Encouraging news from Nike (NKE) in its quarterly report, a fall-off in Chinese markets and Greece-centric concerns about the economically beleaguered country defaulting on their deadline Monday inform investors in the pre-market. We’re seeing these pressures working toward a slightly lower opening. However, with the Russell indexes planning to swap equities later today, we do expect market activity to pick up this afternoon.
However, Nike’s positive earnings results have pushed up futures on the Dow this morning. After Thursday’s close, Nike reported better-than-expected earnings and revenues, as well as positive guidance for fiscal 2015. Earlier this month, Nike announced a deal with the NBA that will put the Nike “swoosh” logo on all NBA uniform apparel for an 8-year deal, and the popularity of American professional basketball will go some way to ensuring growth for the company going forward.
Chinese stocks fell more than 7 percent overnight on fears that their 8-month bull run has run its course. Both the Shanghai and Shenzen markets are now down 20 percent from their peaks, with analysts fearing valuations are running hot in relation to fundamentals. Seems at this point like a corrective blip more than the official start of a new bear market, but only time will tell. Stay tuned…
Greece has until Monday to pay 1.54 billion euros ($1.72 billion) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which it almost certainly won’t be able to do. In the face of positively draconian austerity policies, including gigantic tax hikes for regular Greek citizens, the country is still extremely likely to come up short of paying its full amount owed. The only hope now, it would seem, is for another round of political “kick the can,” in which Greece will have an expended time to pay the full amount it owes.
Finally, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to uphold the ACA yesterday, effectively allowing ObamaCare to progress as American healthcare policy for the foreseeable future, news swerves to the possibility of mergers & acquisitions activity in the healthcare sector. As Director of Research Sheraz Mian posted yesterday, “UnitedHealthcare (UNH) and Anthem (ANTM), the two biggest players in the space, are looking at three smaller players — Humana (HUM), Aetna (AET) and Cigna (CI) — to solidify their positions.”
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