| Trump prepares to surrender himself, Credit Suisse chairman says he is 'truly sorry' and a JPMorgan analyst warns stocks are in the 'calm before the storm.' — David Goodman Five days after he became the first former US president to be indicted, Donald Trump will surrender to law enforcement officers in lower Manhattan to be booked, hear the charges against him and enter his plea: Not guilty. Trump, who is making a comeback bid for the White House, is set to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon following his March 30 indictment by a New York state grand jury. The city's police department, the US Secret Service and other authorities are on high alert given the political firestorm over the case. The former president will plead not guilty "very loudly and proudly," his lawyer Joe Tacopina said Sunday on CNN. Credit Suisse Chairman Axel Lehmann apologized to shareholders for failing to stem a loss of trust in the bank, saying he was "truly sorry" for being unable to turn the lender around. "We failed to stem the impact of legacy scandals, and counter negative headlines with positive facts," Lehmann said in remarks prepared for the bank's annual shareholder meeting in Zurich. In the end, "the bank could not be saved." The Swiss central bank said earlier today that Credit Suisse faced imminent failure if it hadn't been sold to UBS in an emergency rescue last month. Shareholders and proxy advisors indicated prior to the meeting their intention to vote against the reelection of several board members, including Lehmann, and expressed discontent with the board of directors and management's leadership of the bank. It's still unclear which of the failed bank's top executives will survive the takeover. Equities are in the calm before the storm, with headwinds from bank turbulence, an oil shock and slowing growth poised to send stocks back toward their 2022 lows, according to JPMorgan strategist Marko Kolanovic. "The Fed indicated no intention to cut interest rates this year, yet risk assets are exhibiting an unprecedented rally, with European stocks trading near all-time highs and US stocks recovering recent losses," Kolanovic wrote Monday. "We expect a reversal in risk sentiment and the market retesting last year's low over the coming months." European stocks posted modest gains and US equity futures were steady as investors weighed weak factory data against inflation concerns from OPEC+'s plan to cut oil output to assess the path of interest rate increases. Basic resources and real estate shares led the advance in the Stoxx Europe 600 Index. The two-year Treasury yields edged slightly higher after being at the center of the action in the US hours when they swung from sharp gains to close lower. How will recent turmoil in the financial sector affect corporate earnings and outlooks? What will be the impact on bank profitability? Will tech earnings be strong enough to support the recent rally? What will be the biggest positive and negative drivers this season? And what luxury brand do you think represents the most investment value these days? Share your views in our MLIV Pulse survey. The US publishes job openings data at 10 a.m. New York time, along with factory and durable goods orders numbers that might be closer watched than usual after yesterday's ISM surprise. Later, there's a trio of Fed speakers, with Lisa Cook, Susan Collins and Loretta Mester all due to make comments. Here's what caught our eye over the past 24 hours: Last year saw a historically large rate shock, with the Fed hiking massively to fight inflation. Of course, one part of the economy that's very directly exposed to rates is the housing market. The rate on a typical 30-year mortgage started 2022 at 3.3%. It ended the year over 6.6% and today it's around 6.75%. With rates having moved up so much, so fast, it stood to reason that the housing market was facing some kind of imminent doom. Yet so far that hasn't materialized. At all. And in fact, just yesterday we got the latest reading on home prices from Black Knight, indicating that actually prices rose modestly in February. Below is the key price chart (a full slide deck is here): Back in October on the Odd Lots podcast, we talked to Morgan Stanley analyst Jim Egan who predicted that the housing market would remain fairly firm, largely due to a lack of inventory. Unless you get a big spike in unemployment, you're not going to get a big spike in forced selling, and so you just don't get many new houses on the market. That's exactly what we've seen. The unemployment rate has remained low. And per Black Knight, inventory fell in February. New real estate listings continue to fall well below pre-pandemic levels for the same month. Data from Mike Simonsen of Altos Research shows the same thing. Demand is surprisingly strong, and total available inventory is just way below pre-crisis levels. Mike's full thread of fresh housing data is worth checking out here. Here you have this financial asset which on the surface is highly exposed to rates. And in some sense it clearly is. But unlike in 2008/2009 when we had the housing crisis, we haven't had a big surge in unemployment. And so we haven't seen the surge in forced selling and active listings. And so prices remain robust, even with the higher monthly price tag. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Twitter @TheStalwart. | 
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