Financial Markets and Economy
These activist investors absolutely crushed it on huge trades (Business Insider)
Activist investors are putting cash to work like never before, setting their sights on bigger targets and extracting enormous paydays from companies once thought untouchable.
They’re awash with cash, as investors in search of returns in a low-interest rate environment pump cash in to the strategy.
Some of the boldface names of activist investing have made billions this year alone.
Brazils Worst Quarter of 2015 Even Worse Than Analysts Forecast (Bloomberg)
Brazils economy contracted more than analysts forecast in the second quarter, as tighter monetary policy and faster inflation torpedoed confidence and caused activity to nosedive.
Overstock has a new target customer: hedge funds (Business Insider)
Overstock has struck a deal to take the online retailer into a new arena: helping hedge funds short stocks.
Overstock's t0 subsidiary acquired broker-dealer SpeedRoute Technologies on Wednesday August 26, adding crucial stock trading infrastructure to its list of offerings.
OverStock founder and chief executive Patrick M. Byrne told Business Insider in an interview on Friday August 28 that he was especially excited about a new service that will help investors looking to short hard-to-borrow stocks.
It's TGI Friday on the FTSE 100 (Business Insider)
It's been a crazy week for stock markets around the world and you can practically hear traders in London breathing a sigh of relief as we go into the long weekend.
‘Death cross’ patterns spread like a bearish virus (Market Watch)
The “death cross” pattern is spreading fast through the stock market like a bearish virus.
Investors dump stocks at record pace (CNN)
Mom and pop investors are dumping their investments and moving to cash at levels not seen since the financial crisis of 2008.
It's an "investor revolt," is how Credit Suisse characterized it.
Normally when investors panic about stocks falling, they sell stocks and buy bonds, which are viewed as safer. But that's not happening now.
Asian Stock Markets Rise for 2nd Straight Day, but Europe Is Slightly Down (NY Times)
Investors were calmed by strong growth figures from the United States, while China continued to take measures to shore up stocks and the renminbi.
This Is What Oil at $40 Means for the U.S. Economy (Bloomberg)
The price of oil has tumbled 58 percent this year to reach a six-year low earlier this week. Even if prices stay at these levels, chances are they won't impact the Federal Reserve's interest-rate plans.
Apple, Amazon and Google top lists of ‘buy ideas’ after selloff (Market Watch)
Top tech stocks, including Amazon.com and Google, are looking attractive after the recent market pullback, according to two analysts who sent buy ideas to clients late this week following a broader selloff.
Google Inc. GOOG, -1.13% and Amazon.com AMZN, -0.07% were touted as leading buy ideas by both Morgan Stanley and Cantor Fitzgerald in notes distributed to clients on Friday morning and Thursday, respectively.
Focus turns to U.S. data as China slowdown looms (Business Insider)
After a dizzying two weeks that saw a rapid plunge and rebound in equity prices, investors are looking forward to a week of economic data that may provide clarity on the likelihood of a near-term U.S. interest rate hike and help tamp down the market's recent wild swings.
The economic figures will culminate in Friday’s jobs report that should reveal more about the strength of the U.S. economy. Car sales, construction spending, the Federal Reserve's "beige book" and jobs growth may show the economy is strong enough to withstand the first rate hike in nearly a decade from the Federal Reserve, despite worries about a hard landing for China’s economy.
Amazon's impressive cash flow: Don't be fooled by it (CNN)
Retail giant Amazon seems to be on a roll.
The company's cash flow figures are exploding. Over the past 12 months, Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) has produced a staggering $8.98 billion of operating cash flow and $4.37 billion of free cash flow. Both dwarf the $188 million net loss the company posted over the same period.
These emerging-markets currencies will outperform as China slows (Market Watch)
The Colombian and Mexican pesos posted remarkable turnarounds in the second half of the week.
Stocks finish the week higher: Here's what you need to know (Business Insider)
Stocks finished the week higher after several wild days of trading that saw stocks collapse in the first few minutes of trading on Monday, fall sharply in just an hour on Tuesday, and have one of their best days in years on Wednesday.
The price of oil also had a wild ride, collapsing to a new post-crisis low early in the week before climbing nearly 20% in just two days to almost the same level at which we started the month of August.
Politics
Obama says nuclear deal blocks every path for Iran to get weapons (Market Watch)
President Barack Obama said Friday the recently negotiated agreement with Iran blocks “every pathway” for the country to acquire nuclear weapons, defending the deal in a web cast with two Jewish organizations.
Obama’s comments came as members of Congress are mulling the deal, which lifts sanctions on Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. The Israeli government strongly opposes the agreement. Congress is expected to vote on the deal after returning from its summer break.
How Trump Makes Jeb Bush Seem Like a Wimp (The Atlantic)
Donald Trump has gotten a boost in his efforts to maul Jeb Bush in recent days from an unexpected source: Jeb Bush himself.
Trump’s attack on Jeb isn’t mostly about issues. As with most things Trump, it’s mostly about persona. The Donald thinks Jeb is a dud. “He’s a man that doesn’t want to be doing what he’s doing,” Trump said in June. “I call him the reluctant warrior, and warrior’s probably not a good word. I think Bush is an unhappy person. I don’t think he has any energy.”
Technology
One week battery life on an iPhone 6? It's possible (CNN)
A green energy company claims to have built a battery that fits inside an iPhone 6 and gives the phone a week's worth of power.
British hydrogen fuel cell maker Intelligent Energy says it's not a theoretical, far-off dream: It has a working prototype of an iPhone 6 that doesn't need to be charged for seven days.
When Robots Get Wasted (Gizmodo)
Mind-altering substances are buckets of fun for humans, but what about for robots? An excellent article at Hopes and Fears wondered if our future robot overlords are going to spend their weekends getting baked out of their minds. (Spoiler: We’re not sure.) But for me, the article raised an even more pressing question: What would a robot on drugs even look like?
A quick scan of the internet shows humans have been trying to answer that question for a long time. Here are a few favorite examples of robots under the influence.
Health and Life Sciences
Drinking water 'no hangover cure' (BBC)
Instead, a study concluded, the only way to prevent a hangover is to drink less alcohol.
More than 800 students were asked how they tried to relieve hangover symptoms, but neither food nor water was found to have any positive effect.
The findings are being presented at a conference in Amsterdam.
Life on the Home Planet
Mathematician reveals the mechanism for sustaining biological rhythms (Science Daily)
Our bodies have a variety of biological clocks that follow rhythms or oscillations with periods ranging from seconds to days. For example, our hearts beat every second, and cells divide periodically. The circadian clock located in the hypothalamus generates twenty-four hour rhythms, timing our sleep and hormone release. How do these biological clocks or circuits generate and sustain the stable rhythms that are essential to life?
Solar device shatters records for splitting water (Futurity)
A new “artificial leaf” system that uses solar energy to split water can safely and efficiently create hydrogen fuel.
“This new system shatters all of the combined safety, performance, and stability records for artificial leaf technology by factors of 5 to 10 or more,” says Nate Lewis, a chemistry professor at Caltech and scientific director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP).
Increasingly severe disturbances weaken world's temperate forests (Phys)
Longer, more severe, and hotter droughts and a myriad of other threats, including diseases and more extensive and severe wildfires, are threatening to transform some of the world's temperate forests, a new study published in Science has found. Without informed management, some forests could convert to shrublands or grasslands within the coming decades.
