Next month will mark three years since Britain voted to leave the EU and it has been a hard path for the Prime Minister over that time; Theresa May will now be resigning from her position on June 7 after she could not push a Brexit deal through Parliament. Semiconductor manufacturers had a rough start to the week after Huawei was added to a trade blacklist only for the Commerce Department to ease restrictions the following day. The Trump administration has rolled out a similar program to last year providing $16 billion in aid to help farmers hit by the trade war.
For the third straight week, U.S. large company stocks – measured by the S&P 500 – have declined although YTD returns remain strong, and the prevalent DJIA index has fallen for the fifth week in a row. Small company stocks have been hit harder recently and trailing one-year returns gone further negative. Geo-political tension muted international equity returns to near zero and slightly negative in emerging markets. Global growth concerns and rising trade tension led the 10-Year Treasury yield to its lowest level since 2017 on Thursday.
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