His scientific papers were published years ago, filled with equations wrought by the energies of a younger man. But at 69, theoretical physicist Ron Mallett still goes to work every day to build a time machine based on his most elegant construct…
[Photo: American theoretical physicist Dr. Ronald Mallett pours dry ice into a ring laser at a laboratory at the University of Connecticut on March 23, 2015. Photographer: Scott Eisen/Bloomberg]
If getting trapped in a time warp doesn't scare you, how about pirates and bombs?
The battle as to whether or not we are in a Biotech bubble is raging on, and Credit Suisse analyst Ravi Mehrotra is laying out his thoughts on what is going to drive the sector moving forward.
There has been much debate over whether we are in a Biotech bubble, especially since the Fed warned last year last the sector may be overstretched. Yet, these stocks are continuing to make new highs and are now up five years in a row, something that no other sector has ever done before.
With the Biotech sector significantly outperforming other areas of the market, people are continuing to ask if the sector is in a bubble.
Credit Suisse is out with a note this morning that takes a closer look at this debate.
"We are in completely unprecedented times for the stock performance of the biotech sector," the note says, going on to point out that since the start of 2011 the NYSE Biotech Index has delivered 204 percent while the S&P 500 is up 64 percent in that time frame, and it's also up nearly 400 percent since the previous peak reached during the dotcom bubble of 1999 and 2000.
Google to Develop Robot Surgical Devices in Pact With J&J— Google Inc. is joining forces with Johnson & Johnson to develop a robotic-assisted surgical program, moving into a growing field of medicine as the search-engine giant expands its health-care investments.
Now when you type a cocktail's name into the search engine, you get a list of ingredients and a recipe in addition to your normal search results. That's fine and dandy—assuming the instructions are on point. Nobody should suffer a bad cocktail. I shudder at the thought.
ConocoPhillips Hires Scotiabank to Sell Some Canadian Assets — ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. energy producer, has hired the Bank of Nova Scotia to advise on the sale of about 20 percent of its production in Western Canada outside of the oil sands, according to the bank’s website.
Governments laboring under sovereign debt burdens should do so too, suggests a new Harvard Kennedy School research paper by Carmen M. Reinhart, Vincent Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
During the financial crisis, governments piled up so much debt that they're now forced to think outside the box about how to get rid of the burden. Really, they should have considered the broader swath of options all along, their research suggests.
Carnival Earnings Beat Estimates Amid Lower Fuel Costs — Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise-line operator, posted first-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates, benefiting from lower fuel costs and higher passenger spending. The shares jumped.
SocGen Says Hogs Will Rally Even as Analysts Expect Bigger Herd — Hog futures are poised to rally in the second quarter as gains in demand mute the impact on prices of an expanding herd, which analysts predict will be the biggest since 2008, according to Societe Generale SA.
Last year, Rick Smith put his family’s house in suburban Dallas on the market, hoping to find a new home close to better schools and the city’s downtown. Selling the old house was a snap; buying a new one wasn’t. In January the family moved to a town home in a rental community, and quickly found they weren’t the only family forced into renting. “If you drive around our community, you’ll see moving boxes stacked up in the garages,” he said. “No one wants to unpack, because they think they’ll be moving again soon.” (Continue)
Saudi Arabia says it will do "anything necessary" to defeat the rebels, but the group took over an airport on Wednesday, and the President reportedly fled the country by boat." …
“Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they don’t know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up,” said Josh Petersen, Director of Amazon Cloud Drive, in a statement. “With the two new plans we are introducing today, customers don’t need to worry about storage space–they now have an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and files in one convenient place.” (Read more)
The last few days have been almost the worst for the Saudi Arabian stock market in 4 years. Between low oil prices, a new King's big social welfare budget, and now "war," it appears this year's dead cat bounce from last year's exuberance is dying rather rapidly. However, what is perhaps even more troublesome for The Kingdom than the net worth destruction and potential blowback from instigating war against the Houthis is the fact that this month saw the largest drop in foreign curreny reserves on record (over 15 years) for the Arab nation… somewhat suggesting capital flight on a scale never seen before in one of the richest states in the world.
Streaming music companies have had uneven success shifting ad-supported listeners to more valuable paid monthly subscriptions, and this has created a drag on the entire digital music industry.
Paid-music streaming services account for a smaller share of revenue — and audience pool — than ad-supported versions.
We think penetration of paid subscription tiers have failed to achieve massive scale because the free ad-supported versions of the leading services — including Pandora internet radio, iTunes Radio, iHeart Radio, and Spotify — already offer deep music libraries. (Full article.)
Ironically, to get the full report, you'll have to take a trial to BI Intelligence. Your Satisfaction Is Guaranteed.
Forbes writes, The Best Management Article Of 2014. You may be surprised to learn what Harvard Business Review found to be the most compelling article in area of management last year.
Harvard Business Review has announced that Bill Lazonick is the 2014 HBR McKinsey Award winner for the best HBR article in 2014 for his brilliant, hard-hitting piece, “Profits Without Prosperity” (September 2014 HBR). Lazonick is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he directs the Center for Industrial Competitiveness.
In the article, Lazonick described the horrifying impact of massive stock buybacks: net disinvestment, loss of shareholder value, crippled capacity to innovate, destruction of jobs, exploitation of workers, runaway executive compensation, windfall gains for activist insiders, rapidly increasing inequality and sustained economic stagnation. Lazonick’s article explained with quantitative detail why buybacks are an economic, social and moral disaster.
The article revealed for instance that share buybacks weren’t done for the most part when stock prices were low: astonishingly, most of the big purchases came when the stock price was high. Why? “Because stock-based instruments make up the majority of executives’ pay, and buybacks drive up short-term stock prices.” These firms are engaged, the article said, in “what is effectively stock-price manipulation.” In September 2014, The Economist called them the “corporate cocaine.”
Earlier this month, we identified the reason why Chinese stocks have continued to rise in the face of overwhelming evidence that the country’s economy is decelerating quickly. While the first part of the 8-month run can be plausibly attributed to PSL, the furious buying that began in late November looks to be at least partly attributable to the fact that thanks to tighter regulations on lending outside the traditional banking system, China’s $2 trillion shadow banking complex needed somewhere to put cash to work and that somewhere turns out to be the giant bubble that is the SHCOMP. (Continue.)
If you're planning on buying an Apple Watch, you might want to seriously consider reserving the specific model you want, 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman reports.
The inventory at most Apple Stores throughout the country will be heavily restrained, and Apple will be giving priority to those that reserve their watches ahead of time.
In fact, one person at an Apple flagship store reportedly told Gurman that employees are being told to act as if there are no watches available for walk-in purchases. (Continue.)
Reuters reports, Japan PM Abe to address joint session of Congress. "Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will address a joint meeting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on April 29, becoming the first Japanese leader to do so." Abe is expected to focus on joint responses to China's recent assertive moves in the region.
[Studies] at the world-leading Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research suggest that many of our traits are more than 50% inherited, including obedience to authority, vulnerability to stress, and risk-seeking. Researchers have even suggested that when it comes to issues such as religion and politics, our choices are much more determined by our genes than we think. (More.)
[Photographer: Ben Torres/Bloomberg]
