US: House Passes GOP Megabill In Major Win For Speaker Johnson And Trump

First earnings of the week filtering through in a busy few sessions for corporate reports. So far today:

• 3M - Beats on EPS
• General Electric - Beats on EPS, affirms FY view

Major names due this week including:

Tuesday: Tesla, Verizon, Lockheed Martin
Wednesday: Boeing, IBM, Philip Morris
Thursday: Alphabet, P&G, T-Mobile
Friday: Abbvie

Full schedule including EPS, revenue expectations and timings here: https://media.marketnews.com/MNIUSEARNINGS_210425_3ed710b2f3.pdf

Recent option flow includes:

• ERZ5 98.50/62 call spread vs. 98.31/18 put spread paper paid 0.5 for the put spread on 13K.
• ERM5 98.12/98.25 call spread paper paid 1.25 on 5K.

Speaking after a meeting of the Council of Ministers, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that Spain will hit the (current) NATO defence spending floor of 2% of GDP in 2025. For several years, Spain has been NATO's most notable laggard in terms of defence spending, which is estimated to have come in just above 1.4% in 2024. The new 'Industrial and Technological Plan for Security and Defence' was approved by ministers today and will be sent to Brussels on 23 April for evaluation. 

• Sanchez: "To achieve [the 0.6% increase], we will have to make a significant investment, a significant effort of €10.471 billion in addition to what has already been allocated to  security and defence,"
• Of the E10.471bln, E3.3bln will go on a 'digital shield' to protect critical infrastructure and the military from cyber attacks. A larger proportion, accounting for 35% of the total, will go to increase wages for the armed forces.
• Just 15% of the investment will go on to fund new defence and deterrence equipment, a contribution that could draw criticism from the US and NATO's other big spenders.
• The PM claims that the investment can be funded by reorienting NextGen EU funding, " savings generated by the government's rigorous management and the good performance of economic policy," and headroom from the last approved budget in 2023.
• Sanchez claims that 87% of the investment will remain within Spain, while the bulk of the remainder will be spent in the EU, with only 5% going outside the Union.