Financial Markets & Economy
Without follow-up, Yellen’s warning was cheap talk, ex-Fed official says (Market Watch)
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s warning issued Wednesday on stocks is likely going to be just talk unless the U.S. central bank is prepared to follow up with policy actions, a former top Fed official said Wednesday.
Yellen said Wednesday that valuations are “quite high” and that there are potential dangers.
Flash Crash a Perfect Storm for Markets (Ritholtz Blog)
Great couple of graphics from the WSJ this AM.
This is the simple version, a short explanatory overlaid on a graph:
Kahn Brothers Buy More Shares Of Blackberry Ltd. (BBRY) (Value Walk)
Irving Khan was the head of Khan Brothers Group, a registered investment advisor and money manager. He wass oldest, active living investment professional, until he passed away recently. He served as a teaching assistant forBenjamin Graham, the legendary investor known as the “father of value investing.”
Based on its filing, Khan Brothers increased its stake in three companies, sold out its positions in eight companies and reduces its holdings in 22 stocks.
Mohamed El-Erian warns of trouble as bond liquidity dries up (Market Watch)
The leap in German bund yields over the last two weeks is another sign that liquidity issues could eventually present serious problems for financial markets, former Pimco Chief Executive Mohamed El-Erian on Wednesday warned at the annual SALT investment conference in Las Vegas.
“There isn’t the countercyclical risk-taking we need,” said El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Pimco parent Allianz ALV, +1.54% That could spell trouble when there is a big shift market positioning, he warned at SALT, a gathering of around 1,800 hedge-fund and investment-industry professionals.
Doctor shortages: Here's the real culprit (CNBC)
Ever wonder why it's often so hard to find a doctor, especially if you don't live in a big city?
Ever wonder why the government has such a hard time understanding or following the law of supply and demand?
10 companies with the fastest increases in sales per share (Market Watch)
What does it mean when a company “beats” its consensus earnings-per-share estimate?
Absolutely nothing.
For one thing, net income, under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), can contain so many one-time items, an investor needs to dig into the earnings report to learn how well a company is really performing.
Apple dives again into bond market (Value Walk)
Apple Inc. is back in the bond market.
The company is looking to complete an $8 billion bond sale on Wednesday. One investor said the deal received about $20 billion in orders from buyers, allowing the company to sell more than the roughly $6.5 billion that investors initially expected.
The company AAPL, -0.63% says it will use the proceeds to help pay for share buybacks and dividends, part of an expanded capital-return program for shareholders the company announced last month.
Michael Pettis Puts New Chinese Monetary Policy In Context (Value Walk)
Last week China announced changes to its monetary policy that would allow banks to use the Pledged Supplementary Lending facility to buy local government bonds, a measure meant to help local governments roll over 1.9 trillion yuan ($306 billion) in debt that is maturing this year that’s being described as Chinese QE. The comparison is imperfect on its face, these local government bonds won’t end up on the central bank balance sheet, but what’s more important is that China is in a dramatically different position than the US after the financial crisis or the eurozone today.
Technology
Qualcomm Finally Speaks Out About Samsung And Snapdragon (Forbes)
Qualcomm QCOM -0.8% has provided its version of the story in the long running saga that has dogged the Snapdragon 810 chip since the start of the year.
In January, reports began to surface that Qualcomm’s upcoming flagship system-on-chip was having overheating problems. And as a result, Samsung pulled out of using it for its soon-to-be released flagship the Galaxy S6, instead opting for its own Exynos 7420 processor.
The AWS IPO (Stratechery)
One of the technology industry’s biggest and most important IPOs occurred late last month, with a valuation of $25.6 billion dollars. That’s more than Google, which IPO’d at a valuation of $24.6 billion, and certainly a lot more than Amazon, which finished its first day on the public markets with a valuation of $438 million.
Don’t feel too bad for the latter, though: the “IPO” I’m talking about was Amazon Web Services, and it just so happens to still be owned by the same e-commerce company that went public nearly 20 years ago.
Politics
Issues, Schmissues. Can the Presidential Candidates Sing? (NY Times)
The cacophony of presidential candidates is getting louder by the day, and while they have a variety of views on political matters, many of them have at least one thing in common — a love of music.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, has roots as a folk singer. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland leads a Celtic rock band. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas strums the bass guitar. The campaign of Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, says she is a proficient pianist. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, showed off his voice in high school talent shows. And although Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, struggles to carry a tune, he occasionally tries.
Hillary Clinton Isn't Ready to Disclose Who's Funding Her Campaign (Mother Jones)
On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has been pushing hard to overhaul of the country's broken campaign finance system. "We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccounted money out of it, once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment," Clinton said during one of her first official speeches in Iowa last month.
The Complete UK Election Preview (Zero Hedge)
The UK General Election will be held tomorrow. The polls close at 10 pm. We should have a pretty clear picture of the overall seat count by 5 to 6 am on Friday morning. The result, as SocGen notes, is almost certain to be a hung parliament.
Then the fun will really start.
Health & Life Sciences
Vitamins and Cancer Risk (Science Based Medicine)
One of the greatest triumphs of marketing over evidence was the incredible rise of vitamin supplement use in the 20th century. Supplement makers successfully created a “health halo” around vitamins, and taking your vitamins became a virtue, something mothers told their children to do. The evidence, however, does not tell such a simple story.
In recent years it has become increasingly apparent that there are unintended consequences to taking vitamin supplements, and in fact there may be a net negative health effect. This is especially true for those who are healthy and don’t need vitamins, and for those who exceed the recommend dosages.
Missing link in evolution of complex cells discovered (Science Daily)
In a new study, published in Nature this week, a research team led from Uppsala University in Sweden presents the discovery of a new microbe that represents a missing link in the evolution of complex life. The study provides a new understanding of how, billions of years ago, the complex cell types that comprise plants, fungi, but also animals and humans, evolved from simple microbes.
New form of DNA modification may carry inheritable information (Science Daily)
Scientists at the University of Chicago, Harvard, and China have described the surprising discovery and function of a new DNA modification in insects, worms, and algae.
Common DNA modifications occur through methylation, a chemical process that can dramatically change gene expression, which regulates the eventual production of proteins that carry out the functions of an organism. It's all part of a growing new subfield of epigenetics being pioneered by the University of Chicago's Chuan He and his collaborators.
Life on the Home Planet
Your Winter Vegetables: Brought to You by California's Very Last Drops of Water (Mother Jones)
California's drought-plagued Central Valley hogs the headlines, but two-thirds of your winter vegetables come from a different part of the state. Occupying a land mass a mere eighth the size of metro Los Angeles, the Imperial Valley churns out about two-thirds of the vegetables eaten by Americans during the winter. Major crops include broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, and, most famously, lettuce and salad mix.
Grass-Roots Push in the Plains to Block the Keystone Pipeline’s Path (NY Times)
A new round of hearings on a state construction permit for the Keystone XL project is expected to pit South Dakota activists against pipeline supporters eager for construction to begin.
At Least 12 Million Trees Are Dead Because Of California’s Drought (Think Progress)
As California’s historic drought continues into its fourth year, the state’s forests are being hit hard by years of below-average precipitation. According to a new study conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, at least 12.5 million trees in California’s national forests have died during the current drought — adding more brittle, dry vegetation to areas already threatened by potentially explosive wildfires.
The Return of the Deadheads (Wall Street Journal)
The last of the 121 times Michael Sheridan saw the Grateful Dead was in 1995, at a blissful concert on the San Francisco Bay two months before Jerry Garcia died. After that fatal blow to the group, Mr. Sheridan moved on, too. He avoided other jam bands, even ones featuring former members of the Dead. None could live up to the original, he thought.
Last January, however, when the surviving members of the Grateful Dead announced a reunion to mark the band’s 50th anniversary, with three concerts in Chicago during Fourth of July weekend, Mr. Sheridan bought in. Ahead of his 50th birthday in July, the cafe supervisor from North Bend, Wash., booked a plane ticket and reserved a hotel room in Chicago, where he will rendezvous with some old running buddies for the concerts being billed as the Grateful Dead’s last ever.
Germanwings Co-Pilot Is Said to Have Rehearsed Steps for Crash (NY Times)
Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot suspected of deliberately flying a German airliner into the French Alps, appears to have rehearsed preparations for the plane’s fatal dive during an earlier flight on the day of the crash, the French authorities said in a preliminary report published on Wednesday.
The initial findings by the Bureau of Investigations and Analyses show that the co-pilot repeatedly adjusted the Germanwings plane’s altitude dial to 100 feet during its outbound flight to Barcelona, Spain, from Düsseldorf, Germany, on March 24.
80-Hour Work Week? This is How She (or He) Does It (NY Times)
Call it faking, or call it flexibility by omission, but sometimes the answer to the question “how does she do everything” is “she doesn’t.” Or at least, not exactly the way you think she does.
It’s one of the myths of modern parenting, and particularly one of the myths of modern motherhood, that a “big job” (like investment banking, consulting and law) with its commensurate big paycheck also requires big trade-offs. That’s sometimes true, but in many workplaces, it’s more possible to take control of those trade-offs than most people think.
Our Country's Cartoonish Gun Debate Isn't Just Idiotic—It's Really Damaging (Mother Jones)
Kevin Drum doesn't write much about guns, which is why I'm going to keep on it a bit here and honor him by rolling out the red carpet for a bunch of grating 2A trolls to stampede into the comments thread.
How exactly is that going to honor Kevin, you ask? By underscoring what his legions of intelligent readers already know: These dudes could learn a thing or three from Kevin Drum. He's open-minded and deeply curious. He asks shrewd questions and tests his own assumptions. He respects data. And he's a damn fine writer—clear, to the point, and not always entirely correct but who the hell cares because he's right there chatting with you as if happy hour has come early today and the drinks are already on the table. (Godspeed, Kevin—we miss you, we're stoked that you're on the road back to full-time badass blogger, and we'll see you again soon.)
Humor
Hillary Expected to Adopt All of Sanders’s Positions by Noon (Borowitz Report, The New Yorker)
Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is on pace to adopt rival Bernie Sanders’s positions on all major issues by noon on Thursday, Clinton campaign officials have confirmed.
Within minutes of Sanders’s entry into the Democratic race, Clinton released position papers on trade, income inequality, national defense, and the environment that meticulously aped the Vermont senator’s views on those matters.
Fiorina Has High Name Recognition Among Thousands She Fired (Borowitz Report, The New Yorker)
One day after the former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O. Carly Fiorina announced her candidacy for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination, a new poll shows that she enjoys extremely high name recognition among the tens of thousands of former H.P. employees she fired.
According to the poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, Fiorina’s name recognition stands at a hundred per cent among the legions of employees she terminated, with many of them calling the former C.E.O. “unforgettable.”
N.F.L. Sentences Brady to a Year with the Jets (Borowitz Report, The New Yorker)
In what football insiders are calling an unexpectedly severe punishment, the National Football League has sentenced the New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady to a year with the New York Jets for his role in the so-called Deflategate scandal.
The punishment drew howls of protest from Patriots fans and management, with many calling it the harshest in league history, but N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell defended the decision as “a necessary deterrent.”
