Efforts to “save” United States Steel may rip it apart. An agreed $14 billion acquisition by Japan’s Nippon Steel slammed into political opposition, with U.S. President Joe Biden declaring it “vital” the centenarian company remain “domestically owned and operated.” A sale to hostile suitor Cleveland-Cliffs or a standalone U.S. Steel seem equally intolerable. The transaction unveiled in December riled unionized U.S. Steel employees, an influential constituency ahead of a presidential election. Their displeasure also looms large as the inscrutable Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States reviews the deal. The U.S. Treasury-chaired agency sends recommendations to the Oval Office; Biden’s intervention portends an

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is scheduled to take place from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 in Glasgow, Scotland. Therefore, we take a closer look at carbon emission levels within the United Kingdom. For this analysis, we look at Refinitiv ESG data for the current constituents of the FTSE 350 index (as of Sep. 30), which comprises the largest U.K. publicly listed companies by market capitalization and is home to many of the largest commodity companies globally. Using Refinitiv ESG data, we can extract the total Carbon Dioxide Equivalent Emissions (will be referred to as CO2) as

The peak-period of earnings season will begin over the next few weeks, where approximately 80% of constituents report.  The current S&P 500 20Q4 earnings and revenue growth rate are -7.8% and -1.2% respectively. In a typical quarter, year-over-year (YoY) growth expectations decline by an average of 3.6 percentage points (ppts) from the start of the quarter to the start of earnings season.  However, 20Q4 YoY earnings have increased by 1.5 ppts over this period to -10.3% by Jan. 1, 2021. Consumer Discretionary saw the greatest improvement over this period, with YoY earnings increasing 3.0 ppts to -22.6% by Jan. 1.

Trump’s eagerness to pander to vested interests in pursuing a mercantilist policy may well end up taking the US economy back to the 1970s with its vertical Phillips Curve.