Financial Markets and Economy
Senate Democrats just snubbed Obama and blocked his Pacific trade bill (Business Insider)
Legislation giving U.S. President Barack Obama authority to speed trade deals through Congress failed a crucial procedural test on Tuesday, delaying a measure that may be key to President Barack Obama's diplomatic pivot to Asia.
In a setback to the White House trade agenda, the Senate voted 52-45 – eight votes short of the necessary 60 – to clear the way for debate on the legislation, which would allow a quick decision on granting the president so-called fast track authority to move trade deals quickly through Congress.
U.S. companies aren’t doing enough to battle the buck (Market Watch)
Lately, the buck has been the biggest bugaboo of U.S. corporations.
Many U.S. companies have blamed the strong dollar for eating into earnings — so consistently, in fact, that some have likened CEO’s griping about exchange rates to the ubiquitous laments about “bad weather” heard during last year’s first-quarter earnings season.
The US economy is prepared for liftoff (Business Insider)
The U.S. economy is once again underperforming expectations, as it has in the first quarter of the past five years. Yet despite the recent slowdown, the economy is ready for a Federal Reserve (Fed) interest rate hike.
This has been the single biggest surprise of 2015 (Business Insider)
Energy companies have astonished investors with their first quarter earnings.
According to FactSet's Jonathan Butters, the energy sector currently has an earnings per share surprise rate of 28.7%, meaning companies are, in aggregate, beating earnings expectations by this amount.
This follows a quarter in which analysts cut their earnings expectations for energy companies by 50.3%, the largest decline since FactSet started tracking the data in 2002.
Greece Empties IMF Reserve Account To Pay IMF; Liquidity "Terribly Urgent" Says Finance Minister (Talk Market)
Greece emptied an IMF holding account to repay 750 million euros ($840 million) due to the fund, a Greek central bank official said, avoiding default but underscoring the dire state of the country's finances.
Greece, like all other International Monetary Fund members, holds reserves from the IMF that are denominated in Special Drawing Rights (SDR), a basket of international currencies. The reserves must be kept at a certain level or the country must pay interest if its holdings fall below its "allocation" of SDRs from the IMF.
Global Bond Rout Returns With A Vengeance; 10Y Treasury Tumbles Under Key Support; Futures Pounded (Zero Hedge)
It all started again in Asia, although not in China where the berserker mania bid for stocks has returned and the SHCOMP is now up nearly 5% in the past two days following the PBOC's latest easing, but in Japan where once again the massively illiquid JGB market, of which the BOJ owns roughly a third as of this moment, is going through yet another shock period (if not quite VaR yet) with last night's 10 Year JGB auction seeing the lowest Bid to Cover since 2009.
Saudis Boosted Oil Output in April as U.S. Idled Rigs (Bloomberg)
Saudi Arabia boosted crude oil production for a second month to the highest level in at least three decades, helping to raise OPEC output as U.S. supply growth showed signs of slowing.
The Middle Eastern country increased crude output by 13,700 barrels a day in April to 10.308 million, according to data the country communicated to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ secretariat in Vienna.
Small business confidence perks up; jobs market solid (Reuters)
U.S. small business owners gained confidence in April and were surprisingly bullish about capital expenditure plans, further supporting views that economic growth was rebounding after a dismal first quarter.
The National Federation of Independent Business said on Tuesday its Small Business Optimism Index rose 1.7 points to 96.9 last month. It was the largest gain since December.
"A fairly positive tone. The data add to the evidence that the weakening in growth in first quarter was largely due to 'transitory' factors," said Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.
Remarkably, Brooklyn real estate is now so expensive that people are moving back to Manhattan (Business Insider)
At the top of the market, some Brooklyn transplants are doing the unthinkable – moving back to Manhattan in search of a better deal.
Brooklyn real estate prices have become so high that parts of Manhattan are starting to look like bargains.
2 massive casinos are about to open in Macau, and they could end up being one giant disaster (Business Insider)
Galaxy Entertainment, the $158 billion casino firm, will open two highly anticipated properties in Macau in a couple of weeks, and it could be a disaster.
That's because the government has yet to allocate gaming tables to the $3 billion projects.
Stocks and Trading
European stocks are tumbling (Business Insider)
European stocks are tumbling this morning, with every major index down by more than 1%.
Here's the scorecard:
France's CAC 40: -1.96%
Germany's DAX: -2.22%
UK's FTSE 100: -1.74%
Spain's IBEX: -1.82%
Italy's FTSE MIB: -1.42%
One Year In, Modi Euphoria Fades Along With Indian Stock Prices (Bloomberg)
Modi-mania is fading.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose election last May fueled hopes that he would unleash India’s economic potential, is finishing his first year in office with few major legislative victories.
Lawmakers on Tuesday delayed voting on a proposal to create a national sales tax, one of the country’s biggest economic reforms in decades. Another bill to make it easier to buy land also got sent to a committee.
The Crucial Piece of Information That Big Traders Get Before Everyone Else (Bloomberg)
In today’s U.S. stock market, trading is fast approaching the speed of light. Yet for one crucial piece of information, many investors still have to wait as long as two weeks for updates.
“Short interest,” Wall Street speak for how heavily a company’s stock is being targeted by traders betting prices will fall, is arguably the best predictor of returns, research suggests. But the official tallies from exchanges are almost always outdated, a substantial handicap when speed is paramount.
Politics
New Jersey governor Chris Christie is out with a brand new tax plan. Well, perhaps “plan” is too strong a term – it’s more accurate to say that he’s written a lot of words about taxes in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, and some of those words could conceivably form the basis of a tax plan should Christie decide to run for president in 2016. And the overall message of Christie’s tax vision can be summed up in one word: Reagan.
Columbia Gets Obama Foundation Presence; Library in Chicago (Bloomberg)
Barack Obama made it official Tuesday: His presidential library and museum will be built in Chicago while his foundation will have a presence at Columbia University in New York.
“Not only will we be able to encourage and affect change locally, but what we can also do is attract the world to Chicago,” Obama said in a video with his wife on his foundation’s website. “The lessons that I learned, they’re all based right in this few square miles where we’ll be able to now give something back and the bring the world back home after this incredible journey.”
Pope Warns "Powerful People Don't Want Peace Because They Live Off War" (Zero Hedge)
Over the course of the last several months, we’ve witnessed meaningful escalations in multiple conflict zones across the globe. In Syria, an ISIS incursion into the Yarmouk refugee camp transformed an already desperate humanitarian crisis into what U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called “the worst circle of hell,” as Palestinian fighters sought to repel ISIS and al-Nusra while dodging a barrage of barrel bombs launched by the Assad regime. In Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthis literally ran the US puppet government out of the country as deposed President Hadi fled to Riyadh prompting the Saudis to launch a series of airstrikes that were invariably accompanied by “collateral damage” (i.e. dead civilians). Finally, Ukraine continues to be plagued by sporadic fighting as the Minsk agreement has proven to be a “cease fire” only in name.
The last report of murdered Russian opposition politician claims Putin spent billions on mercenaries to fight in Ukraine (Business Insider)
Prominent Russian opposition politician and Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down on the streets of Moscow in February, has had his final report published today by his former colleagues. It promises to be explosive.
The 64-page report, titled simply "Putin. War", contains all of the evidence collected by Nemtsov in the final months of his life as he looked into Russia's role in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine that has so far cost over 6,000 lives.
Technology
Rise of the machines (Economist)
ELON MUSK busies himself building other people’s futures. A serial entrepreneur who made his first fortune in the early days of the world wide web, he has since helped found a solar-power company to generate green electricity, an electric-car firm to liberate motorists from the internal-combustion engine, and a rocketry business—SpaceX—to pursue his desire to see a human colony on Mars within his lifetime. It makes him the sort of technologist you would expect might look on tomorrow with unbridled optimism.
A breakup letter to my Apple Watch (Business Insider)
The following letter is from Morgan Oliveira, director of communications for Hampton Creek, a startup working on replacing eggs with plant-based products.
Health and Life Sciences
Scientists discover a natural molecule to treat type 2 diabetes: Molecule mimics some effect of physical exercise (Science Daily)
Researchers at the Université Laval Faculty of Medicine, the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute Research Center, and the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods have discovered a natural molecule that could be used to treat insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The molecule, a derivative of omega-3 fatty acids, mimics some of the effects of physical exercise on blood glucose regulation.
A Top Cardiologist Says A Diet Drug Maker Misled Patients And Investors (Forbes)
Update 7:15: Click here for Orexigen’s comments on this situation.
A top cardiologist is accusing a drug maker with whom he worked closely of making misleading statements about its weight loss medicine and refusing to release data that would undermine its previous claims.
How to Eat Healthy Meals at Restaurants (NY Times)
Most meals at American restaurants aren’t healthy. They’re packed with processed food and enough calories to cover two or three sensible meals.
Yet it’s entirely possible to eat both healthy and tasty restaurant meals. And because eating out is one of life’s great pleasures, we’ve put together this guide to smart restaurant eating. It ranges from undeniably healthy meals — with a rich variety of foods, heavy on fruits and vegetables, light on sugar — to fast-food meals that are at least better than the alternatives if you find yourself eating at McDonald's.
Life on the Home Planet
Nepal Hit by Fresh Earthquakes (Wall Street Journal)
Two large earthquakes struck Nepal on Tuesday, killing at least seven people, just weeks after a devastating earthquake that left more than 8,000 people dead.
A magnitude-7.3 quake hit near midday in the Gaurishankar Conservation Area, a mountainous area near Nepal’s border with China, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That was followed by a magnitude-6.3 earthquake about 30 minutes later in the Ramechhap district.
Sea Level Rise Is Happening Faster Than Anyone Thought (Think Progress)
Global sea level rise isn’t just happening — it’s happening much faster than previously thought, according to new research from climate scientists at the University of Tasmania, in Australia.
The study, published Monday in Nature Climate Change, found that sea level rise has been speeding up over the past two decades compared to the rest of the 20th century. This contradicts previous satellite data dating back to 1993, which appeared to show sea level rise accelerating in the 1990s, but slowing slightly over the past decade.
Punishment Is a Matter of Perspective (NY Times)
If you are a fan of the New England Patriots and you live in the Northeast, you most likely reacted with rage and indignity to Monday’s announcement that the N.F.L. would penalize the team for using deflated footballs.
More Patriots bashing, you might be saying — the unfair persecution of a benevolent owner, Robert K. Kraft; a rugged individualist of a coach, Bill Belichick; and a quarterback virtually assured of a place in the Hall of Fame, Tom Brady, who collectively make up a holy trinity that has delivered four Super Bowl titles to New England.
25 oddly beautiful photos of massive crowds of people (Business Insider)
At as I write this sentence, there are 7,313,527,932 people on earth.
Such a massive number of human beings can often look chaotic and overwhelming, but now and again human bodies can arrange themselves in a way that appears fascinating, and even beautiful.
Whether it's world records or huge group activities, when lots of people come together for a single purpose, special things can happen, as I think you'll see in the following images.
How bacon became bacon: The real story about how humans tamed the pig (Salon)
Mutated wheat and barley was waiting for humans, ready to be plucked and planted, but animals were different. People could kill and eat them, but they couldn’t take wild beasts back to the village and commence a captive breeding program. Domesticating animals entailed a more complex process.
Bill Gates: 50 Years Of Warren Buffett’s Wisdom (Value Walk)
A couple weekends ago I joined Warren Buffett and 40,000 others in Omaha for Woodstock for Capitalists—a.k.a. the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B). As a shareholder and member of the board, I’ve been going for years and it’s always a blast. This time we had our usual fun, including a ping-pong match where Warren hit an impressive forehand winner against a former U.S. national champion. But the gathering had an extra resonance, because we had something special to celebrate: 50 years of Warren’s leadership at the company.
McDonald’s simplifying menu, adjusting prices (Market Watch)
McDonald’s Corp. is moving ahead with plans to simplify its menu and revamp prices as it tries to turn around its struggling U.S. operations.
The company MCD, -0.73% plans to display only the top-selling items from its drive-through business on the outside menu boards as a way to speed up orders, executives told U.S. franchisees during a webcast on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.
