Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day: Americas

Stock futures are following European shares lower amid some lackluster outlooks as earnings season winds up. Meanwhile markets await further signals on interest rate cuts, with the Bank of England’s meeting today in close view. [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Good morning. Stock futures are following European shares lower amid a spattering of lackluster outlooks as earnings season winds up. Meanwhile markets await further signals on interest rate cuts, with the Bank of England’s meeting today in close view. Here’s what else you need to know -- [Morwenna Coniam]( Want to receive this newsletter in Spanish? [Sign up to get the Five Things: Spanish Edition newsletter](. Gloomy outlooks Stock futures are pointing toward a lower open as earnings season winds down and investors await fresh data for pointers on the timing of a potential move to lower interest rates. Stocks in focus include [chip designer ARM](, which is down pre-market after a tepid annual forecast which raises broader concerns of a slowdown in tech spending on AI. Also poised to slide are shares of Airbnb, whose guidance suggested weakening travel spending ahead of the summer. Meanwhile, Warner Bros Discovery is pointing higher after Bloomberg reported the media giant was [planning to cut costs]( and raise subscription fees. Spanish hostility Spain’s second largest bank BBVA has made a [$12 billion hostile bid]( for Banco de Sabadell, days after an initial approach was rejected by the smaller rival’s board. The government criticized the move — the first hostile bid in Spanish banking since the late 1980s — and said it could be negative for the industry. BBVA’s offer values Sabadell at a premium of about 18% compared to Wednesday’s closing price. Musk’s AI funding Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup [X.AI Corp.]( is set to close its funding round at a valuation of about $18 billion as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter, although the size of the round hasn’t been finalized. The maker of AI chatbot assistant Grok was set to raise $6 billion in the round, whose participants include Sequoia Capital. Apple’s next chapter The question of who will[follow Tim Cook as Apple CEO]( is complicated by the lack of someone who’s both ready immediately and likely to be a long-term successor. Bloomberg’s Big Take today takes a look at the possibilities — Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams is seen as the mostly likely to takeover were Cook to step down soon, but there’s no reason to assume change at the helm is imminent. In another few years the most likely successor would be hardware engineering chief John Ternus. Coming Up… In the US, initial jobless claims figures today will add to the economic picture. For now, market eyes are focused on the Bank of England, which isn’t expected to change its benchmark rate today but may give an indication of how soon that will come. Companies scheduled to report earnings today include Warner Bros Discovery and Roblox. What We’ve Been Reading This is what’s caught our eye over the past 24 hours. - Biden warns he’d [delay more weapons](if Israel attacks Rafah - [Manhattan apartment rents]( climb to highest on record for April - UK home sellers flood [property market](just as buyers walk away - [‘Seriously underwater’ home mortgages](tick up across the US - Tourists are [swapping London for Paris, Milan and Madrid]( since Brexit And finally, here's what Joe’s interested in this morning We have a fun episode of the Odd Lots podcast today. Hugh Hendry, the former CIO and founding partner of the hedge fund Eclectica Asset Management, who now writes under the ACID Capitalist brand, visited our NYC studios to give us his latest take on the state of the markets. Normally he's living the life out on St. Barts in the Carribean. So what's on his mind these days? Well he's worried about a repeat of some kind of 1998 Asian financial crisis style meltdown. Booming US growth, which is turn leading to a booming US dollar (particularly against currencies like the yen) may turn into something terrifying. He also thinks China is going to run into a wall as the rest of the world finds its aggressive export-oriented model to be intolerable. I think my favorite part though was when we asked him about the vibe in St. Barts these days, and he the real estate market is like "Bobby Digital" which is his personal nickname for Bitcoin. Basically the dynamic is that real estate in a jurisdiction like St. Barts (or, say, Dubai) is this huge sink for global money looking for a refuge. And so it trades like "Bobby Digital", as higher prices themselves become a useful sink for global wealth. Anyway, it was a fun chat. Check it out in all the usual places like [Apple](, [Spotify]( or elsewhere. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on X [@TheStalwart]( [Bloomberg Markets Wrap: The latest on what's moving global markets. 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