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Adding to the market’s risks: Shares now look relatively expensive relative to their historical averages. One gauge, the “forward 12-month price to earnings ratio” for the S&P 500, a favorite Wall Street metric to assess if a stock is priced too high versus how much money a company is expected to make, is now over 20, according to FactSet. This easily eclipses the five-year average of 16.7 and the 10-year average of 15.0, according to FactSet. The last time the forward 12-month ratio was above 20.0 was April 2002. The Federal Reserve is helping boost stock prices by pumping vast sums of cash into the financial system. But even so, some analysts are perplexed at the rise given the scale of the economic damage and the unknown future of the virus. “If one excludes Connecticut, New Jersey,...

Adding to the market’s risks: Shares now look relatively expensive relative to their historical averages. One gauge, the “forward 12-month price to earnings ratio” for the S&P 500, a favorite Wall Street metric to assess if a stock is priced too high versus how much money a company is expected to make, is now over 20, according to FactSet. This easily eclipses the five-year average of 16.7 and the 10-year average of 15.0, according to FactSet. The last time the forward 12-month ratio was above 20.0 was April 2002. The Federal Reserve is helping boost stock prices by pumping vast sums of cash into the financial system. But even so, some analysts are perplexed at the rise given the scale of the economic damage and the unknown future of the virus. “If one excludes Connecticut, New Jersey,...

Those with a keen memory may recall DOF said in December that the state had reached 39.96 million people and stated a year ago the population was at 39.93 million. The department has since revised its past estimates downward to reflect updates in domestic migration data from the Internal Revenue Service and international student data from the Department of Homeland Security. Continuing with recent trends, growth remained strongest in rural cities and inland counties around the Inland Empire and Central Valley. Seven counties had growth rates of at least 1 percent, with Glenn, Yuba and Placer counties leading the way at more than 2 percent each. Of the state’s 10 largest cities, only Bakersfield and Sacramento surpassed the 1 percent growth mark. Los Angeles County, the most populous in the...

Global Climate Strike, a coalition inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg’s Friday school strikes, has suspended the weekly demonstrations that brought thousands of people to the streets in the U.S. and around the world. Thunberg last week encouraged supporters to participate in a “digital strike” instead of gathering in public, and coalition members have been on wall-to-wall calls this week to figure how to keep up public pressure on governments to fight climate change. In the U.S., Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Sunrise Movement and other green groups canceled three days of nationwide protests in April coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The Sunrise Movement has suspended a voter registration drive on college campuses that aimed to sign up 125,000 new vote...

Most countries are far behind in meeting the national commitments they made as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the first global pact of countries to address climate change. The Glasgow conference was designed to ratchet up pressure on nations to reach those marks while simultaneously setting more ambitious goals. “All members recognised the need to postpone both events in light of COVID-19 and welcomed the decision to fix a date for [the June talks in Bonn, Germany] ensuring momentum is maintained on global climate action and a venue can be secured,” said the internal note of the decision by the U.N.’s climate bureau. The note added that the U.N. and the British government “agreed to work closely with the COP Bureau members over the next few weeks to identify a ...

Restrictions on drilling in an ANWR were lifted in 2017, although the Bureau of Land management has not finalized its plans to offer leases to companies to explore for oil in part of the region that is the largest protected wilderness in the U.S. Estimates vary widely, but as much as 16 billion barrels of oil and gas liquids is believed to be recoverable in the region. Amid growing pressure to address climate change and protect sensitive lands, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup have all ruled out Arctic drilling projects in recent months, leaving Bank of America as the sole major holdout. “A lot of these banks start out opposing the Arctic, which I think is the easy one, and it gets a little more dicey after that,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D...

By POLITICO STAFF 05/05/2020 11:05 AM EDT Facebook Twitter Link .st1{fill-rule:evenodd;clip-rule:evenodd;fill:#fff} Link Copied More Mail Reddit WhatsApp .cms-textAlign-left{text-align:left;}.cms-textAlign-center{text-align:center;}.cms-textAlign-right{text-align:right;}.cms-magazineStyles-smallCaps{font-variant:small-caps;} POLITICO is asking a group of experts to weigh in on the latest sustainability trends and developments for our weekly sustainability newsletter: The Long Game.

EIA said the U.S. would become a net crude oil importer in the third quarter of the year “because as U.S. crude oil production declines, there will be fewer barrels available for export.” But the EIA’s forecast may still be too rosy, since many industry analysts are expecting U.S. production to decline by 3 million barrels per day or more this year as companies tighten spending and idle drilling rigs. Earlier on Tuesday, Exxon Mobil became the latest company to announce cutbacks, saying it would cut its expenditures this year by $10 billion, or about 30 percent of its total, mostly from operations in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico. The U.S. has emerged as one of the largest suppliers of oil and refined products such as gasoline and diesel fuel in the globa...

Mexico’s energy minister said on Twitter that the group of nations agreed to cut 9.7 million barrels a day to begin May 1. Energy officials from other countries shared similar information. Video aired by the Saudi-owned satellite channel Al-Arabiya showed the moment that Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, a son of King Salman, assented to the deal. “I go with the consent, so I agree,” the prince said, chuckling, drawing a round of applause from those on the video call. But it had not been smiles and laughs for weeks after the so-called OPEC+ group of OPEC members and other nations failed in March to reach an agreement on production cuts, sending prices tumbling. Saudi Arabia sharply criticized Russia days earlier over what it described as comments critical of the kingdom, w...

Trump’s efforts to push the OPEC-Russia deal to completion — including his pitch late last week to contribute U.S. oil reductions to Mexico’s share of the cuts — won him praise from shale oil producers, even though many companies are still expected to suffer. “It’ll provide him with temporary respite from the pain — from the excruciating pain — from the oil patch. He emerged as master of the deal,” said Bob McNally, founder and president of the oil consultant firm Rapidan Energy Group. “To the degree that this stops hemorrhaging from the oil patch, he will benefit from this.” But McNally said the administration may yet resort to trade barriers that Trump has threatened to impose on foreign oil shipments. And the deal may address the massive global oversupply through June, he ad...