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The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund overcame sluggish markets at the start of last year to deliver a return of 6.9 per cent in 2016.

Norway’s $905bn oil fund was boosted by strong stock markets in the second half of the year with equity investments returning 8.7 per cent. Fixed income returned 4.3 per cent in 2016.

Yngve Slyngstad, chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management, the manager of the fund, said:

“The return in 2016 was characterised by falling international interest rates in the first half of the year and strong equity markets in the second half. The year began with a downturn in the markets, and uncertainty regarding developments in China.”

The fund had 62.5 per cent of assets invested in equities at the end of the year but is expected this spring to be given permission to increase that to 70 per cent. Fixed income assets accounted for 34.3 per cent and real estate 3.2 per cent.

The biggest contributors to the return in equities were Royal Dutch Shell, Glenmore and Apple with the worst performers being Novo Nordisk, Credit Suisse and Lloyds Banking Group.

The worst performance among its big government bond holdings was for UK gilts, which lost 5.1 per cent. Measured in local currency, however, UK gilts returned 11 per cent.

A New Way to Look at Crazy Stock Valuations

Valuations have been inflated by a collapse in profits for oil companies

The swinging price of oil has played havoc with forecasts for the economy and inflation over the past two years. Now it may also be messing with the heads of investors by pushing the most popular tool for U.S. stock-market valuation to the highest in more than a decade.

The S&P 500 stands at almost 18 times estimated operating earnings, the highest forward PE ratio since 2004 and a figure which was higher before that only during the late 1990s dot-com bubble and its aftermath.

Yet, the valuation has been inflated by a collapse in profits for oil companies. Because analysts expect little in the way of earnings over the next year, but a recovery later, the ratio of price to year-ahead earnings for oil stocks is elevated. The energy sector stands at more than 30 times Thomson Reuters IBES’s estimate of operating earnings over the next 12 months, higher than any time from when the sector data started in 1995 up to last year—when it briefly reached an extreme of almost 60 times.

There are other reasons to think future returns from stocks might be low, but investors who rely on the overall valuation of the index as a signal for future returns would be misled if they ignored the collapse in oil-sector profits.

Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, puts the overall market at 18.1 times this year’s estimated operating earnings. When the energy sector—containing six of the seven S&P companies forecast to lose money this year—is excluded, the forward PE stands at 16.6, a much less frightening figure.

There are lots of ways to compute the forward PE, and the gap is slightly narrower on IBES figures used by Société Générale’s quantitative equity team. But either way, valuations are lower when the oil sector is stripped out, and look little different to two years ago.

There are both conceptual and practical objections to taking this as a signal that stocks are at a reasonable level. The conceptual problem is that it looks like manipulation of the figures to justify buying shares, a practice with a long and dishonorable history on Wall Street.

In reality, whether to include or exclude the oil sector amounts to a question about whether its profits will recover. If oil prices and profits plunge again, then the sector is truly expensive, and it should be included in the overall figures. Excluding energy from valuations amounts to an assumption that oil sector profits will recover, implying prices won’t fall much below $50 a barrel.

The practical issue is more worrying. Even without energy, valuations are pretty high. Stocks were expensive two years ago and are still expensive today, with valuations high compared with most of history. Investors are pricing in a lot of good news for earnings, notably U.S. corporate tax cuts, and not a lot of bad news.

The main explanation for pricey shares is the same as it was two years ago, too. Low interest rates tend to lead to higher valuations, since the same future profits are worth more when discounted back into today’s money. Profit margins are elevated by cheap debt, and investors think that will continue.

The Federal Reserve may have started raising U.S. interest rates, but it has barely kept up with the rise in inflation, and investors expect money to remain easy pretty much forever.

If today’s market is a bubble, it is a particularly joyless one. Cheap money has pushed every sector to be pricey, but none to be extraordinary. Indeed, the most expensive sector after energy is consumer staples, made up of boring-but-reliable earners.

We’re promised news on Donald Trump’s “phenomenal” tax cut in his speech Tuesday, which could reverse at least some of the postelection stock rally if the corporate tax plans disappoint. The real threat to valuations, though, would come if it looked like inflation was running out of control, and the Fed were forced to get serious with rate increases.

Investors expect oil to stay calm, energy-sector profits to recover and inflation to be subdued. If any of those turn out to be wrong, high valuations may yet be a problem.

Snap IPO: A $22 Billion Test for the Unsocial Social Network and Its Elusive Founder

Snap defiantly operates unlike most Silicon Valley outfits, where collaboration and wide-open office spaces are prized

Mark Zuckerberg says he created Facebook Inc. to make the world more open and connected. Twitter Inc. says it wants to give everyone the power to share ideas instantly.

Snap Inc., which this week could become the biggest technology public offering in years, is the unsocial social-media company. Not only does its app feature messages that disappear, the company defiantly operates unlike most Silicon Valley outfits, where collaboration and wide-open office spaces are prized.

Former employees say often the only way they knew co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel was at work was by seeing his chauffeured SUV. He avoids holding companywide meetings and prefers to dispense information to individuals or small groups, they say.

In contrast to the big, open campuses of Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, designed for employee collaboration, Snap doesn’t have a headquarters. Its main offices are scattered around Venice, Calif., keeping employees siloed and making communication difficult, the former employees say. The company in its IPO filing listed the lack of a headquarters as a risk factor that could hurt morale, prevent adequate oversight and cost talent.

So far, Snapchat has won legions of teenage users, who like that what they share now won’t define them permanently—and that it keeps their parents out of their business. And it has attracted advertisers who want to reach a young audience, setting the stage for Snap’s initial public offering. The listing on the New York Stock Exchange is expected to take place this week and could value the company at as much as $22 billion, which would make it the biggest U.S. tech IPO in years.

A Snap spokeswoman declined to comment or make Mr. Spiegel available for this article, citing the company’s quiet period ahead of the public offering.

The question is whether this management style and focus on privacy will help the company compete with television networks and challenge the Facebook juggernaut. Mr. Spiegel’s approach at times has left staff in the dark about important initiatives, the former employees say. And it has made the company resist giving advertisers the ability to narrowly target users based on their behavior and preferences, a strategy that has enabled Facebook, Google and others to mint enormous profits.

‘Doesn’t talk much’

“Evan doesn’t talk much,” says Hemant Taneja, managing director at venture-capital firm General Catalyst, an early Snap investor, saying confusion can stem from the fact that Mr. Spiegel doesn’t always feel compelled to explain his concepts to the public.

In September, he surprised potential investors when he began publicly calling Snap “a camera company” instead of a social-media company. Some investors wondered if Snap was suddenly becoming a hardware company, but Mr. Taneja says the camera concept wasn’t new.

Rapid growth and increasingly intense competition are putting Mr. Spiegel’s management style to the test. Snap’s full-time workforce tripled during last year to 1,859 as it expanded internationally.

It is competing head-to-head with the global social-media giants, especially Facebook, whose Instagram unit already has emulated Snap’s features with some success, such as the Stories feature it rolled out over the summer. Snap in its public filing attributed part of its slowing user growth to increased competition.

Part of the competition is about the race to hook users first. Instagram is more popular than Snap internationally, and people could be inclined to stick with Instagram if they are already using Facebook, or with Snap if they landed there first. “You aren’t going to switch if you are satisfied with what you are using,” says Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.

Snap is also vying with traditional television networks to woo young viewers and advertising. Young people have been drifting away from television to their smartphone screen, where hours of videos from friends can be played.

Meanwhile, Snap must continue to generate unusual and captivating content—much of which has been meticulously managed by Mr. Spiegel, former employees and business partners say.

Like many tech executives, Mr. Spiegel attended Stanford University. But that is about where the comparisons end. He was more social than secretive when he arrived at college in 2008, friends recall, even though his high-profile lawyer-parents had had a rancorous and public divorce when he was in high school in Los Angeles. Far from geek, he was the life of the party, they say, and his style was more hipster than hoodie: skinny jeans, V-neck T-shirts, flip flops.

These days, Mr. Spiegel, who is more of a product designer than a computer scientist, eschews many of the tech industry’s habits, preferring to be away from what he has described as the bubblelike culture of Silicon Valley.

As he got to college, Facebook was taking off. In just four years since its launch in 2004, the social network had gained 58 million active users (it now has 1.9 billion monthly active users). In February 2009—during Mr. Spiegel’s freshman year—it added the Like button. From the start, Mr. Spiegel wasn’t a fan, friends recall. He would come to see it as a form of social pressure, where people create falsely perfect worlds in the quest to rack up likes.

Mr. Spiegel said Snapchat was much more, a place for spontaneous interaction that evaporates in the same way a real conversation would. It was also about creativity and fun: Photos and video could be animated in whimsical and ridiculous ways using its functions to make selfies that vomit rainbows, sport puppy and bunny ears, and wear banana faces.

In most cases, photos and videos that users send in messages disappear after they are viewed, and other content disappears after 24 hours, although some items can be saved.

In the recent company video, created for its IPO, Mr. Spiegel says the ephemerality is “why people love creating Snaps. Because there isn’t pressure to feel pretty or perfect. Self-expression isn’t a contest, it’s not about how well you can express yourself, it’s about being able to communicate how you feel, and doing that in the moment.”

Conceived for mobile

Also key to Snap’s success, and unlike incumbents such as Facebook and Twitter: Its design and concept is mobile-only. Content is presented vertically, to fill a smartphone screen; location-based tags and filters are popular; and bite-size content is swipeable.

As Facebook was trying to transition to mobile in 2012, Snapchat sped out of the gate, catching the bigger company by surprise. Mr. Spiegel saw the smartphone as the new movie screen. When Mr. Zuckerberg offered $3 billion to buy Snapchat in 2013, Mr. Spiegel turned him down.

Mr. Spiegel’s talent combining a Hollywood approach to content with a keen business sense is admired by many who know him.

“For someone of his age, he operates with much more wisdom than anyone else I have seen. I find him to be a very, very clear thinker,” Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, said in an email. When faced with critical decisions on issues like funding and partnering and selling, Mr. Schmidt says, “he gets it right every time.”

He says Mr. Spiegel, a former student of his at Stanford, is now a friend and customer. Snap has a five-year, $2 billion contract for Google to provide cloud-data storage.

Other people note Mr. Spiegel’s timing on the dominance of mobile, getting ahead of Facebook and the recognition that social media was getting boring.

Revenue is generated by brands placing short video advertisements and simple location-linked overlays called “geofilters,” plus more elaborate “Lenses”—Taco Bell made a Lens that turned faces into tacos being doused with hot sauce.

More than two dozen media and entertainment outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, also provide news, sports, fashion and features. Advertisements are sold to place in the content the media companies produce.

Snap’s revenue last year jumped more than 500% to $404.5 million. Its net loss widened to $514.6 million, and its user growth slowed somewhat, rising 48% to 158 million in the fourth quarter from the same period a year earlier.

That revenue is a fraction of the $27.6 billion last year at Facebook, which also booked $10.2 billion in profit.

Mr. Spiegel has been wary of advertising from the start, worrying that it would feel intrusive. As his business marketing team was crafting presentations for prospective advertisers and business partners, Mr. Spiegel didn’t want to explain the app to them, said one of the former employees. He preferred that CEOs learn it—not from a presentation but from their children. It was “difficult for a salesperson to run that one up the flagpole,” the former employee recalls. A product demonstration is now part of the meetings.

When Snapchat’s first ads made their debut in October 2014—Facebook was already generating $12.5 billion in annual revenue by that year—Mr. Spiegel’s ambivalence was evident in a company blog post. It told users if they didn’t want to watch the ads, which were in a different section, “No Biggie.” The company wouldn’t place ads in personal communiqués because that would be “totally rude.” It wanted Snapchat advertising to be “the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted.”

In the past, he has resisted efforts to collect and share information that would enable advertisers to target the app’s individual users. Lately, he has made concessions. In January, for example, Snap signed a deal with Oracle Corp. to help marketers use data from offline purchases, such as supermarket loyalty cards, to target Snapchat users with more relevant ads.

Ad targeting

Snap is still far away from the more aggressive approaches of Facebook and Google, which have used precise ad targeting to make billions in profits. As a result, the giants can outspend Snap on talent and fresh content, and bankroll development of potentially expensive new products, such as hardware that taps into augmented reality, or tech that blends computer images onto a user’s real view of the world.

Because of Snap’s vision of ads as less intrusive than most digital advertising—more like old-fashioned television spots made for a broader audience—Snap ads must have a wider appeal, with high production values, and be spliced into the rest of the app in an interesting way. During the Super Bowl, for example, users could choose to adorn their selfies with either Falcons’ or Patriots’ football helmets or cascade gushers of colorful Gatorade over their heads.

Snap’s requirements set a high bar for its partners. The small group of media and entertainment outlets that appear on Snapchat have tough targets to meet, according to a person familiar with the process. If Snap isn’t happy, it suggests changes to the content, and if the material doesn’t get enough traffic, the providers fear they could be booted off the app, according to a current and a former editor of content for Snapchat Discover, the section of the app where publishers post content.

Until lately, a lot of Snap’s advertising has come directly from brands like Coca-Cola Co. and Yum Brands Inc.’s Taco Bell. It has been slow to woo Madison Avenue’s big ad agencies, which have bigger budgets and can commit to longer contracts, and to form partnerships that would enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Last summer, Snap hired Viacom’s Jeff Lucas to help court big deals.

As the IPO has neared, Snap has signed deals with Oracle Data Cloud, Nielsen and others to ramp up its use of metrics that will dispel some of the mystery that has enshrouded the effectiveness of advertising on the app.

The stock-exchange listing will force more transparency about the business, including regular updates on user and engagement data. Even so, Mr. Spiegel will continue to keep a tight grip on the company after it goes public. Snap is selling to the public only shares that have no voting power. Afterward, Mr. Spiegel and co-founder and chief technologist Bobby Murphy will retain more than 90% of the voting shares.

This is the level the OPEC heavyweight and its Gulf allies - the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar - believe would encourage investment in new fields but not lead to a jump in U.S. shale output, the sources said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers pledged last year to cut production by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) from Jan. 1. The first cut in eight years is intended to boost prices and get rid of a supply glut.

Crude prices LCOc1 have risen by more than 14 percent since the November pact but are still only trading around $56 a barrel despite record compliance by OPEC and non-OPEC members.

OPEC officials have repeatedly said the group does not target a specific oil price and their focus is on drawing global oil inventories and helping the market to re-balance.

But behind closed doors, Riyadh and its Gulf OPEC allies hope to see a higher level because the low price has pressured their finances and stoked fears of a future supply shortage.

However, they do not want the price to be so high that it encourages rival U.S. shale producers, which were hard hit by the slump in oil prices, to ramp up production again. Advances in technology have made it easier for them to adapt quickly to oil price fluctuations.

"They (the Saudis) want to see oil prices at $60 towards the end of this year. It's good for (oil) investments," said a Gulf oil industry source familiar with the matter.

Another non-Gulf industry source said "OPEC and particularly the Saudis want higher prices" not just for investment but also as Riyadh as it seeks to offload a stake in state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco‎.

Over $1 trillion worth of oil projects have been canceled or delayed since mid-2014. A decline in investments in future oil projects triggered worries that this could lead to a supply shortage and spike in oil prices.

Oil fields take around four years to develop before production can start whereas U.S. shale oil can now be extracted within a few months of a decision.

"In general, something around $60 this year is good. $60 will not encourage that big increase in shale," said one OPEC source, adding that shale oil production is expected to grow by about 300,000 bpd this year.

ABSORBING SHALE

U.S. shale producers started to grow production again when crude prices first topped $50 a barrel in May 2016 after a two year price slump due to a global glut starting in mid 2014.

U.S. drillers have added more than 280 oil rigs since the end of May, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has forecast that U.S. domestic production will rise by 430,000 bpd between December 2016 and December 2017.

Despite the advances in technology, another OPEC source said that shale producers who survived the downturn may be cautious about responding quickly to a change in oil prices.

A third OPEC source said it was difficult to see oil prices rising to $60 or above this year due to a lingering oversupply.

That source also said that even if shale oil production rose by more than 300,000 bpd the market could absorb it if it comes during the cold winter season when demand peaks.

"The catch is the timing. If this happened, as it is widely projected, during the fourth quarter, the impact will be manageable and could be absorbed by the market," the source said.

OPEC could extend its oil supply-reduction pact with non-members or even apply deeper cuts from July if global crude inventories fail to drop to a targeted level, OPEC sources have told Reuters.

The Gulf industry source said OPEC and non-OPEC members may extend the supply curb pact because a return to a pump-at-will oil policy would crash prices and destabilize markets again.

"If we go back to a race to raise production, then we haven't achieved anything and prices will fall again," the source said.

MEGGITT - FY16 beat and cash flow better. We put through 5% upgrades (436)..+5%

DERWENT LDN - Strong results plus flurry of activity shows +ve start (2800).+3%

GKN - 3% beat for op profit & mgmt PBT. Good enough for modest upgrades(353)+3%

SES - Spec of Intelsat (+25% a/h)/One Web consolidation is +ve (19.8).....+2-3%

BABCOCK - Trading since start of H2 has been inline. FY outlook unch (902)..+2%

TULLOW - Read from Kosmos call: Jubilee field producing 120kbd gross (275)..+2%

BOOHOO - Strong. Expect rev growth +50% v prev guided range of 46-48% (150).+2%

FERROVIAL - Modest beat on EBITDA & CF with Q4 traffic +6.5% v +4.5% (17.5).+2%

STEINHOFF - Decent. Rev ex acq grew 11%. Poundland performing ahead (5.3)...+2%

EUTELSAT - Spec of Intelsat (+25% a/h)/One Web consolidation is +ve (18.55).+2%

VALEO - Very bullish 2021 targets. To outperform auto prodn by 7% (59.1)..+1-2%

MERLIN PROPS - Announces 20c final div & lifts guide for '17 to 44c (11)....+1%

BLND - CC Land offered £1.02bn for the Cheesegrater; Co Star reports (616)..+1%

HISPANIA - Azora has proposed a value return plan. Nos look good (12.2).....+1%

V.MONEY - Beat cons with PBT 4% ahead. Capital & credit both strong (340)...+1%

ARKEMA - Solid. EBITDA 6.6%/revs 4.5% beat gives margin 13.1% v 12.9% (92.7)+1%

THALES - 2H operating beat & inline guidance. Positive acq comments (90.5)..+1%

TELEPIZZA - Group has beat on FY16 LFL sales but missed on margin (5.08)....+1%

ERSTE - Positive one offs but pre provision profit/guide is inline (27.72)..u/c

EDPR - Inline. Q4 load factors weak which explain weakness in op CF (6.2)...u/c

T.WIMPEY - Modest beat. PBT & EPS 2% beat with stronger commentary (178.4)..u/c

CRODA - Sales 2% ahead of cons with op profit broadly inline with est (3345)u/c

BODYCOTE - All looks bang inline. Nothing to move the dial this am (713)....u/c

MINERS - Copper -0.27%, Iron Ore fut -2.1% with BHP OZ +0.04%, RIO OZ -0.8%.-1%

ADIDAS - Struggling to sell Taylor Made (golf brand); New York post (156)...-1%

SALZGITTER - Inline with EBT 2% ahead but FY17 guide lower than exp (34.6)..-2%

ST JAMES - Mixed. Div ahead but miss on underlying cash generation (1050).-3-4%

SEADRILL - EBITDA 354m, slightly ahead of co guidance of US$340m (156.2)....-5%

MONY - Inline nos. Outlook weak saying group revs are behind last yr (327)..-7%

GO AHEAD - Half yr inline. FY exp lowered due to challenges in GTR (2056)..-10%

Aalberts +1-2% Sales inline, operating profit ahead, net ahead

Ackermans M/P Net €224.2m vs cons 224m, divi €2.04 vs cons €2.09

Adidas -1-2% Losses at golf unit TaylorMade are much worse

Applus -1% FY results broadly in line

Arkema +1% Q4 EBITDA 243m Cons 228m, FY17 guidance 1.3bn Cons 1.29bn

Babcock +1-2% No's inline, outlook for FY remains unchanged

Bodycote M/P FY revs 7% beat, margin lower

Brit Land M/P In discussions to sell Leadenhall building

BT -1-2% OFCOM plans to cut bills

Croda +1% FY operating profit 298.2m vs cons 296.3m

Derwent +1-2% NAV lower but better vs cons, couple of small disposals

Erste M/P 4Q net income EU85.6m vs EU204m, 2017 Guidance confirmed

Eurofins +1-2% FY revs €2.54bn vs cons 2.532, guidance confirmed

Ferrovial +1% EBITDA ahead, Net light, buyback of up to Eu275m

Fresnillo +1-2% Revs $1.91b vs cons 1.90b, guidance inline

George Fisher M/P Sales CHF3.74bn vs cons 3.76bn, outlook reads fine

GKN +1-2% Operating profit 2% ahead, revenues 4% ahead

Go-Ahead -3-5% 1h Numbers fine but co have lowered guidance

Greggs M/P FY sales inline, PTP and outlook inline

Hochtief +2-3% FY16 sales 1% ahead, guidance reads well

Intesa M/P Wants to Buy a Large Bank in Russia: Local Unit Chairman

IWG +1-2% FY16 a touch ahead of cons, pick-up in sales

Meggitt +7-10% Revs £1.99b cons 1.91b, FCF is 29% ahead, guidance strong

Merlin Prop +1% FY16 net 20% ahead, Occupancy down to 91.3% vs 95.7%

Moneysuper -5-7% FY inline, slower start, CS DOWNGRADE to NEUTRAL

Miners -1% Copper -0.30%, Brent UNCH, Iron Ore -1.90%, China -0.10%

Novo Nord M/P Files NDA application with Japanese Ministry of Health

Orior +1% FY16 Turnover 1% ahead, EBITDA 2.5% ahead

Oerlikon +1% FY Turnover inline, Order intake 2% ahead, EBITDA 2% ahead

Safran UNCH To buy-back remaining €200m of €450m mandate

Salzgitter -0.5% Q4 beat, Guidance below consensus

Seadrill -5% Numbers inline but outlook extremely challenging

St James -1-2% CEO Bellamy stepping down, NAV at 900.6p is 5% above cons

Taylor Wimp +0.5% Op profit inline, No change to medium term targets

Thales +0.5% FY ebit 1.354 vs 1.325-1.374 range, strong FCF

Valeo +1-2% Announces new long-term targets ahead of its Investor Day

Valora +1% EBIT CHF72m vs cons 70m, Outlook for 2017 is positive

*NOVARTIS-Has 13 potential blockbusters in pipeline says CEO........U/C 

*VALEO-Tgts 2021 Sales above 27b,FCF 3.7b 2017-21,Margin 9% '21.....+1% 

*EUROFINS-FY Rev 2.54b(2.53),Confirms 2017 targets,Trends +ve.......+1% 

*ACKERMANS-FY Net 224.2m(224),Div 2.04(2.09),outlook ok.............+1%

*HOCHTIEF-Q4 Sales 5.4b(5.42),Op Ebt 196.2m(170),NI 112.4m(88)......+1.5% 

*THALES-FY Ebit 1.354b(1.347),Sales 14.89b(14.85),Div 1.60..........+1% 

*A2A-FY Ebitda 1.22b(1.14),PT 350m,Net Debt 3.14b(3.19),FY 3/4......+2% 

*STRAUMANN-Ends partnership with MegaGen rec'd $30m repayment.......U/C

*OERLIKON-FY16 Sales 2.33b(2.34),Ebitda 334m(326),Net 388m(373).....+1% 

*AALBERTS-FY Ebita 298m,FCF 273m,Div 273m,Sees bolt-on acq's........+1% 

*ADIDAS-Struggling to sell TaylorMade Brand says New York Post......-1% 

*ELRINKLINGER-Prelims Q4 Rev 407.2m(403),Adj Ebit 39.5m(36.7).......-1.5%

*SALZGITTER-FY16 Rev 7.91b(8.18),EBT 53.2m(52.2),Net 56.8m(32)......-1.5% 

*HAPAG LLOYD-FY16 Ebitda 607m(569.7),Ebit 126m(82.82),Rev 7.3b(7.8).+1% 

*ARKEMA-FY NI 427m(384.5),Rev 7.54b(7.45),Div 2.05(2.05)............+1%

Safran Holders Should Push Co for Vote on Zodiac, TCI Says

Dow +0.08% S&P +0.10% Nasdaq +0.28% Russell +0.96%

Nikkei +0.06% Hang Seng -0.62% CSI +0.14% Shanghai +0.33%

Eur$ 1.0595 CNH 6.8568 CNY 6.8681 JPY 112.38 GBP 1.2424 CHF 1.0071 RUB 57.94 WTI$ 54.06

S&P -0.08% EuroStoxx +0.15% Dax +0.05% FTSE +0.09% SMI +0.14%

Macro :

- Euro Stoxx 50 ETF Call Volume Surges to Record on Block Trades

- David Tepper Says ‘Still Long Stocks, ’Still Short Bonds’: CNBC

- S&P 500 Upside Calls Show Bullish View Into March Expiration

- HSBC Recommends Emerging Markets vs Europe on Policy Uncertainty

- Greece Said to Expect Revised Bailout Proposal for Tuesday Talks

Keep an eye on :

- A2A IM : A2A Exceeds Ebitda Guidance, Focus Now on Plan: Kepler Cheuvreux

- AALB NA : Aalberts Forecasts Further Sustainable Profitable Growth

- ABG SM : Abengoa Begins Sale Process for Atlantica Yield: Expansion

- AKE FP : Arkema Confirms 2017 Ebitda Target as 2016 Net Beats Estimates

- CS FP : Axa Denies Lettre De L’Expansion’s Report on Online Bank Review

- BWO NO : BW Offshore 4Q Ebitda Stable; Net Loss Narrows

- DAI GY : Daimler Appoints Martin Daum to Head Trucks, Buses Units

- DLG GY : Dialog Semiconductor watching for bolt-ons

- EDPR PL : EDP Renovaveis 2016 Net Income Falls 66% Y/y to EU56m

- EDP PL : EDP Renovaveis Sells Stake in Wind Assets to China Three Gorges

- ZIL2 GY : ElringKlinger 4Q Revenue Rises, Swiss Business Improves

- ERF FP : Eurofins Adj. Net Misses Forecast, Dividend Below Estimates

- EURCAR FP : Europcar to Pay Dividend for 2016 of 50% of Net Income

- FER SM : Ferrovial 2016 Net EU376.2m, Misses EU406.5m Analyst Consensus

- FER SM : Ferrovial Proposes EU0.74/Shr Scrip Dividend

- HOT GY : Hochtief 4Q Profit Rises, Sees 2017 Sales Growth

- ISP IM : Intesa Not Seeking to Syndicate EU5.2b Glencore-Qatar Debt, Intesa Wants to Buy a Large Bank in Russia: Local Unit Chairman

- NOVN VX : Novartis Has 13 Potential Blockbusters in Pipeline: CEO in BaZ

- PRS SM : Prisa 2016 Net Loss EU67.9m; Operating Revenues Slip 1.2%

- SAF FP : Safran to Buy Back Up To EU200m of Its Shares by June 14

- SAZ GY : Salzgitter Sees 2017 Pretax Profit Rising to EU100m-EU150m

- SDRL NO : Seadrill Ebitda Beats; Challenging Reaching Deal Before Deadline

- SO IM : Sogefi 4Q Rev. +5.4%; Sees Mid-Single Digit Rev. Growth in 2017

- HO FP : Thales May Seek Acquisitions in Four Core Areas, CEO Caine Says, Thales FY Ebit Jumps 11%; Co. Sees Profit Rising Again in 2017

- FR FP : Valeo Targets 2021 Sales Above EU27b, Op. Margin About 9%

- VCT FP : Vicat FY Net Climbs 18%; Co. Sees Results Improving in 2017