Market News

Bill Ackman tries his hand at a new form of risk management after Pershing Square falls 26.4%.

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The real estate market in China is once again burning hot.

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Alphabet Inc.’s subsidiary Google recently announced that, with its most recent update to Google Maps, the company is adding to the app new ride hailing service providers across five countries. These providers are in addition to its global ride service partner Uber. Users of Google Maps will now be able to use the app to hail 99 Taxis in Brazil, Ola Cabs in India, and Gett in the UK, as well as Hailo in the UK and Spain, an mytaxi in Germany and Spain. Uber was integrated with Google Maps in 2014. We believe that, by extending this integration to other players who are Uber’s competitors in certain geographies, Google is looking to make its Maps app as a one-stop transportation solution for users. While Google is currently providing this service free to ride hailing companies, we believe this can open up another revenue stream for Google in future and increase user engagement with Google Maps.

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Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Simon Property Group, Inc. (NYSE: SPG), where a total volume of 10,679 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approximately 1.1 million underlying shares (given that every 1 contract represents 100 underlying shares). That number works out to 94% of SPG's average daily trading volume over the past month, of 1.1 million shares. Particularly high volume was seen for the $190 strike call option expiring March 18, 2016, with 2,050 contracts trading so far today, representing approximately 205,000 underlying shares of SPG. Below is a chart showing SPG's trailing twelve month trading history, with the $190 strike highlighted in orange:

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On Thursday, Senators Tammy of Wisconsin and Jeff Merkley of Oregon unveiled The Brokaw Act, a Congressional effort to introduce legislation to regulate activist funds.

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The directors of a company tend to have a unique inside view into the business, so when directors make major buys, investors are wise to take notice. Presumably the only reason a director of a company would choose to take their hard-earned cash and use it to buy stock in the open market, is that they expect to make money — maybe they find the stock very undervalued, or maybe they see exciting progress within the company, or maybe both. So in this series we look at the largest insider buys by company directors over the trailing six month period, one of which was a total of $1.1M by G. Bradford Jones, Director at Stamps.com Inc. (NASD: STMP).

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Looking at units outstanding versus one week prior within the universe of ETFs covered at ETF Channel, the biggest outflow was seen in the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF), where 33,450,000 units were destroyed, or a 4.5% decrease week over week. Among the largest underlying components of XLF, in morning trading today Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) is up about 0.1%, and Wells Fargo (WFC) is up by about 1.4%.

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Be sure to ask brokers about the mark up on bonds.

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For the past several years, we have witnessed a rise in global investor demand for liquid products to help diversify risks to long-only fixed income and long-only equity investments. Asset management firms responded in-kind to this demand, offering an array of liquid alternatives products to institutional and retail investors in both the UCITS and SEC Investment Act of 1940-compliant structures.

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