A Big Week for the S&P 500

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Townhall Finance – Going into this week, we’re not much closer to knowing for sure if the stock market’s climb from its last notable trough on 18 April 2013 is the result of noise, a fundamental shift in investor focus, or the Fed’s recent indication that it might really amp up its current quantitative easing program as we have previously speculated it might.

But regardless, even if stock prices stay flat, this will be a big week for the S&P 500, because this is the week that three of the largest companies that compose the market-cap weighted index will be determining who owns their stock for the purpose of paying out dividends for 2013-Q2!

AAPL and XOM as Share of S&P 500, 10 May 2013

In fact, two of those three companies will be noting their shareholders of record today (Monday, 13 May 2013): Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). They just coincidentally happen to be the two biggest companies in the S&P 500, accounting for nearly 5.74% of the entire value of the index (at least, as of last Friday, 10 May 2013)!

The third S&P 500 heavy hitter who will be noting their shareholders of record on Friday this week is Chevron (NYSE: CVX), which is only the fifth largest component stock of the index, representing about 1.6% of the S&P 500′s value.              More

Two Drivers Lift Dollar, Pressure Yen

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Zero Hedge – The break of the JPY100 has unleashed the animal spirits. The US dollar is broadly higher and equity markets are finishing the week on a strong note. Bond yields are mostly higher, led by a sharp 9 bp rise in 10-year JGB yields. Indeed, at almost 69 bp, the benchmark 10-year yield is the highest since late February.

There are two fundamental themes. The first is that despite signs of slower US growth here in Q2, the US labor market continues to improve. Weekly initial jobless claims and the smoothed 4-week moving average fell to new cyclical lows. There are several influences on the Us stock market, we find that the weekly jobless claims is among the most important high frequency economic reports that tracks the US S&P 500 very closely. This encouraged more talk that the Fed may taper off its purchases of long-term assets sooner than the market currently anticipates, which is late this year.

The second is the news reported in Tokyo, after the JPY100 level broke in North American yesterday, that Japanese investors turned buyers of foreign bonds. This is an important signal for the yen bears. They have been selling yen partly in expectation that that is what Japanese investors will do as they are displaced from the local bond market by the BOJ’s qualitative and quantitative easing. However, this has not materialized until now.

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Feds Disrupt Cyber Crime Ring that Allegedly Raided $45M

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Fox News – Federal prosecutors plan to unveil charges against eight individuals on Thursday connected with a campaign of cyber attacks on the global financial system that caused $45 million in losses.

Prosecutors say that members of a New York cell of criminals were involved in an incident that resulted in $2.8 million being stolen from compromised bank accounts in a 24-hour period, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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Charles Payne – First They Junked the Constitution

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MRCharlesPayne

There is a serious push to junk the US Constitution, and it’s not going away anytime soon. It’s scary to think, but the same approach for legalizing pot and for pushing immigration is being used. Chip away with a subtle approach aided by some folks on the fringe, then make the circle tighter and tighter. I saw an ad for a new television show that teased something about the Constitution keeping up with the times. This is a favorite approach, the notion the Founding Fathers couldn’t fathom cell phones and machine guns, so this “old piece of paper” is a relic.

The one thing we know has never changed and never will is human behavior. The Constitution provides checks and balances that protect against the worst instincts of checks and balances. And while key players were also slave-owners, it doesn’t make the document void or less valid, it just means these men had flaws. The point is that over the next three years you will witness that all the surface battles will really be proxies for an even bigger prize-a new constitution based on universal laws (read United Nations) coupled with natural laws (read pagan)- that focuses on a Voltaire-like nation of fairness.

Typically, when there is an attempt to junk something as vital and important as the Constitution is to the United States, opponents look for that major event to drive home change.

Many thought it would be Newtown but that didn’t work, although now inner city politicians can blame gun owners in the suburbs or different states for young people in their own districts slaughtering each other. Hollywood can tweet about the evils of guns even as violence has not taken a week break in their world. The critics have their platforms but missed badly on their attempts to use a senseless slaughter of innocents, and now they want to claim blood is on everyone’s hands who believe in the Second Amendment.

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