A daily morning look at the financial stories you need to know to start the day

STOCKS/ECONOMY

-Stock futures are down. New home sales numbers for March come out at 10am Eastern.

-The job market for new grads is improving. A new survey by the Wall Street Journal shows employers plan to hire 5.2% more new college grads this year compared to last year. And CareerBuilder has some similar good numbers.

-Top investor Jeffrey Gundlach says negative interest rates are a horror we don't want to come to the US.

-China's total debt has reached a record 237% of total GDP.

OIL/ENERGY

-Crude prices are down 1% at the $43/barrel level.

-Haliburton says it cut 6,000 jobs in the 1st quarter and revenues were down 40%.

ELECTION

-In an unprecedented move to stop Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich will try to stop splitting the anti-Trump vote in most of the remaining primaries. That means one or the other of them will sit out the contests in certain states.However this works out, it's more evidence that the Republicans are still not ready to accept Trump as the nominee and some kind of big convention fight is coming.

DEALS/NO DEALS

-Ford says it has no interest in any kind of merger with Fiat/Chrysler.

-Novartis may sell its $14 billion stake in Roche, so it can buy something else.

TERROR/DEFENSE

-Pres.Obama is sending 250 more US troops to fight ISIS in Syria.

-Many Silicon Valley companies complain that the Pentagon moves too slowly and they are forced to sell their must cutting edge defense tech to foreign countries.

PRINCE DEATH

-So far, it appears Prince left no will.

-Online sales of Prince's music are surging.