Stocks Waver, With Tech Extending Gains – Wall Street Journal, 6/8/2021

• A jump in technology shares pushed the Nasdaq Composite index up 0.1% Tuesday morning, pointing to a third consecutive day of gains for the index of technology and growth stocks.
• The broad S&P 500 index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both slipped.
• On Monday, the blue-chip index briefly climbed into record territory before ending the session down 0.4%.
• In corporate news, Tesla rose 0.2% after data from the China Passenger Car Association showed sales of electric cars in China surged by 177% in May. The electric car maker sold over 33,000 vehicles that were made in China last month.
• Shares of Clover Health Investments soared 79% after the healthcare company emerged as the latest darling for retail traders on Reddit forums, building on its 32% gain Monday.
• Other so-called meme stocks rose, with GameStop up about 17% and AMC Entertainment Holdings rising more than 3%.
• In bond markets, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 1.536%, from 1.570% Monday. Bond yields drop when prices climb.
• Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.4%, putting it on course to close at a fresh all-time high.
• In Asia, stock indexes mostly edged lower by the close of trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 slid 0.2%. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index was relatively unchanged from the prior day. China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.5%.

Global Wealth Gap Likely to Widen as Major Economies Power Recovery, World Bank Says – Wall Street Journal, 6/8/2021

• Global inequality is likely to widen this year as a small number of major economies power the fastest recovery in 80 years while many poorer countries struggle to return to pre-pandemic income levels, the World Bank said.
• The global economy is set to grow by 5.6% this year, up from a January forecast of 4.1%, marking the fastest recovery from five post-World War II recessions, the bank said Tuesday in its semiannual Global Economic Prospects report.
• While about 90% of advanced economies are expected to regain their pre-pandemic per capita income levels by 2022, only about one-third of emerging-market and developing nations are likely to do so, the bank said, in part because of uneven access to Covid-19 vaccines.
• The Covid-ravaged global economy shrank an estimated 3.5% in 2020, the bank said. While the rebound is forecast to continue next year with growth of 4.3%, the level of output will remain 2% below pre-pandemic projections.
• Growth in the U.S., the world’s largest economy, is projected at 6.8% this year, up from the bank’s January forecast of 3.5%. Growth is forecast at 8.5% in China, the second-largest economy, 8.3% in India and 4.2% in the euro area.
• By contrast, the bank cut its growth forecast for low-income countries—those with an annual gross national income per capita of $1,035 or less—to 2.9% this year from an earlier projection of 3.4%. Many of those countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The bank forecasts the global inflation rate to increase to 3.9% this year from 2.5% during 2020.

Internet Outage Hits Major Websites – Wall Street Journal, 6/8/2021

• Dozens of websites in the U.S. and Europe flicked back on after being offline for roughly an hour early Tuesday, following an internal glitch at a major cloud-services provider.
• Sites including the U.K. government’s main public-services portal and several major U.S. and European news outlets, such as the New York Times and Le Monde, were inaccessible to at least some users for about an hour, beginning around 6 a.m. Eastern Time.
• Fastly, the operator of a content-delivery network service that many websites use to help speed the loading of their webpages for users, appears to have been at the root of the problems.
• Joshua Bixby, Fastly’s chief executive, reached in the middle of the outage, said the company was investigating the issue, but that it wasn’t attack-related.

Tesla’s China Sales Bounce Back Despite Consumer Backlash – Wall Street Journal, 6/8/2021

• Tesla’s sales in China rebounded in May after a short slump, a boost for the electric-vehicle maker as it looks to overcome its first major stumble in one of its most important markets.
• Tesla delivered 21,936 cars to Chinese customers in May, the China Passenger Car Association said Tuesday, almost double the number sold the month before, but still well below the near 36,000 it shipped in March.
• Tesla faced a backlash in April when one of its customers staged a protest at Auto Shanghai, China’s premier auto-industry expo. Images of Zhang Yazhou standing atop a Model 3, berating the company for allegedly selling her a vehicle with defective brakes before being dragged away by security guards, went viral on Chinese social media.
• Tesla had outpaced its Chinese rivals in the first three months of the year, selling 69,280 vehicles.
• In comparison, BYD sold 53,380 passenger EVs in the quarter, while the U.S.-listed startup trio of Li Auto, NIO and XPeng collectively sold 45,979.
• But in April and May Tesla fell behind. BYD sold 56,715 EVs during the two-month period, while the three startups sold a combined 34,528 cars—more than Tesla’s 33,607.

Ford’s Maverick Truck Offers Alternative to Hulking Pickups – Wall Street Journal, 6/8/2021

• Pickup trucks in the U.S. have trended for years toward the bigger, brawnier and more expensive. Now, Ford Motor is reversing course, with plans to sell a diminutive hybrid truck with a price tag—and gas mileage—similar to that of a compact car.
• Ford on Tuesday revealed the Maverick, a pickup truck with a body comparable in size to a compact SUV, such as a Ford Escape. Its starting price of $19,995 will make it the least-expensive vehicle in Ford’s U.S. lineup when it goes on sale this fall.
• The nation’s No. 2 auto maker is betting that some people who own sedans or small sport-utility vehicles would like the versatility of having a flatbed, but don’t have the budget or garage space for a big, gas-guzzling truck, such as Ford’s F-150 or midsize Ranger pickup.
• The Maverick will be built on the same basic frame as Ford’s Focus car. The frame also underpins the company’s popular Escape SUV and the new Bronco Sport, released last year.
• The vehicle will come standard with a hybrid system, which saves fuel by combining a gas engine with a small battery pack and electric motor. Ford says the system will deliver about 40 miles per gallon in city driving.

Southwest Airlines orders 34 more 737 MAX aircraft from Boeing – Reuters, 6/8/2021

• Southwest Airlines said on Tuesday it had ordered 34 new Boeing 737 MAX 7 aircraft to receive in 2022, as the U.S. airline prepares for a vaccine-driven recovery in travel demand.
• The move brings the carrier’s total orders for the MAX 7 to 234.
• Southwest said it expected revenue to continue to improve in June, driven mainly by leisure travel.
• It also tightened its second-quarter average core cash burn forecast to between $1 million and $2 million per day, compared with the previous range of $1 million to $3 million per day.

Apple in talks with CATL, BYD over battery supplies for its electric car – Reuters, 6/8/2021

• Apple is in early-stage talks with China’s CATL and BYD, about the supply of batteries for its planned electric vehicle, four people with knowledge of the matter said.
• The discussions are subject to change and it is not clear if agreements with either CATL or BYD will be reached, said the people who declined to be named as the discussions are private.
• Apple is in favor of using lithium iron phosphate batteries that are cheaper to produce because they use iron instead of nickel and cobalt which are more expensive, the four people said.
• People familiar with the matter have previously said Apple’s planned EV could include its own breakthrough battery technology. It was not immediately clear if the discussions with CATL and BYD involved Apple’s own technology or designs.

Apple’s Tim Cook Kicks Off WWDC by Doubling Down on Privacy – Wall Street Journal, 6/8/2021

• A year after angering software developers with new privacy features aimed at making it harder to track iPhone users’ digital footprints, Apple Inc. on Monday doubled down with even more changes that will roil the digital-advertising industry.
• Among the many updates to popular apps, such as Maps, Wallet and Weather, the Cupertino, Calif., technology company said it would introduce later this year additional features to help users control how their online data is used by third-parties.
• Those changes include allowing users to shut off the ability of marketers to see if and when an email is opened through Apple’s Mail app—which could have a large effect on campaigns from businesses and publishers—and to hide IP address information to prevent tracking web usage on the Safari browser.
• Apple also said premium iCloud users will be able to access the internet with a feature called Private Relay that would block network providers from using IP addresses and web usage to create a user profile for tracking.

U.S. Retrieves Millions in Ransom Paid to Colonial Pipeline Hackers – Wall Street Journal, 6/8/2021

• U.S. authorities have recovered millions of dollars in digital currency paid to the hackers who hit a major East Coast fuel pipeline with a ransomware attack last month, in a law-enforcement operation that officials said demonstrated progress undermining criminals’ ability to disrupt American commerce and critical infrastructure for profit.
• Investigators seized about 64 bitcoin, valued at roughly $2.3 million, from a virtual wallet—the alleged proceeds from the ransom hack carried out by a suspected Russian-based criminal gang on Colonial Pipeline Co., the Justice Department said.
• “The extortionists will never see this money,” Stephanie Hinds, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, where the seizure warrant was obtained, told reporters. “This case demonstrates our resolve to develop methods to prevent evildoers from converting new methods of payment into tools and extortion for undeserved profits.”
• The ransom amounted to 75 bitcoin, a person familiar with the payment said, of which 64 was recovered. Because the cryptocurrency fluctuates dramatically in value, the dollar value recovered was only a little more than half the dollar value of the ransom payment.

Most Coal Plants in Biggest U.S. Grid Are Becoming Money-Losers – Bloomberg, 6/8/2021

• Most of the coal plants that feed the biggest U.S. power grid will soon no longer be economic to run after prices in a key auction plunged to the lowest in 11 years.
• Of the 44 coal-fired power plants on the grid operated by PJM Interconnection LLC, 32 will be unprofitable in 2023, the first full year that will be affected by results released last week for its capacity auction.
• That represents 38 gigawatts of capacity out of 47 total gigawatts supplied by coal, and is quadruple the number of money-losing coal facilities now, according to a BloombergNEF analysis on Monday.
• More than 8 gigawatts of coal capacity failed to clear the auction after prices tumbled to $50 a megawatt-day for the year starting in June 2022, down from $140 a megawatt-day in the last auction, in 2018.