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Thursday, July 1, 2021
Stars and Stripes Daily Headlines
First-Half Performance Derby
Here's how some notable performers did in the
first half of 2021:
Best-performing sector – Energy +47.6%
Worst-performing sector – Utilities +3.6%
Best-performing S&P 500 stock – Marathon Oil +112.4%
Worst-performing S&P 500 stock – Viatris
-21.9%
Best-performing DJIA stock – Goldman Sachs +42.7%
Worst-performing DJIA stock – Verizon Communications -4.2%
Best-performing market worldwide – Austria +23.1% (in USD)
Worst-performing market worldwide – Turkey -19.3% (in USD)
Best-performing commodity – Lean Hogs +86.4%
Worst-performing commodity – Cocoa -9.3%
Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index -1.6%
10-Year U.S. Treasury Yield +0.530 percentage point
Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) -30.4%
WTI Crude Oil +51.4%
U.S. Dollar +2.8%
Bitcoin +19.4%
June Jobs on Deck
By Nicholas Jasinski |
Thursday, July 1
Streaking. The
S&P 500 notched its sixth-straight record
high close today, on its longest winning streak since early February. The index
added 0.5%, ahead of the Nasdaq Composite's
0.1% rise and the Dow Jones Industrial Average's
0.4% gain.
The rally was broad, but S&P 500 oil and gas
stocks did particularly well today as oil prices hit a nearly two-year high,
above $75 a barrel. That rise came even as a highly anticipated meeting of
the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
and its allies was postponed to Friday. The United Arab Emirates reportedly disagreed with the slow pace that
other OPEC members wanted to increase oil production over the coming months and
year.
Global oil demand has been rising faster than
supply over the past year, pushing up prices. WTI crude oil—the
main U.S. benchmark—settled up 2.4%, at $75.23 a barrel today, its highest level
since October 2018 and up more than 50% since the start of the year.
It's not the long weekend yet. All eyes tomorrow
morning will be on the June jobs report from the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, which is expected to show a gain of
625,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 5.6%.
Here's Barron's Lisa
Beilfuss previewing the report:
By this point in the recovery, economists
anticipated around 1 million payroll gains per month. But since the start of
the year, job gains have been a fraction of that. Companies, facing booming
demand, have been complaining of a shortage of workers. The reasons run from
enhanced unemployment benefits and a lack of childcare to early retirements and
ongoing virus concerns.
June is the first month where unemployed workers
in many states lost the extra $300 per week in jobless pay, ahead of the
federal program’s September expiration. Economists say it’s too soon for the
early end of enhanced benefits to show up in hiring, and hiring challenges
connected to childcare won’t fully resolve before the fall. It is possible,
however, that vaccination numbers and falling Covid-19 cases brought some
people back into the workforce as companies raise pay and offer bonuses to
attract help.
Like in April and May, the limits on employment
growth in June were likely to have been largely on the supply side. Federal
Reserve officials and economists have predicted that that will
ease in the fall, when job gains could accelerate again. Markets seem to be
comfortable with that thesis as well—that all those jobs are coming back, just
not for a few more months.
Read the rest of Lisa's preview here.
DJIA: +0.38% to 34,633.53
S&P 500: +0.52% to 4,319.94
Nasdaq: +0.13% to 14,522.38
The Hot Stock: Diamondback
Energy +6.1%
The Biggest Loser: Walgreens Boots Alliance -7.4%
Best Sector: Energy +1.7%
Worst Sector: Consumer Staples -0.3%
Baylor Scott & White's CEO to retire at end of 2021
Baylor
Scott & White's CEO to retire at end of 2021
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Jim Hinton will
be replaced by the health system's president, Pete McCanna, effective Jan. 1,
2022. |
Startup insurer Bright Health made...
...$924.3 million during its initial public offering (IPO) last week, the most successful launch of any of the recent insurer IPOs. The company is now valued at $11.23 billion, according to Reuters. Bright Health currently enrolls 500,853 people in 12 states, with 99.8% enrolled in individual commercial risk-based products.
From AIS’s Directory of Health PlansCigna Doubles Down on Incentives to Spur Biosimilar Adoption
by Leslie Small
Cigna Corp. revealed in a recent press release that starting in July, it "will offer
all eligible customers the option to receive a one-time $500 debit card for
health care services and products if they decide to switch to a biosimilar or
another preferred medication." The insurer also gave preferred status on
its formularies to two approved biosimilars for Janssen's immunosuppressive
drug Remicade (infliximab), Avsola and Inflectra.
Background:
- The new "Shared Savings Program" comes months
after the American Journal of Managed Care obtained a letter sent to
providers by the insurer, stating that patients could receive a $500 debit
card if they switch from Novartis’ Cosentyx (secukinumab) to Eli Lilly
& Co.'s Taltz (ixekizumab) or an older biologic before Aug. 31 and
then refill the prescription before Dec. 31.
- At the time, Taltz was already preferred over Cosentyx
on most of Cigna's 2021 formularies, "so the $500 card program may
have been a signal that Cigna didn't feel that their traditional
utilization management tools were as effective at migrating existing
patients to a preferred drug when it comes to these chronic drugs,"
says Omar Hafez, managing director at Avalere Health.
Expert's view:
- According to Hafez, patient preferences as well as
"continuity of care/non-medical switching/step therapy laws" are
all barriers to moving patients from their existing biologics, "but
the $500 card could help convince some patients to switch on their own,
partially neutralizing these barriers."
- "The fact that Cigna is rolling this out to the
infliximabs could be a sign that Cigna was pleased with the results of
[the Taltz/Cosentyx] program and is trying to replicate it in a physician
administered drug setting," Hafez says.
Save the Date - engAGED Virtual Social Engagement Summit on July 22
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