The Traderszone Network

NEW YORK (Reuters/IFR) – U.S. bank stocks and bonds took a pounding on Monday as recession fears compounded concern about their exposure to the energy sector and expectations that global interest rates are unlikely to rise quickly. The S&P 500 financial index, already the worst performing sector this year, fell 2.6 percent and now stands more than 20 percent from its July 2015 high, confirming the sector is in the grip of a bear market. Shares of Morgan Stanley slid 6.9 percent in their largest one-day drop since November 2012, while rival Goldman Sachs fell 4.6 percent.

Shares of cloud services companies such as Splunk Inc and Salesforce.com Inc had also declined sharply on Friday. “I think that what we see is a crisis in valuation for the highest multiple stocks, where valuations … had been driven too far for thematic reasons, what investors perceived as the hottest growth areas,” Avondale Partners analyst Randle Reece said.

Tesla Motors Inc faces a pivotal moment Wednesday in its fight to convince skeptical investors that it can still win against traditional auto makers in the competition to reshape the auto business. The …

Facing a hostile Congress in an election year, President Barack Obama will be hard-pressed to push through many of the proposals in his final budget as U.S. leader. Added funding could benefit suppliers such as Delphi Automotive, Autoliv and Mobileye, which are developing safety features for autonomously driven cars, and Lear, which makes electrical power systems, according to Brian Sponheimer, analyst at Gabelli & Co.

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Investors spooked by a steep sell-off in enterprise tech stocks will get a fresh glimpse of the health of technology spending on Wednesday when bellwether Cisco Systems Inc posts its quarterly results. The networking equipment maker is the largest of several companies reporting this week that have benefited from the trend toward information technology (IT) delivered over the Internet, widely known as cloud computing.

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The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Monday it is expanding a defect investigation of 856,000 Fiat Chrysler SUVs and cars because the vehicles may roll away after drivers exit, thinking they have put the transmission in Park. The government’s investigation covers the 2014-15 Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV, 2012-14 Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300. The vehicles under investigation have “E-shift” gear-shifts that operate electronically.

Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, hasn’t hired bankers to conduct an offer and there have been no formal talks, according to the report. Yahoo said last week that it would consider “strategic alternatives” for its core Internet business, even as it continues with its plan to revamp the business and spin it off. Yahoo’s core business, which includes popular services like Yahoo Mail and its news and sports sites, could attract private equity firms, media and telecom companies or firms like Softbank Group Corp (9984.T), analysts had said.