Financial Markets and Economy
Brazil’s economy: It’s ugly (Quartz)
Brazil’s economy is slowing down fast.
The South American giant’s unemployment rate jumped to 6.7% in May, the highest since 2010.
Asia falls, euro drifts as Greece remains in spotlight (Business Insider)
Asian equities fell on Friday as Greece failed again to reach an agreement with its creditors and stumbled toward a default, while major currencies like the euro and dollar drifted as the debt saga sidelined investors.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.MIAPJ0000PUS> slipped 0.2 percent.
The Simple Reason Why China's Stratospheric Stock Market Rally Can't Fuel Economic Growth (Zero Hedge)
Despite Janet Yellen’s efforts to explain to poor people how important it is to build up one’s financial assets, the trickle down “wealth effect” that Ben Bernanke promised would accompany successive rounds of QE never quite panned out as economic growth — which, in the US, is driven by consumption — has now flatlined and even the NY Fed admits that perhaps weather isn’t to blame after all.
Freddie Mac: Mortgage Serious Delinquency rate declined in May (Calculated Risk)
Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate declined in May to 1.58%, down from 1.66% in April. Freddie's rate is down from 2.10% in May 2014, and the rate in May was the lowest level since November 2008.
In Gold We Trust 2015 (Acting-Man)
As every year around this time, our good friends Ronald Stoeferle and Mark Valek, the managers of the Incrementum Fund, have published their annual “In Gold We Trust” report, the extended version of which can be downloaded below.
Health care stocks surge after Obamacare ruling (CNN)
Health care stocks surged on the news. Hospitals were the biggest winners. Tenet Healthcare (THC)jumped over 12%, making it the top gaining stock of the day. The company runs 80 hospitals in the U.S. and over 400 outpatient facilities.
"Scariest jobs chart ever" (Calculated Risk)
During the recent recession, every month I posted a graph showing the percent jobs lost during the recession compared to previous post-WWII recessions.
This chart proves the US is leading the world in fintech investing (BAC, WFC, COF) (Business Insider)
The US is leading the world in fintech investing.
Chinese Stocks Tumble At Open As Morgan Stanley Warns "Don't Buy This Dip" (Zero Hedge)
Is it time to step in and buy the dip in Chinese mainland shares after last week’s harrowing 13% decline on the SHCOMP? Absolutely not, Morgan Stanley says.
Building for the Future: Infrastructure in Emerging Markets (Mobius Blog, Frank Templeton)
There has been a recent debate about whether the end of the commodities “supercycle” is over, and if we are entering a new era of lower prices for natural resources, particularly oil. While no one can predict exactly where prices are headed next, one thing I do know is that demand for natural resources has continued to increase in emerging markets. Emerging economies in general have experienced stronger economic growth trends than developed markets over the past decade, a trend that I expect to continue. That growth, combined with rising populations and a trend toward urbanization, requires more infrastructure.
There’s Something Wrong With The World Today and It’s 1995 (Alhambra Partners)
There weren’t any surprises in the “final” GDP update for Q1. Going back to -0.2%, the same interpretations still apply, especially and including the inventory contribution. Economists and policymakers want to talk particularly about how Q1 is prone to “residual seasonality” but that is missing the bigger part of the problem. Whether Q1 was -0.2% or +2% doesn’t really matter, as what truly makes this a dangerous economic situation is that Q1 and all the prior quarters were not a steady +4%.
Investment Banks Low ROE Necessitates ‘Radical Changes': EY (Value Walk)
Investment bank ROEs have been in steady decline since 2009, falling to 7.8% in 2014. The combination of pressure from low cost financial products like ETFs, the costs of regulatory compliance, and competition from private equity and hedge funds have simply made the business less profitable than it once was and a new Ernst & Young report argues that even getting back to 10% ROE will be impossible without radical change.
Bankrupt gun maker Colt gets revised loan, eases rush to sale (Business Insider)
Bankrupt gun maker Colt Holdings has reached an agreement with its bondholders that will postpone the company's rush into a controversial sale to its current private equity owner while also providing much-needed cash.
Colt will accept a loan of up to $75 million from its bondholders and other lenders to finance its operations while in bankruptcy. The company originally planned to borrow up to $20 million from its current lenders, including Morgan Stanley.
Trading
Why Friday could be the year’s biggest trading day (Market Watch)
Stock-trading volume is expected to surge in Friday’s last moments of trading, as the Russell indexes go through their annual routine of adding and removing stocks.
A massive amount of money is linked to the small-cap Russell 2000 RUT, -0.05% the large-cap Russell 1000 RUI, -0.29% and their siblings. The index funds that track these benchmarks must buy or sell stocks as result of this summertime shakeup that’s finalized Friday. Traders also try to play the Russell reconstitution, with Reuters noting that Schwab has promoted buying possible additions in March, then selling them in June.
Politics
State Department says Hillary Clinton’s email disclosure is incomplete (Market Watch)
The State Department said Thursday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t hand over at least 15 emails that appear to be work-related from her personal server, contradicting her claims that all her work emails were in the hands of the federal government.
The emails in question were uncovered as part of a subpoena from a congressional committee to Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton confidant and former White House aide in Bill Clinton’s administration.
Barack Obama's Unexpected Best Friend: Chief Justice John Roberts (Bloomberg)
After President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts, a veteran of the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, to the Supreme Court as chief justice in 2005, one Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a freshman Democrat, explained why his vote would be "no."
"It is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak," Obama said at the time. "I hope that I am wrong. I hope that this reticence on my part proves unjustified."
Technology
The Wireless Charging Future is Getting Closer to Reality (Popular Science)
Imagine a world where we don't have to plug anything in. Your phone, laptop, tablet and headphones are constantly being topped-up whenever they're placed on an inductive surface, so that when you take them out with you into the wider world, your devices are always brimming with battery. Step-by-step, it's what we might be moving toward, if the industry lobbying group The Wireless Power Consortium gets its way. The group's long-in-development wireless charging technology, Qi, is now getting a considerable power boost, which means it will be able to charge more smartphones faster, as well as tablets, which were previously too power hungry for it. While this a big step forward for Qi, and may lead to wider adoption for the fledgling charging standard, there are other barriers still standing in the way on the road to a wireless power utopia.
Doctors and Hospitals Need to Talk More. This App Can Help? (Wired)
AS AN INTERN fresh out of medical school at Columbia University, Joe Mayer says one of the most frustrating tasks in the ER was spending hours trying to track down a patient’s primary care physician. It was tedious, yes. But more than that, it was just one more obstacle to making a decision about that patient’s care in an already byzantine healthcare system.
And so, during his intern year, Mayer, who had worked for and founded several healthcare IT companies in the past, started work on a company to cut through this complexity. The startup, called Cureatr, tries to bridge this information gulf with a mobile notification system that lets physicians and other caretakers know when one of their patients has checked into or out of the hospital.
Reserve Strap Promises To Extend Your Apple Watch Battery By 30 Hours (Tech Crunch)
Reserve Strap just announced the final details for its Apple Watch battery band, which it claims will add an additional 30 hours of battery life to the device. The Reserve Strap will ship at the beginning of November and will cost a pretty staggering $249.99.
The “Specialized Thermoset Elastometer Silicon band” (lol) will boast the same water resistance as the Apple Watch, and will be available in white, grey and black models. Both sizes of straps for the 38mm and 42mm Watch will increase the device’s total battery life to “48 hours of functionality.”
Health and Life Sciences
Living With Cancer: Being Mortal (NY Times)
Like many people with advanced-stage cancer, I wonder when I will decide about treatment, “Enough is enough.” In helping me formulate an answer to this question, Atul Gawande’s latest book, “Being Mortal,” will now play an indispensable part.
A bestselling doctor-writer, Dr. Gawande has received praise from reviewers better able than I am to assess his judgments on the shortage of geriatric physicians; the damages done by nursing homes that don’t feel like homes; the benefits of experiments in assisted living to alleviate boredom, loneliness and helplessness; and the positive effects of palliative care with respect to the quality and also the quantity of life.
Why women should worry about Alzheimer's (CNN)
The plight of Alzheimer's patients and the challenges for those who care for them are garnering more attention thanks to movies such as "Still Alice" and the steady disclosure of well-known sufferers, such as musician Glen Campbell, model and entrepreneur B. Smith and Jeb Bush's mother-in-law. They are all courageous in talking about the disease that robs people of mind and dignity.
But one aspect of this debilitating disease is only just beginning to register: Alzheimer's disproportionately affects women.
Life on the Home Planet
Antarctic Life is Weirder Than You'd Think (Futurity)
A new look at biodiversity in the Antarctic reveals the region is more diverse and biologically interesting than previously thought.
Recent investigations have shown the continent and surrounding ocean are rich in species, which are also very highly diversified into a variety of distinct ecological regions that differ greatly from each other.
These emotional photos cut to the heart of the battle for this sacred Hawaiian mountain (Business Insider)
Hundreds of protestors flocked to Mauna Kea on Wednesday to block construction of the world's largest optical telescope.
It's the second time in the past few months that demonstrations have broken out on the dormant volcano.
Astronomers want to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) there because the cloudless air and dark skies offer one of the most pristine windows into the universe on Earth. From such a lofty perch, the observatory could reveal parts of the cosmos we've never glimpsed before.
Good news for reefs: how corals could survive a heating planet (CS Monitor)
As concern grows over the threat coral reefs face from pollution, destructive fishing practices, and especially climate change and ocean acidification, a research team has found that heat-tolerant corals pass along that tolerance to corals adapted to cooler waters.
One of the key questions regarding heat tolerance is the extent to which it is genetically inherited or whether the corals build an ability to endure heat stress through repeated exposure, a process analogous to hardening tomato plants.
