A fire at a liquid natural gas shipping facility in Texas last week has sent U.S. natural-gas prices freefalling after operator Freeport LNG revealed the disaster “would knock out the facility until late this year, greatly reducing export capacity.” Indeed, the Freeport closure cuts overall U.S. LNG export capacity by a sixth, which means “a lot of shale gas that had been slated to be shipped abroad will now be available to traders to sock away in domestic storage facilities for winter when furnaces are fired up and demand is highest.” It also hinders U.S. efforts to provide new sources of LNG to its European allies - WSJ and Bloomberg and NYTimes
Markets generally stabilized on Tuesday after a brutal Monday that saw the S&P 500 dip into Bear territory (down 20% from its recent peak in January) - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
Some perspective on how bear markets have played out in the years since the Great Depression - NYTimes
Meanwhile, Wall Street analysts are watching several indicators for signs of what’s to come. It all starts with the Fed’s latest move on interest rates, which is set to drop this afternoon - NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch and Marketplace
Rough decision for Nigeria from a London High Court judge, who determined on Tuesday that JPMorgan was under no obligation to “restore funds” that Nigeria claimed “former officials had looted from a government bank account.” In her decision, Judge Sara Cockerill noted that “although JPMorgan had flagged the transactions [in question] to regulators as potentially related to criminal activity, it had not breached its duty under British law to protect its customer by completing them” - NYTimes
Germany’s competition authorities announced this week that they’ve opened a probe into “Apple over concerns that its new policies requiring other app developers to clear a higher bar to track user data might impede competition.” The investigation sets up an interesting battle between officials concerned about antitrust behavior and those placing a premium on user privacy – Law360
Well, so much for that. Uber and Lyft’s nearly $20 million campaign to make Massachusetts the next battleground for a gig-worker bill that would classify their drivers as independent contractors met with unceremonious preemptive defeat on Tuesday when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that the measure “violated state law and was not eligible to be put to voters this fall” - NYTimes and TechCrunch
Crypto exchange Coinbase announced this week that it will terminate some 18% of its work force “amid depressed markets and concerns of a looming recession.” As we’ve noted here, cryptocurrencies have been hit particularly hard during the recent downturn on Wall Street, as investors’ appetite for digital currencies has dried up in favor of safer bets - NYTimes and WSJ
While we’re talking crypto, interesting development in the space, as SEC Chair Gary Gensler is on record expressing concern “that efforts in Congress to write legislation for the cryptocurrency industry could compromise regulations that govern the broader capital markets” - WSJ
FedEx will increase its dividend payments and “adding board members under pressure from activist investor D.E. Shaw Group, moves that come shortly after longtime leader Fred Smith stepped aside as chief executive” - WSJ and Bloomberg
Because sometimes a generation of stoner comedies can really make a difference . . . ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Cheech - NYTimes
Stay safe,
MDR
The Robins Kaplan Financial Daily Dose features top stories and latest news headlines in financial markets, banking, securities and technology topics.
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