Building on Friday’s US index gains of 0.3% to 0.8% US index futures are up 0.3% to 0.7% this morning. European markets are climbing as well with the Dax up 1.25% and the FTSE up 0.9%. The US 10-year treasury note yield is up slightly trading just below 3.50%, while Gold is down 1.4%, a sign that the recent wave of fear among investors may be starting to subside.
A “no news is good news” weekend for the banking sector appears to be helping to improve investor confidence. Investors appear to have figured out that Deutsche Bank’s issues were minor compared with Credit Suisse helping to reignite the Dax. Here in North America, supportive comments out of the White House related to bank deposits, and news that First Citizens Bank (up 39.9% premarket) agreed to purchase $72B of Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits for $16.5B has been received positively.
In premarket action this morning, several regional banks are rallying including First Republic (up 23.1%), PacWest (up 9.1%) and KeyCorp (up 7.1%). Senior banks like JPMorgan, Citigroup and their peers, are generally up 1.5%-2.5%.
It’s the last trading week of the quarter. The economic calendar is light until Friday when Canada Monthly GDP, US Core PCE inflation and Chicago PMI numbers come out. There is only a smattering of earnings reports of note this week, most notably lululemon, Micron Techology, and Walgreens Boots on Thursday.
