ANALYSIS: S&P falls for seventh day, suffers biggest weekly plunge since 2008 crisis

February 29, 2020  02H:47  GMT/ZULU

by Judith Stein and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters Business News Analysts, New York

New York - The S&P 500 fell for the seventh straight day on Friday and the benchmark index suffered its biggest weekly drop since the 2008 global financial crisis on growing fears the fast-spreading coronavirus could push the economy into recession, although stocks regained some ground right at the end of a volatile session.

The Dow and the Nasdaq also registered their deepest weekly percentage losses since October 2008.

The Nasdaq managed to eke out an 0.01% gain after plunging as much as 3.5% during the session. After falling as much as 4.2% - more than 1,000 points - the Dow ended the day down 1.4%.

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But, after the bell, S&P 500 e-mini futures EScv1 were up about 1% and the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF was up 1.3% in extended trade.

On Thursday, all three indexes had confirmed corrections by finishing more than 10% below their closing record highs.

Equities found some support after U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the fundamentals of the American economy remained strong and that the central bank would act as appropriate to provide support.

A screen shows the Dow Jones Industrial Average during trading on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., February 28, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

But investors had spent most of the day dumping equities for the safety of U.S. Treasuries, pushing 10-year yields to their fourth record low this week. [US/]

The virus spread further on Friday, with cases reported for the first time in at least six countries across four continents, battering markets and leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise its impact risk alert to “very high.”

Some investors voiced concerns about heading into a weekend where they could not trade on new reports about the virus.

“To get an all-clear sign, the market needs evidence it’s under control, no flaring up in new countries and that we don’t get a significant outbreak in the United States,” said Jack Janasiewicz, chief portfolio strategist for Natixis Investment Managers.

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Janasiewicz saw the spread of the virus China as a prompt to reduce exposure to riskier assets, and said the next milestone for further risk cuts would be a U.S. outbreak.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 357.28 points, or 1.39%, to 25,409.36; the S&P 500 .SPX lost 24.54 points, or 0.82%, to 2,954.22; and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 0.89 point, or 0.01%, to 8,567.37.

The CBOE volatility index, also known as Wall Street’s fear gauge ended the day near its session low, up 0.95 point at 40.11, after rising as high as 49.48.

Of the S&P’s 11 major sectors, the rate-sensitive financial index .SPSY weighed the most on the benchmark S&P 500 index, ending the day down 2.6%. The utilities sector .SPLRCU was the S&P’s biggest percentage loser with a 3.3% drop. Real estate .SPLRCR and consumer staples .SPLRCS - also rate-sensitive sectors that are often seen as safe havens - both fell more than 2%.

Slideshow (4 Images)

Yet the energy .SPNY, technology .SPLRCT and communications services index .SPLRCL all showed gains for the day.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 3.39-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.95-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted no new 52-week highs and 129 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 19 new highs and 538 new lows.

Trading was brisk on U.S. exchanges with 19.31 billion shares changing hands compared with a 9.25 billion-share average for the last 20 days.

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Nigeria's Nollywood film industry reels in foreign investors

Date created : 07/07/2019 - 08:48  GMT/ZULU

Foreigners want a part in Nollywood's tales of romance and riches AFP/File

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Lagos 

by Tokun Lawal and Biodun Iginla, France24

Nigeria's film industry, dubbed Nollywood, has long kept viewers entertained with tales of romance and riches, and now foreign investors are increasingly looking for a part of the action.

US giant Netflix, France's Canal+ and China's StarTimes are among those making moves in the globe's second most-prolific film industry, which churns out more than 2,500 films each year and is topped only by India's Bollywood.

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At an event in Nigeria's economic capital Lagos this week potential investors from France mingled with local directors and politicians as they heard about the possibilities on offer.

"The revenues from the box office rose by 36 percent between 2017 and 2018 from $17.3 million to $23.6 million," Chijioke Uwaegbute, an expert on the industry at PwC Nigeria, told those gathered.

"Nowhere in the world will you see this kind of opportunities and growth."

Traditionally, Nollywood films have been low-budget productions, often shot in just a couple of days at a cost of several thousand dollars and marred by poor sound and image quality.

Rampant piracy and the widespread circulation of unlicensed copies has eaten into profits and put off investors from increasing funding.

But higher quality Nigerian-made films have in recent years been having far more impact at the box office in a nation with a potential market of almost 200 million people.

The Wedding Party and its sequel Wedding Party 2 released by director Kemi Adetiba in 2016 and 2017 generated over $2 million, beating out US blockbusters for the first time.

Following up on that success the comedy Chief Daddy by Niyi Akinmolayan brought in some $600,000 last year.

The figures remain miniscule compared to the vast sums grossed by Hollywood hits, and the Oscars are a distant dream, but increasingly upper and middle class Nigerians who can afford the tickets seem willing to pay to go see local productions.

And it is these films with higher production value that are attracting the investors from overseas.

- 'Real appetite' -

Canal Olympia, a subsidiary of French media giant Vivendi, runs cinemas and entertainment venues across the continent and includes at least one Nollywood film in its programming each week.

The group will next year open two cinemas in Nigeria, a country with only one screen per million people where power shortages and high land-costs have made such ventures complicated.us at France24. 

"It is very important for us to be close to Nollywood," Simon Minkowski, development director at Canal Olympia, told us at France24. 

"But beyond just distribution, there is a real appetite to produce the content made by Africans in Africa."

Laurent Sicouri, head of acquisitions at Canal+, said he was in Lagos to "evaluate the production" of Nigerian cinema.

The chain has already upped its interest in films from the country and offers Nollywood TV to its subscribers in Francophone Africa.

While there is interest from Europe, most of the attention for directors and producers in Nigeria is focused on trying to attract Netflix.

The online entertainment provider has already acquired the rights to a string of Nollywood productions and in January released the first Netflix Nigerian original film, Lionheart by actor-director Genevieve Nnaji.

Those involved in the industry are hoping that the influx of foreign interest will help push their output to a new level.

But Serge Noukoue, founder of the Paris-based Nollywood Week film festival, warned that the industry needs to wise up to take full advantage.

"Now that Nollywood is attracting investors the Nigerians have to learn to better protect their interests so that there is not just a pure exploitation of their content," he said.

"At the moment, they sell to Netflix and that is the end of the story."

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Analysis: Wall Street sinks and Trump is his own worst enemy

April 3, 2018  06H:45  GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Judith Stein and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters Financial Analysts, San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO  - As far as the stock market is concerned, U.S. President Donald Trump is, right now, his own worst enemy.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S. for the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

The president - who frequently touted Wall Street’s rally following his 2016 election victory - was partly blamed for a sharp stock selloff on Monday that investors believe is likely to continue, deepening cracks in a nine-year-old bull run.

The selling was sparked by escalating fears of a trade war as China slapped tariffs on a host of U.S. goods as Trump prepares to impose tariffs of more than $50 billion on Chinese imports, and by Trump’s renewed criticism of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O).

“The president’s behavior is now beginning to impact the capital markets - both the averages and individual equities,” said Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management in Palm Beach, Florida.

Particularly worrisome to investors on Monday: more weakness in the tech sector, which led the market up in recent months, and a breach below a major S&P 500 technical level.

In a Twitter post, Trump attacked Amazon for a second time in three days over the pricing of its deliveries through the United States Postal Service and promised unspecified changes.

Amazon’s stock slumped 5.2 percent and led the S&P 500 and Nasdaq down, pressuring other high-growth, technology-related stocks, including Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Facebook Inc (FB.O). Outcry in recent weeks over Facebook’s handling of data about its users has shaken the tech sector with fears of greater governmental oversight.

People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

“(One) big factor is Trump further going after the tech sector, namely Amazon,” said Tom di Galoma, managing director at Seaport Global Holdings in New York. “It casts a shadow effectively around all of the tech sector.”

TECH SECTOR PAIN = MARKET PAIN

The selloff in technology-related stocks was seen as a particularly worrisome sign for investors who have banked on that sector continuing to drive the broader market.

Amazon.com Inc1371.99

AMZN.ONASDAQ

-75.35(-5.21%)

• AMZN.O
• MSFT.O
• AAPL.O
• FB.O
• .SPX

“It’s very significant,” said Michael Purves, chief global strategist at Weeden & Co in New York. “Selling tech is not a sector rotation story, its a sell-the-market story.”

Technology stocks have been widely viewed in recent months as a “crowded trade” - with most investors having the same opinion, increasing the potential for a volatile selloff if sentiment changes.

“What we’ve learned over the past two weeks is just how overweight investors were in technology,” said Nicholas Colas, co-founder of Datatrek Research, New York.

Investors saw more selling pressure ahead, particularly after the S&P 500 .SPX dipped below a major technical level, the 200-day moving average, for the first time since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. The index closed at 2,582, for a year-to-date decline of 3.4 percent.

“We have been pounding on the 200-day for the last six sessions and now we’ve broken through,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas. There may be support around the 2,537 level, he said, “but then below that we may be looking at 2,500 or so again, which is pretty scary.”

In Trump’s first year as president, the S&P 500 surged 24 percent on bets he would boost the economy with fiscal spending, deregulation and deep tax cuts. Trump tweeted frequently about the stock market as it rallied through 2017. But since a selloff in February, he has been noticeably silent.

But this bull market has frequently staged swift recoveries, and some were poised for opportunity.

“I’m taking advantage of these markets and am heavily overweighted financials and banks,” said David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer Of Cumberland Advisors in Sarasota, Florida. “I didn’t buy today, we’re in freefall, but I might tomorrow.”