Markt snapshot Wall Street vandaag

TOP NEWS
• U.S. House poised to impeach Trump for his role in Capitol assault
A week after President Donald Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote to impeach the president for his role in an assault on American democracy that stunned the nation and left five dead.

• As China COVID-19 cases rise, millions more placed under lockdown
China posted its biggest daily jump in COVID cases in more than five months, stepping up containment measures that have seen four cities put under lockdown, as the world's second biggest economy scrambles to head off a new wave of infections.

• YouTube suspends Trump's channel after violating policy on inciting violence
Alphabet's YouTube said on Tuesday it has suspended Donald Trump's channel as it violated policies for inciting violence after last week's assault on the U.S. Capitol by the president's supporters.

• U.S. tells European companies they face sanctions risk on Nord Stream 2 pipeline
The U.S. State Department this month told European companies which it suspects are helping to build Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that they face the risk of sanctions as the outgoing Trump administration prepares a final round of punitive measures against the project, two sources said on Tuesday.

• Bets on for Macau's Sands China after U.S. billionaire Adelson's death
Sands China's adjustment to life after the death of billionaire founder Sheldon Adelson, coming a year before the firm's gaming licence expires, could open up opportunities for Chinese investors to acquire a stake, industry executives said.


BEFORE THE BELL
U.S. stock index futures were in the red as investors digested a recent rally to record highs on bets of a snap-back in economic activity fueled by more economic stimulus and vaccine rollouts. Most European stocks inched up as merger talks powered gains in French grocer Carrefour and Spain's Telefonica, offsetting weakness in banking stocks. Japan's Nikkei closed higher with semiconductor shares leading the gains on expectations of strong demand recovery in the industry. Spot gold prices eased, as the dollar firmed and U.S. Treasury yields held close to recent highs, with investors awaiting for more details on American fiscal stimulus measures. Oilwas slightly higher as industry data showing a bigger-than-expected drop in U.S. crude inventories, but rising global COVID-19 infections capped gains. Consumer Price Index data is expected on U.S. economic calendar later in the day.


STOCKS TO WATCH
Results• Infosys Ltd: The company raised its annual revenue growth forecast and reported a higher quarterly profit, helped by large deal wins as demand for its digital services rose during the COVID-19 pandemic. Infosys said it expects annual revenue in the financial year to end-March 2021 to grow between 4.5% and 5% in constant currency terms, higher than 2% to 3% forecast earlier. Consolidated net profit climbed to 51.97 billion rupees from 44.57 billion rupees a year earlier. Revenue from operations rose 12.3% to 259.27 billion rupees.

• Target Corp: The company said that robust online sales during the holiday season resulted in a 17.2% rise in comparable sales for the retailer. The company has been investing heavily in its online business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital sales more than doubled as customers shopped across all its major categories including home goods, electronics and apparel. Store traffic increased 4.3% in the November-December period, Target said, adding that sales trends since January were strong.
IPOs
• Affirm Holdings Inc: The U.S. provider of installment loans to online shoppers said it sold shares in its initial public offering (IPO) at $49 apiece, above its target range, to raise $1.2 billion. Affirm said it offered 24.6 million shares of its Class A common stock, and that shares are due to begin trading on the Nasdaq later in the day under the symbol "AFRM". The IPO, the largest U.S. listing so far in 2021, signals that investor appetite for new stocks remains robust following a stellar 2020, which was the strongest IPO market in two decades.

Deals
• Hudson Executive Investment Corp: Online therapy app Talkspace agreed to go public through a merger with Doug Bernstein-backed blank-check firm Hudson Executive Investment Corp, in a deal valued at $1.4 billion, including debt. The deal includes $300 million by way of private investment by firms including Federated Hermes Kaufmann Funds, Jennison Associates, Woodline Partners and Deerfield. Talkspace will be listed on the Nasdaq and will trade under the new ticker symbol "TALK". J.P. Morgan Securities LLC was the lead financial advisor to Talkspace.

In Other News
• Albemarle Corp: Global supplies of lithium used to make electric vehicle (EV) batteries will fall short of projections for demand to more than triple by 2025 if prices do not rebound to fund expansions, an executive at industry leader Albemarle said on Tuesday. The warning laid bare the tension emerging in the EV industry between the companies that supply the lithium crucial for battery development and automakers who are hunting for discounts. Prices for lithium dropped last year due in part to the coronavirus pandemic, forcing Albemarle and peers to pause expansions, a step they will reverse only if the price is right, Eric Norris, who runs Albemarle's lithium business, told the Reuters Next conference. "We're at the ready to expand, but it's got to be at terms that make sense," Norris said.

• Alphabet Inc: YouTube said on Tuesday it has suspended Donald Trump's channel as it violated policies for inciting violence after last week's assault on the U.S. Capitol by the president's supporters. Online platforms and social media companies are distancing themselves from, and taking action against, those that encouraged or engaged in the violence in Washington, DC. Trump's channel is now prevented from uploading new videos or livestreams for a minimum of seven days, which may be extended, Youtube said in a statement. The company has also indefinitely disabled comments under videos on the channel. Separately, Google said it would support President-elect Joe Biden's efforts to pass a new U.S. immigration law and would help cover application fees for immigrants seeking lawful work under a threatened government program.

• Amazon.com Inc: The company has launched an online academy to train students for one of India's most competitive college entrance tests, the e-commerce giant said, as it taps a boom in virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. "Amazon Academy", available as a website and an Android smartphone app, will offer learning material, live lectures and assessments to help students prepare for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), which allows entry into top engineering schools across India. Content on the platform is currently available free and will remain free for "the next few months", Amazon India said in a statement.

• AstraZeneca PLC: Some Australian scientists have proposed delaying mass inoculation using the company's COVID-19 vaccine with a view to considering a different shot instead. Questions surrounding the vaccine in Australia have cast a cloud over its immunisation plans, with 53 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab already on order. Experts cited data showing the AstraZeneca jab had 62% efficacy compared with over 90% for a vaccine developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech. "The question is really whether it (AstraZeneca) is able to provide herd immunity. We are playing a long game here. We don't know how long that will take," said Professor Stephen Turner, president of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology (ASI).

• AT&T Inc & Comcast Corp & Fox Corp: Fox News Channel, which ended 2020 as the most-watched network in all of basic cable, finished third among cable news channels last week as power shifted in the U.S. Senate and rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Nielsen data showed on Tuesday. AT&T’s CNN topped cable networks with roughly 2.8 million viewers per day from Jan. 4 through Sunday, and 4.2 million in primetime, according to the ratings data. For that same period, Comcast's MSNBC attracted 2.3 million per day and 3.8 million in primetime. Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corp, drew about 1.7 million per day and 3.2 million in primetime.

• Facebook Inc: The adviser to the EU's top court has issued a recommendation to allow data protection agencies in any EU country to take legal action against Facebook or any other tech firm even if their regional headquarters are in a different EU state. The recommendation was issued after Facebook sought to rebuff Belgium's privacy regulator in a data case by saying its European Union headquarters were in Dublin and so Ireland was the lead authority in the EU for the U.S. social media giant. Advocate-General Michal Bobek, the adviser to the Court of Justice of the European Union, recommended that the data protection agency in any EU country should be able to take legal action in various situations even if they were not the lead authority.

• Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV: The Italian American carmaker said that the payment of a planned 2.9 billion euro special dividend as part of its merger with France's PSA had "become unconditional". The special dividend, worth 1.84 euros per share, will be paid on Jan. 29, Fiat Chrysler (FCA) said in a statement. FCA and Peugeot maker PSA expect to complete their $52 billion merger to create Stellantis, the automaker, on Saturday, after their investors gave their blessing to the plan last week. The record date has been set to Friday, the day before the merger finalisation, and only FCA investors on that date will be paid the extraordinary dividend.

• Intel Corp: The head of Intel's self-driving car subsidiary said on Tuesday the company wants to shift toward using its own radar-based technology and use a single lidar sensor per vehicle by 2025 in a bid to lower the cost of autonomous driving. Mobileye has taken a different strategy from many of its self-driving car competitors, with a current camera-based system that helps cars with adaptive cruise control and lane change assistance. Those systems are on the road today and are gathering data to help Mobileye map the roads in new cities. For more advanced systems, the company plans to add both radar sensors, which use radio waves to detect distance from objects, and lidar, a laser-based system that helps self-driving vehicles gain a three-dimensional view of the road.
• Johnson & Johnson: The company is facing unexpected delays in the manufacturing of its coronavirus vaccine and may not be able to supply as many doses it promised the U.S. government by spring, the New York Times reported. U.S. federal officials have been told that J&J has fallen behind its original production schedule and will not catch up until the end of April, when it agreed to deliver more than 60 million doses, the NYT reported, citing people familiar with the situation. Separately, Johnson & Johnson is likely to apply for EU approval for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in February, a top lawmaker said.​
• Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc: The U.S. government will buy 1.25 million additional doses of the company’s COVID-19 antibody cocktail for about $2.63 billion, bringing the total supply of the treatment to more than 1.5 million doses. The cocktail, a combination of two antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab, was authorized in November for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Department of Health and Human Services said the doses will be delivered in the first half of 2021 to treat non-hospitalized, high-risk COVID-19 patients.

• Sinovac Biotech Ltd: A unit of Sinovac could double annual production capacity of its CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine to 1 billion doses by February, the group's chairman said. More than 7 million doses of CoronaVac vaccine have so far been supplied to regions including the city of Beijing and Guangdong province, Sinovac Biotech Chairman Yin Weidong told a news conference. Separately, the company defended the safety and efficacy of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine, after researchers in Brazil released late-stage clinical data showing efficacy that was much lower than initially announced.

• Walmart Inc & Walt Disney Co: The companies joined other major companies in indefinitely suspending donations to U.S. lawmakers who voted against President-elect Joe Biden's election certification. Walmart said on Tuesday that in light of last week's attack on the U.S. Capitol, its "political action committee is indefinitely suspending contributions to those members of Congress who voted against the lawful certification of state electoral college votes." Disney said in a statement that in the "immediate aftermath of that appalling siege, members of Congress had an opportunity to unite — an opportunity that some sadly refused to embrace. In light of these events, we have decided we will not make political contributions in 2021 to lawmakers who voted to reject the certification of the Electoral College votes."


ANALYSIS
Trump suspension to test Twitter CEO's truce with investors
Twitter’s decision to suspend President Donald Trump's account will test a truce made last year between CEO Jack Dorsey and top shareholders of the social media company which allowed Dorsey to remain in the top job.


ANALYSTS' RECOMMENDATION
Boot Barn Holdings Inc: Jefferies raises target price to $68 from $58, following the company's pre-announcement of a significant beat in third quarter fiscal year, on both top and bottom-line expectations.

Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc: Piper Sandler cuts rating to neutral from overweight, reflecting the uncertainty regarding the company's direction.

ConocoPhillips: RBC raises target price to $58 from $55, noting the company's diverse portfolio in a decade of drilling inventory which is capable of generating economic and shareholder returns.

Huntington Bancshares Inc: Piper Sandler raises target price to $17 from $15, to reflect higher bank equity valuations.


ECONOMIC EVENTS (All timings in U.S. Eastern Time)
0830 (approx.) Core CPI mm, SA for Dec: Expected 0.1%; Prior 0.2%
0830 (approx.) Core CPI yy, NSA for Dec: Expected 1.6%; Prior 1.6%
0830 (approx.) CPI Index, NSA for Dec: Expected 260.428; Prior 260.229
0830 (approx.) Core CPI Index, SA for Dec: Prior 269.89
0830 (approx.) CPI mm, SA for Dec: Expected 0.4%; Prior 0.2%
0830 (approx.) CPI yy, NSA for Dec: Expected 1.3%; Prior 1.2%
0830 (approx.) Real weekly earnings mm for Dec: Prior 0.1%
0830 (approx.) CPI mm NSA for Dec: Prior -0.060%
0830 (approx.) CPI Index SA for Dec: Prior 260.820
0830 (approx.) CPI Wage Earner for Dec: Prior 253.826
1100 (approx.) Cleveland fed CPI for Dec: Prior 0.1%
1100 Refinitiv IPSOS PCSI for Jan 2021: Prior 48.12
1400 Federal budget for Dec: Prior -$145.00 bln


COMPANIES REPORTING RESULTS
No major S&P 500 companies are scheduled to report. ​


CORPORATE EVENTS (All timings in U.S. Eastern Time)
1100 Commercial Metals Co: Annual Shareholders Meeting
1500 Veeva Systems Inc: Shareholders Meeting


EX-DIVIDENDS
BankUnited Inc: Amount $0.23
IDEX Corp: Amount $0.50
Johnson Outdoors Inc: Amount $0.21