The Morning Hammer: Apple Slammed on Tax Ruling

Don’t Fear Forex…

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Shares of Apple (AAPL) are getting slammed this morning after the European Commission found that Ireland gave the iPhone maker an illegal “selective tax treatment.

Apple has been ordered to repay 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) plus interest, though Ireland will appeal the ruling.

The stock traded as low as $103.50 in the early going but it's come back a bit.

Apple has well over $200 billion in cash so it won't have any problem fitting the bill.

The real issue is whether investors will start worry about the tech sector's ability to cut taxes by using Ireland-based entities.

NDX futures are down -0.2%, so it seems that no one really cares for now. But keep an eye out on this issue.

Overseas markets are mostly in the green today, led by the banks, even with negative economic data.

Euro-area economic confidence, UK mortgage approvals, and Adzuna advertised salaries were all weak. UK economic data has generally been solid post-Brexit, so these numbers are bucking the trend.

Check out this of the Citi UK Economic Surprise Index (starts on 6/1/2016):

The dollar is up and gold is down on increased confidence that the Fed is ready to move. The gold miners (GDX) look especially weak this morning.

The news flow is pretty slow and the economic calendar is light, with just S&P CoreLogic home price and consumer confidence numbers on tap.

Fed Vice Chairman Fischer appeared on Bloomberg TV this morning, expressing optimism that productivity growth will rebound.

He also said that incoming economic data will determine the trajectory of interest rate increases.

So for now, it looks like we're back to the range, which makes sense ahead of Friday's big  jobs report.

Maybe that will give traders an excuse to start taking real action?

One can dream…

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