Wall Street Today: One S&P 500 sector just posted its best win streak recently

He was responding to an upcoming book that says Apple CEO Tim Cook called Musk in 2016 about taking over Tesla.

The book claims that merger discussions ended when Musk told Cook he’d like to replace him as Apple’s CEO as part of the deal. According to the story -- revealed in a Los Angeles Times review of “Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century” by Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins -- Cook then hung up the phone after uttering an expletive.

Afterpay lets consumers purchase items on credit and pay later with a series of installments. The Australian company had a market value of about A$27.9 billion at Friday’s close. The purchase is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2022, the companies said in a statement.

In the second quarter, Samsung Electronics Co. overtook Intel as the world’s top chip maker by revenue. Given divergent outlooks for their core businesses, the positioning is likely to stay that way in the near future, industry analysts say.

The South Korean tech company, which specializes in memory chips, racked up 22.74 trillion won, the equivalent of $19.7 billion, in semiconductor revenue during the April-June quarter. Total revenue for Intel, was $19.6 billion—or $18.5 billion after subtracting the contribution of a business unit it has agreed to sell.

Few issues have vexed money managers more this year than inflation. As the global economy has regained its footing, prices for goods and services have risen—in many cases far faster than economists had anticipated. Labor shortages and supply-chain disruptions snarling the global shipping industry have added to inflationary pressures.

The trend has worried many investors, since inflation can chip into companies’ profit margins, pressuring share prices. It can also eat away at the purchasing power of government bonds’ fixed returns.

Yet markets are starting to signal that investors may be growing less fearful.

Take the break-even rate. Calculated by measuring the difference in yields between Treasurys and their inflation-protected counterparts, or TIPS, the break-even rate shows how much inflation traders anticipate over a period of time. Since peaking for the year in May, the break-even rates for five-, seven-, and 10-year Treasurys have all fallen—suggesting traders are pricing in a moderation in inflation in coming years.

The materials sector, which holds stocks such as Linde and Sherwin-Williams, ended last week up nearly 3% in the top performance on the benchmark index. The group also closed out its ninth straight day of gains, its best daily win streak since June 2020.

Steve Chiavarone, portfolio manager at Federated Hermes, sees several tailwinds that should carry the group even higher.

“We think it’s really kind of four stories – infrastructure, earnings, the sensitivity to inflation and then the fourth is they’re cyclical and that’s why we went overweight the sector last August,” Chiavarone told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Friday.

French car sales slumped 35% in July as a semiconductor shortage curbed inventory in one of Europe’s biggest markets.

France recorded 115,713 passenger-car registrations for the month, the industry group Plateforme Automobile said Sunday.

Joe Biden’s $1tn infrastructure package had enough support from lawmakers to pass the Senate this week, Republican senator Susan Collins said on Sunday.

Collins said the bill could be introduced to the Senate floor as soon as late-Sunday, and that she expected it to be backed by at least ten Republican senators.

The Senate convened over the weekend in a push to get the deal done, following weeks of uncertainty and false starts. The $1tn plan would fund investments in roads, bridges, ports, airports, water facilities and broadband networks.

Investors poured a record $3.2bn into funds investing in US inflation-linked bonds last week, adding to a deluge of cash this year which some analysts say is distorting signals from the government debt market.

The yield on 10-year inflation-protected US Treasuries, also known as Tips, has plumbed new depths this week, hitting an all-time low of minus 1.17 per cent on Friday. The collapse has come amid a global debt rally which has left investors searching for explanations.