Arizona's Bitcoin Reserve Bill scheduled for Third Reading, and Potential Final Vote (Could be the first State SBR)
Amazon to launch the first 27 satellites for its Project Kuiper fast internet network, a competitor to Elon Musk’s Starlink
Tue/29:
U.S. JOLTS Job Openings & CB Consumer Confidence
Meta’s LlamaCon (AI developer conference): Llama 4, New AI Models, Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella speaking at 4:00PM PDT
Earnings: Spotify, PayPal, Visa
Wed/30: 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency: ‘Worst 100 Days Since WW II’
US Treasury Quarterly Refunding Announcement
U.S. Q1 GDP: We estimate real GDP decelerated sharply in the first quarter to 0.4%, from 2.4% in the final quarter of 2024. The trade deficit is set to be the largest drag, as businesses front-loaded goods imports ahead of the Trump administration’s tariff surge. Consumers also rushed to buy goods that are likely to face higher prices from the tariffs, such as cars, though they otherwise remained cautious: Anna Wong, BBG
U.S. PCE
Earnings: Microsoft, Meta, Robinhood
Crypto: Token2049 Conference. Speakers: CZ, Eric Trump, Emad Mostaque, Robert Mitchnick (BlackRock), Mathew Mcdermott (Goldman Sachs), Tarun Chitra (Gauntlet), Eric Balchunas, Ben Zhou (Bybit), Zach Witkoff (World Liberty Financial), etc
Worldcoin “At Last” event: Sam Altman will join the Event: A big announcement expected like a social platform or certain features (like claiming tokens or rewards), WLD token might become available to US residents or they might partner with OpenAI for verification (this one is less likely but anyway)
Thu/01: May Day
BoJ Interest Rate Decision: expected to keep rate unchanged
U.S. Nonfarm Payrolls: employment report is forecast to show a 130k increase in payrolls — about 100k less than the larger-than-expected March gain
De Minimis tariff exemptions, which currently allow packages worth $800 or less from China and Hong Kong to enter the US duty-free will end & now will face new tariffs and fees; Shein raised US Prices as Much as 377% Ahead of Tariff Increases
U.S. 25% tariffs on imported vehicles as well as 25% tariffs on imported auto parts scheduled to take effect; Trump administration is considering reducing certain tariffs targeting the auto industry
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
TBA/Whole Week:
TradeFi: Trump-Tariffs, Earnings Season: Capital Expenditures, buybacks, blackout period
Crypto: Token Unlocks, Ethereum's Pectra Upgrade
World: AI events, US-Ukraine Mineral Deal & Peace Talks, India-Pak Conflict, Middle East Conflict,
Rumours: DeepSeek R2 model, US might announce trade deal with India
The head of the Swiss National Bank said that cryptocurrencies failed to meet the institution's currency reserve standards, rebuffing calls by crypto advocates that it hold BTC as a hedge against growing global economic risks.
A massive explosion at a port in southern Iran on Saturday killed at least 14 people and injured Hundreds, Fire still not fully contained. The death toll climbs to 40 and more than 1,000 people injured and about 10,000 containers have burnt, according to Iranian media reports. The damage cost is estimated between $500 million to $2 billion. A person with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that what exploded was sodium perchlorate, a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles. The Financial Times reported in January that China had shipped the chemical to Iran, whose stocks of missile propellant were depleted last year when it and its proxy, Hezbollah, launched missiles at Israel: NYT; Israel has said they are not involved in this and Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei has ordered a "thorough investigation" into the explosion between all this Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “We will not accept anything less than the complete destruction of all of Iranian nuclear capabilities”
Apple aims to source all US iPhones from India in pivot away from China: FT
South Korea rules out tariff deal with US before June 3 snap election
Apparently the White House plan is to have trade talks with six different nations every week until Trump's July 9 deadline on tariffs. Perhaps somewhat optimistic, given it takes on average 18 months just to set the terms of a deal, and longer to actually pass one. Analysts at Barclays reckon a likely outcome will be 60% tariffs on China, 10% on everyone else and sectoral levies remaining at 25%, with exceptions. Even that, they note, would be worse than their worst-case scenario heading into 2025: Reuters || It normally takes 18 months on average for the US to negotiate a trade deal
China: Policymakers will likely wait until the July Politburo meeting to unveil new stimulus, By then, two things will become clearer: how trade talks with the US will go and how the economy is faring with most of the policies approved at the Two Sessions having been rolled out: Jacqueline Rong
Retail investors have been aggressively buying US equities this year, pumping over $30 billion into American stocks and ETFs since April 2: JPMorgan; Retail investors net bought $1 billion of US stocks by midday Friday, above last month’s average of $488 million, according to JPMorgan; Foreign investors have sold $63 billion of US equities since the start of March, Goldman Sachs strategists estimate, with Europeans driving the selling. The Goldman Sachs desk now estimates the full market, including the S&P 500 and the Russell 3000, will see $1.35 trillion of buyback authorizations this year, versus $1.45 trillion previously.
Based on a 22% tariff rate modeled by Bloomberg Economics, lower gross margins could result in a net income contraction of about 7% in 2025 for the S&P 500, compared with the current consensus estimate of nearly 12% growth.
Gold is extremely overbought in the short term, which makes it ripe for a correction. That, however, is not to be mistaken for its medium-term trajectory: bullion performs best when the global economy is in distress, and the scale of current economic uncertainty is immense: BBG strategists || SPDR Gold Shares, the world’s largest gold-backed ETF, has seen $8.65 billion of net inflows as of Monday, with the majority of the inflows coming from institutional investors increasing allocations to gold as an equity-overlay hedge.
This is a little funny because crypto is to some extent a reaction against traditional banking. Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin in part in disgust at the 2008 financial crisis: Matt Levine
*crypto companies have ambitions to get banking licenses.
*More Charts are in the group
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