Daily Agenda: Oil Hits Earnings Season

The long-lasting oil price slump is reverberating through macroeconomic data points and this earnings season. Suburban Houston-headquartered oil and gas exploration company Anadarko Petroleum’s announcement yesterday of a $3.27 billion loss for the initial three months of the year was emblematic of this pain. The impact of lower investment and employment in the energy sector was also reflected in disappointing first-quarter U.S. GDP data.

澳大利亚中央银行降低利率。澳大利亚储备银行的政策制定者将基准现金率降低了25个基本点，在定期每月汇率公布期间今天的历史效率为2％。分析师在经过前两次公告中发出的偏见后，分析师预计此举。在陪同声明中，银行总督Glenn Stevens表示，在去年以商品价格急剧纠正之后，通货膨胀展望为许多经济学家推动了未来几个月的进一步率削减了机会。

联邦储备泄露探讨。The U.S. Department of Justice has announced it is investigating how Medley Global Advisors, a private research firm, disseminated confidential information ahead of the September 2012Federal Open Market Committeeannouncement. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has indicated that the bank will comply fully with the investigation into communications between bank executives and Medley Global Advisors. Medley discussed the details of the September 2012 FOMC meeting.

UBS earnings nearly double.Zurich–based UBS Group announced first-quarter results that beat analyst expectations. The financial institution reported net income of 1.98 billion Swiss francs ($2.12 billion) versus 1.05 billion Swiss francs during the same period last year. The bank’s performance reflected the focus on its wealth management franchise and smaller, more focused investment banking operations adopted in 2012. UBS’s wealth management division reported an 14.4 billion Swiss franc increase in assets from first-quarter 2014.

Euro zone growth forecasts increased.The European Commission today increased growth projections for the common currency region. GDP for the 19-nation group is expected to rise at an annualized pace of 1.5 percent in 2015, an increase from a prior 1.3 percent target. Separately, the Commission reduced its forecasts for Greece sharply to just 0.5 percent as thebeleaguered country teeters on the brink of exit from the euro.

印度尼西亚growth slumps.今天由Badan Pusat StatistiStik发布的第一季度GDP数据表明了五年来最慢的增长步伐。东南亚最大的经济体的年产量增长4.71％的增长步伐与先前的5％，因为中国对国家出口商的基础金属和煤炭的需求。虽然家庭消费在今年的前三个月内略微扩大，但出口与2014年最后季度的出口下降了近6％，而政府支出暴跌。经济放缓挑战了Joko Ladodo总统的行政，已承诺经济改革，这些经济改革已被证明由于党派政治而难以实施。

西班牙失业率迅速下降。Spain’s jobless headcount contracted by nearly 120,000 in April, almost twice as large a drop as consensus economist forecasts. Despite this decrease in job seekers, the headline unemployment rate in the country remains above 20 percent, with youth unemployment particularly high.

European cement merger wins U.S. approval.联邦贸易委员会昨日批准了一个剥夺资产的计划，这将允许两个主要的欧洲水泥生产商，瑞士公司Holcim和法国公司Lafarge, to merge without running afoul of U.S. antitrust regulations. The combined market value of the merged companies will exceed $25 billion.

U.S. earnings season continues.Chicago–headquartered global food commodity giant Archer Daniels Midland recorded a 15 percent decline in sales for the first quarter versus the first three months of 2014 as a strong U.S. dollar weighed on multiple business segments, particularly the corn processing division, which has also been hard hit by weak ethanol demand on the back of low oil prices. Despite the setbacks the company achieved earnings of $0.77 per share, beating consensus analysts’ estimates for $0.71. Hedge fund firm Och-Ziff Capital Management Group announced a 17 percent increase in revenues for first-quarter versus the same period last year, with flat earnings per share. Herbalife, the multilevel marketing dietary supplement company that has been the subject of an活动股东拔河, will announce today after equity markets close in New York.