May Retail Sales Increase 5% for Target – $TGT

Consumer still love $TGT for its cheap prices and selections. 5% was on the high end of expectations and the CEO said they expect to power through a tough economy.

Full article

Not a good report to start the morning. Futures pared half their gains on the report.

Full report

“In his latest note, SocGen’s famously bearish Albert Edwards looks around at interest rates falling all over the place and Europe in chaos, and gives himself a good chest-beating, while mocking the equity bulls for yapping about how cheap stocks are.

He’s clearly feeling pretty good about the way things are turning out, writing: “For 15 years we were told the West is nothing like Japan. We agree. It is worse! ”

Full article

CGI now moves into the international players zone for IT services.

Full article

Brazil took rates from 9% to 8.5%.

Full article

Investors took a break from gobbling up German bonds and switched over to French bonds. Perhaps Germany’s yields are getting too low.

Full article

The Euro managed to get a lift today as yields relaxed in Spain and other anecdotal comments and data points help to create a calm within a storm.

Full article 

Unemployment remained unch in Germany giving investors a little hope the strongest economy is not following the rest of the zone into a murder hole.

Full article

Bankia has been handed $28 billion in the last two weeks, but many feel a total bailout is not possible. Spain herself is not expected to be able to finance all the debt needed.

Full article

“India’s economic growth weakened to a nine-year low last quarter, hurt by an investment slowdown that has undermined the rupee and jeopardized Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s development agenda. Stocks fell and bonds climbed.

Gross domestic product rose 5.3 percent in the three months ended March from a year earlier, compared with 6.1 percent in the previous quarter, the Central Statistical Office said in a statement in New Delhi today. The median of 31 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 6.1 percent gain. GDP climbed 6.5 percent in the year to March, the office said.”

Full article

When emerging emerging markets show a slow down in inflation it is usually a good sign. I suppose we will take this good news,  but one must consider deflation vortex action.

Full article

“European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said policy makers will keep focusing their crisis support on solvent euro area banks as he reiterated it’s not the ECB’s job to fix the cause of the region’s turmoil.

“The ECB will continue lending to solvent banks and will keep the liquidity lines active and alive with solvent banks,” Draghi told a European Union Parliament committee in Brussels today.”

Full article

Some good news as Germany and others are so afraid of future inflation.

Full article

So the Irish vote to back debt containment measures and Germany has better than expected retail sales; this is enough to stem losses, fear, and yield spreads blowing out….B.S. Enjoy your dead cat.

Full article

World Markets

Currencies

Commodities

USD Libor

Euribor

Yields for Italy, Spain, France,  and Germany …

min cap $5bill

New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity.

Full Article

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLgWHeezzuc&feature=g-all-u

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um1lA9m4wL0 450 300]

Time to check out South Park…Cheers !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d055EMRZ74I&feature=g-all-u