting business of advising on technology, deals and other issues.

EY’s move could radically reshape the accounting landscape if it goes to plan, industry watchers said.

An EY spokeswoman said that discussions were continuing and that “at this time, no decision has been made on moving to the next phase.”

EY is one of the Big Four firms that dominate auditing in major financial markets and whose multibillion-dollar consulting arms compete with the likes of Accenture PLC and International Business Machines Corp.

“There’s a good chance it will cause other big firms to follow suit,” said Martin White, a senior analyst at Source Global Research, a consulting-industry research company. “Who doesn’t want a massive payday if you think it’s there and it’s not going to cause [your business] longer-term harm?”

EY’s rivals say they intend to keep auditing and consulting under one roof. Deloitte held exploratory talks with bankers after news of the EY plan emerged, The Wall Street Journal previously reported, but says it isn’t planning a split. A spokesman said Deloitte “will not separate and split our businesses and we will not monetize our collective life’s work.” KPMG said in a statement that its current model brings a “range of benefits,” and PricewaterhouseCoopers said it is “fully committed” to its multidisciplinary strategy.

EY’s planned split would divide its $45 billion-revenue global network roughly 60:40 between the consulting business and the audit-focused partnership, which would retain the EY brand, according to a May version of the proposal reviewed by the Journal. The new consulting company was forecast to raise some $10 billion by selling a 15% stake to the public at the time of the split, in addition to borrowing $17 billion to help fund partner payouts.

EY’s partners have a strong financial inducement to back the deal. The audit partners are in line for cash payouts, which were in June expected to average two to four times annual compensation. Those multiples may have declined as markets have fallen in recent weeks. Still, the windfalls are expected to be worth well over a million dollars for the typical U.S. and U.K. partners, who earn on average $850,000 to $900,000 a year, according to people familiar with the matter.

On the consulting side, partners are promised shares in the new company, which were in June expected to be worth typically seven to nine times their annual compensation, paid out over five years.

Carmine Di Sibio,

EY’s global chairman and chief executive who has spearheaded the proposed split, is in line for a windfall of tens of millions of dollars, the people familiar with the matter said.

EY’s leaders are expected to say the split will be good for the firm’s finances, as well as their own, according to the people familiar with the matter. They hope the breakup will free the consultants to win billions of dollars of new business, unfettered by independence rules that restrict the work accounting firms can do for audit clients, the people said.

Carmine Di Sibio, EY’s global chairman and chief executive, has spearheaded the proposed split.



Photo:

Hollie Adams/Bloomberg News

EY checks the books of a raft of Silicon Valley giants, including Amazon,

Salesforce Inc.,

Workday Inc.

and Google parent

Alphabet Inc.

That limits its ability to compete in the fast-growing area of consultants teaming up with tech giants to sell outsourced services to companies.

Once the carefully choreographed “go” decision has been announced this week, the firms that make up EY’s roughly 140-country global network are expected to vote on the plans this fall and early next year, according to the people familiar with the matter. The decision, originally scheduled for June, was delayed to make sure the leaders of the U.S. and other big member firms were happy with the proposal, the people familiar with the matter said. The sticking points included the treatment of around $10 billion of promised payments to retired partners, the Journal previously reported.

The decision is also expected to signal the start of negotiations with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators worldwide who will need to sign off on the deal.

The watchdogs are expected to be pleased by the reduction of potential conflicts of interest, a longstanding problem in the industry. They will want to be assured that EY’s audit-focused firm will be sufficiently resilient to withstand potential blockbuster litigation damages, despite its sharply reduced size.

EY is facing multibillion-dollar legal claims in Germany and the U.K. over its allegedly failed audits of two corporate blowups, fintech company

Wirecard AG

and hospital operator NMC Health PLC. EY has said it stands by its audit work.

Another issue that needs clearance by the regulators is branding. Paul Munter, the SEC’s acting chief accountant, said last month that after an accounting firm sells off part of its business, the new entity shouldn’t profit from the accounting firm’s name or logo. The two businesses can’t share any marketing or advertising, he added.

The new EY consulting company will have to spend heavily to build up its new brand, according to Tom Rodenhauser, managing director at Kennedy Research Reports, which analyzes the consulting industry.

Andersen Consulting,

the consulting arm of the former Big Five firm, spent “millions and millions and millions of dollars” on its successful rebranding as Accenture, Mr. Rodenhauser said. “EY consulting will have to make that same kind of investment.”

Write to Jean Eaglesham at Jean.Eaglesham@wsj.com

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Warren Buffett Not Expected to Bid for Control of Occidental Following Approval for Bigger Stake

Warren Buffett’s

bid to boost his big stake in

Occidental Petroleum Corp.

OXY 9.88%

even further isn’t expected to serve as a prelude to a full takeover of the resurgent energy company by the widely watched billionaire, at least for now.

In a regulatory filing Friday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said that Mr. Buffett’s

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

BRK.B -2.30%

had received permission to buy up to 50% of the driller’s shares. The news stoked speculation that Berkshire could be gearing up to acquire Occidental.

Analysts have said Occidental’s oil business would complement Berkshire’s existing energy holdings, which include utilities, natural gas and renewables. Mr. Buffett has a warm relationship with Chief Executive

Vicki Hollub

and has publicly praised her efforts to turn the company around after its acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and her plans to pay down debt and increase dividend payouts.

But Mr. Buffett hasn’t informed Occidental of any plans to acquire a controlling stake in the company, according to people close to the matter. Given Mr. Buffett’s well-known aversion to hostile deal making, it would be out of character for him to make a bid without sounding out the company’s executives and directors first.

Owning such a big stake—Berkshire is Occidental’s largest shareholder—gives him major influence over the company already, and acquiring control could cost him a hefty premium to the current share price. The stock closed Friday at $71.29, up nearly 10% on the news, giving the company a market capitalization of about $66 billion.

Why would Berkshire seek out permission to buy more of Occidental, then?

For one, it was close to running up against FERC-imposed investing limits.

Filings show Berkshire currently has a 20% stake in Occidental. It also has warrants to purchase another 83.9 million common shares and 100,000 shares of preferred stock that pay a hefty dividend—both of which it acquired after helping Occidental finance its 2019 acquisition of Anadarko.

If Berkshire were to exercise the warrants, its stake would rise to roughly 27%. That would have exceeded the 25% limit FERC allowed for before Friday’s ruling.

“This is not a company that’s going to raise regulators’ hackles,” said Cathy Seifert, an analyst for CFRA Research.

It should also give Berkshire breathing room in case share buybacks or other company moves decrease the amount of shares outstanding, thus increasing its percentage stake.

There are other reasons to doubt a Berkshire takeover of Occidental is imminent.

One of them is price, said David Kass, a professor of finance at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

So far, Berkshire has bought virtually all of its Occidental shares at a price in the range of $50 to $60, Mr. Kass said. The highest price Berkshire paid was $60.37 in July, according to filings.

Mr. Buffett is a well-known bargain-hunter, so it is difficult to imagine Berkshire rushing to buy more Occidental shares at the current price, Mr. Kass said. The shares are up 146% for the year, boosted by a rally in the price of oil, compared with an 11% decline for the S&P 500.

People familiar with deliberations at Occidental said the company’s leadership believes Mr. Buffett might consider making an offer if oil prices fall, bringing down Occidental’s stock price. If Mr. Buffett made an offer the company viewed as fair, a majority of the Occidental’s board would likely approve presenting it to shareholders, one of the people said.

Mr. Buffett didn’t respond to a request for comment. An Occidental spokesman declined to comment.

Mr. Buffett is currently represented as a passive shareholder in Occidental, based on the so-called 13G filing he has on record with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If he were to change his intentions and hold meaningful discussions with the company about a full-on takeover, he would likely need to change his filing to a 13D, which is required by large shareholders who intend to get actively involved in the running of a company.

Taxes could also play a role in Mr. Buffett’s bid for a bigger minority stake in Occidental. Corporations with a stake of at least 20% in another company are eligible to deduct 65% of dividends received, up from the standard 50%.

Berkshire’s 20% stake also allows it to include a proportionate share of Occidental’s earnings in its own results. That could give its earnings a multibillion-dollar boost annually, based on analyst estimates of Occidental’s earnings. Before the most recent purchases, disclosed this month, Occidental fell below the 20% threshold for both benefits.

Since Berkshire started buying Occidental shares in February, Mr. Buffett has had a friendly and collaborative relationship with Ms. Hollub, and the pair speak regularly, according to people familiar with the matter.

When Mr. Buffett bought another slug of Occidental shares this spring, he called Ms. Hollub to let her know about the transaction, according to one of the people. Ms. Hollub was driving at the time and pulled over to take the call, the person said.

Mr. Buffett’s message was simple: “Keep doing what you’re doing,” he told Ms. Hollub.

Berkshire’s growing ties with Occidental have an unexpected link to Mr. Buffett’s earliest days of investing.

At age 11 in 1942, Mr. Buffett made his first investment: three shares of Cities Service’s preferred stock. Forty years later, Occidental went on to acquire the oil company, which Ms. Hollub had just joined the year before.

Mr. Buffett’s investment in Occidental this year shows his first stock purchases “coming full circle 80 years later,” Mr. Kass said.

Write to Akane Otani at akane.otani@wsj.com, Christopher M. Matthews at christopher.matthews@wsj.com and Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com

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Ryan Cohen’s Stock Sale Is No Problem for Bed Bath & Beyond’s True Believers

A stupefying rally in

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.’s

BBBY -40.54%

stock came skidding to a halt last week when one of the company’s biggest shareholders cashed out. 

Now, a crowd of individual investors say they are hoping to ride out the worst of the selloff.

Even as Bed Bath & Beyond slumped Friday in its worst one-day pullback ever, individual investors continued to cheer the stock on social-media platforms like Reddit, Discord and

Twitter.

Many posted emojis of diamonds and hands—internet shorthand for someone who holds steadfast to their investments even when there is rising pressure to sell. Others tagged their posts with “HODL”: hold on for dear life. 

Their message to the world? We aren’t giving up.

Wil Lobach, a 39-year-old investor from New Jersey, said he is hoping to use the selloff as a way to add to his Bed Bath & Beyond holdings. 

He owns more than 250 shares of the struggling retailer. Having scooped them up at an average price of around $6.50, he is still up about 70% on his initial investment. Bed Bath & Beyond shares fell 41% Friday to $11.03.

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Mr. Lobach said the volatility in the stock last week did little to scare him. He also owns stakes in meme stocks

GameStop Corp.

and

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc.

, both of which are also known for their wild swings. 

“I’m proud of him,” Mr. Lobach said of billionaire investor

Ryan Cohen,

whose sale of his stake triggered the selloff in Bed Bath & Beyond’s shares last week. 

Cohen’s “army is right behind him,” Mr. Lobach added, noting that he supports the sale and believes Mr. Cohen isn’t done with Bed Bath & Beyond yet. “It’s been incredible to be a part of this moment in history.” 

Mr. Cohen, the co-founder of pet-supply retailer

Chewy Inc.

, has developed a devoted following of individual investors, who cheered his rapid ascension last year from activist investor to GameStop chairman. Many individuals piled into Bed Bath & Beyond’s shares after he revealed a sizable stake in the company in March and issued a letter to its board pushing for major changes.

David Simpson, a 30-year-old from Seattle, said he is committed to holding on to his Bed Bath & Beyond investment until at least 2023, by which time he believes the stock will have risen to around $200. 

After years of declining sales, Bed Bath & Beyond is facing an existential crisis. WSJ’s Suzanne Kapner explains why the company has fallen on hard times and looks forward to what is next for the veteran retailer. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann/WSJ

He wasn’t deterred by news of Mr. Cohen selling his stake. In fact, he says his conviction in his Bed Bath & Beyond trade has only gotten stronger. He referenced Mr. Cohen’s role in Chewy’s growth from a small startup into a company that would later be acquired by PetSmart for $3.35 billion, a deal that was at the time the biggest e-commerce acquisition ever.

“My instincts tell me the same is true” for Bed Bath & Beyond, Mr. Simpson said, adding that he believes the company will be able to strengthen its financial position by the end of the year.

Bed Bath & Beyond is searching for a $375 million loan to build cash and help pay down debt, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. In June, the company said sales for the current quarter were trending down 20% from the year-earlier period.

Individual investors’ resolve is the latest twist in a meme-stock mania that has endured much longer than many professional investors and analysts could have ever predicted. Some individual investors say they have good reason to believe the shares will spike again.

Many are also continuing to hold out for what they believe will be a massive short squeeze, a phenomenon that occurs when a stock rises so much that investors who bet against it are forced to buy back shares, driving the stock even higher.

At the moment, those betting on the stock face an uphill battle.

On Friday, the selloff hitting Bed Bath & Beyond spread to other meme stocks, with GameStop losing 3.8%, AMC Entertainment falling 6.6% and

Coinbase Global Inc.

shedding 11%. The S&P 500 finished down 1.3%. 

Data also show pressure from short sellers has continued to grow.

Roughly half of Bed Bath & Beyond’s shares that were available to trade Friday afternoon were being shorted, according to

Ihor Dusaniwsky,

head of predictive analytics at S3 Partners, a technology and data analytics firm.

“This has been a roller-coaster week,” Mr. Dusaniwsky said in an email, noting the value of short sellers’ positions was down hundreds of millions of dollars in the first half of the week, only to jump hundreds of millions of dollars on Thursday and Friday.

Wall Street analysts are also warning there could be more pain ahead for shareholders. 

Wedbush Securities analyst

Seth Basham

said he believes Bed Bath & Beyond’s stock should be trading at around $5—55% below where it closed Friday. He cut his rating for the stock to “underperform” from “neutral” in a note after Mr. Cohen made his plans to sell his stake public Wednesday.

Even if the company manages to achieve goals like fixing its inventory and supply-chain problems, its stock has surged so much that the risk-to-reward ratio for investors remains “disproportionately skewed to the downside,” Mr. Basham added.

Bed Bath & Beyond shares are still up 122% for the quarter, compared with the S&P 500, which has risen 12%.

Wells Fargo analyst Zachary Fadem, who covers Bed Bath & Beyond, is holding a price target of $3 for the stock—73% below where it closed Friday.

Among Mr. Fadem’s concerns: Foot traffic at Bed Bath & Beyond’s stores and web traffic on its site seem to be decelerating. The company is also in a financially vulnerable position. It is working with external advisers to try to strengthen its balance sheet.

“We believe the writing is on the wall that BBBY shares have again decoupled from economic reality,” Mr. Fadem said in a note.

There could be more pain ahead for Bed Bath & Beyond shareholders, Wall Street analysts warn.



Photo:

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Write to Akane Otani at akane.otani@wsj.com and Caitlin McCabe at caitlin.mccabe@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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