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BEFORE THE OPEN

Pre-Market:

US Investor % Bullish Sentiment:
43.20% for Wk of Mar 21 2024 (Last week: 45.90%)

Market Recap:

• Stock futures flat as S&P 500 eyes best Q1 in 5 years.

• RH jumps 8% despite missing estimates, hints at strong 2024 demand.

• Wednesday's rally: S&P 500 up 0.86%, Dow +1.22%, Nasdaq +0.51%.

• 2nd winning quarter, 5th consecutive winning month.

• S&P 500 up 10% in Q1, best since 2019; Dow +5.5%, Nasdaq +9.3%.

• Monthly gains: S&P 500 up 3%, Nasdaq and Dow both over 1.9%.

• Await jobless claims, GDP, consumer sentiment data Thursday.

• Economic data on Good Friday: personal income, spending, consumption expenditures.

EARNINGS

What we’re watching:

• Today: Oxford Industries (OXM), Semtech (SMTC)

  • Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) - earnings of $.82 per share (-29.3% YoY). Revenue forecast to fall 2.9% to $35.9B.

Full earnings calendar here

HEADLINES

Dow Surges More than 450 Points, S&P 500 Closes at a Fresh Record

Amazon Spends $2.75B on AI Startup Anthropic in its Largest Venture Investment Yet

• Baltimore port crisis: Carriers put U.S. companies on hook for cargo pickup (more)

  • Rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will likely take years (more)

• Biden admin announces $1.5 billion loan for first reopening of a shuttered nuclear plant (more)

• Yellen warns China against flood of cheap green energy exports (more)

  • China’s economy is on track for ‘strong’ March performance (more)

  • US businessmen were participating in a 'Chinese Communist spectacle' (more)

• Japan's yen dips to 34-year low against US dollar (more)

• Paramount global credit rating cut to junk status by S&P (more)

• Short sellers target Reddit shares as stock slips (more)

• Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months (more)

• BlackRock issued warning over 'misleading statements' tied to ESG funds (more)

• Fast-food companies seeing low-income diners pare orders (more)

• Disney agrees to settle Florida lawsuit with special district backed by DeSantis (more)

TOGETHER WITH RUNDOWN AI

DEALFLOW

M+A | Investments

• UBS sells $8 billion of Credit Suisse assets to Apollo (more)

• J&J in talks to buy Shockwave Medical (more)

• SIX Group CEO rules out Allfunds bid amid M&A hunt (more)

• Keysight to launch an offer for London-listed Spirent (more)

• Spindrift explores strategic options including sale (more)

• Ardian-backed lab chain Inovie considers €3 billion sale (more)

• Euro freezer king Nomad Foods looks to US for acquisitions (more)

• Louis Dreyfus to buy Brazil’s top instant coffee exporter (more)

• Woolpert Acquires Murphy Geospatial (more)

• ONE Group acquires owner of Benihana (more)

• Further, a data, cloud, and AI company, acquired Pandata, a company specializing in AI design and development (more)

• Flare, a threat exposure management company, acquired Foretrace, a data exposure company (more)

• Davidson Kempner invests in Upchurch Companies (more)

• Battery Ventures invests in Mobius Institute (more)

• One Equity Partners invests in CBM (more)

VC

• Avenzo Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotech company, closed a $150M Series A-1 financing (more)

• Observe, a SaaS observability company, raised $115M in Series B funding (more)

• Aloha, a Climate Neutral Certified plant-based protein brand, received $68M investment from Semcap Food & Nutrition (more)

• Nourish, a provider of a telenutrition platform that connects people to registered dietitians, raised $35M in Series A funding (more)

• Brightside Health, a telemental health company, raised $33M in Series C funding (more)

• Fireworks AI, a production AI platform helping developers build new AI solutions, raised $25M in Series A funding (more)

• Evoloh, a cleantech company that manufactures electrolyzer stacks for hydrogen production, raised $20M in funding (more)

• Gather AI, a provider of computer vision and AI-powered warehouse inventory monitoring, raised $17M in Series A-1 in funding (more)

• Elixir Games, a web3 gaming distribution platform, closed a $14M Seed funding round (more)

• Binarly, a provider of an AI-powered firmware and software supply chain security platform, raised $10.5M in Seed funding (more)

• BOB (“Build on Bitcoin”), a hybrid Layer-2 powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, closed a $10M seed funding (more)

• Bedrock Security, a data security company, raised $10M in Seed funding (more)

• Nominal, a company providing generative AI to bridge the gap between ERP systems and the financial management needs of modern businesses, raised $9.2M in Seed funding (more)

• ValidMind, a provider of an AI and model risk management platform for financial services, raised $8.1M in Seed funding (more)

• Evari, a developer of heat pump turbocompressors, raised $7.5M in funding (more)

• Sertis, a managing general agency (MGA) focused on innovation in the insurance industry, raised $3.2M in funding (more)

• Be Fulfilled, a full-service platform helping creators grow their businesses, received financing from Decathlon Capital Partners (more)

CRYPTO

Powered by MILKROAD - Get smarter about crypto in 5 min.

• Sam Bankman-Fried is about to learn how much prison time he gets for FTX crimes (more)

• Crypto traders dismiss waning ETF inflows as Bitcoin holds steady over $70K (more)

• The SEC can sue Coinbase for offering unregistered securities, judge rules (more)

BULLISH BITES

💻 Work life: The ‘always on, always in’ era is over.

✈️ Inside: How Boeing's leadership was 'fired' by its own customers.

🤖 Stability AI: Inside the startup’s journey from AI darling to cautionary tale.

🥽 First adopters: The principles of wearable etiquette.

🪺 Limited edition: Fabergé is releasing new Fabergé eggs in honor of James Bond movies. The first can be yours for the very specific amount of $148,383. *

DAILY SHARES

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