Financial Markets and Economy
S&P 500 Futures Little Changed; Alcoa Drops After Earnings Miss (Bloomberg)
U.S. stock-index futures were little changed, after disappointing results from Alcoa Inc. offset optimism from a winning streak that’s put the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index on track for its best week of the year.
France's economy is finally showing some signs of life after years of stagnation (Business Insider)
It's a rare week when there are two positive economic data points coming out of France.
Gold jumps $12 as U.S. rate hike expectations fade (Market Watch)
Gold prices climbed on Friday, on the back of a weaker dollar and renewed speculation that a Fed rate rise may be delayed into next year.
Gold for December delivery GCZ5, +0.63% jumped $11.80, or 1.1%, to $1,156.10 an ounce, setting it on track for its highest close since August.
Charting the Markets: Watch Out for the Spikes (Bloomberg)
Asian stocks rise, emerging market currencies rally and zinc surges as much as 10percent.
China Resources unit to sell stakes in Wal-Mart China stores (Business Insider)
A unit of conglomerate China Resources Corp plans to sell minority stakes it holds in 21 outlets of Wal-Mart Stores Inc <WMT.N> around China, a spokesman for the U.S. retailer told Reuters on Friday.
State-backed China Resources SZITIC Trust Co Ltd has listed for sale its stakes in the stores for a combined 3.3 billion yuan ($525 million), according to official postings from the Chinese firm on the Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange.
CEOs and other company insiders are gorging on shares (Market Watch)
Corporate insiders are more bullish today than they’ve been in four years.
6 alternative ways to fund your business without an investor (Mashable)
Raising money is often the toughest part of starting a business, and it’s also the most important. The majority of small businesses that fail within the first few months have one simple thing in common — they run out of money.
Ruble Pares Best Weekly Gain This Year as Oil Rally Seen Limited (Bloomberg)
Theruble weakened for the first time in five days amid speculation that gains in oil, the main driver for the currencys movements, will be limited.
Germany's Schaeffler rises in market debut (Business Insider)
German automotive parts maker Schaeffler <SHA_p.DE> rose 8 percent in its first day of trading on Friday in one of Germany's largest initial public offerings (IPO) this year.
The shares opened at 13.50 euros, above the issue price of 12.50 euros ($14.10) apiece, after having been offered in a 12-14 euro range.
The time is right for the right mining stocks (Market Watch)
Amid the commodity bust, there is hope for mining companies with strong enough balance sheets to buy attractive assets from weaker competitors.
Spanish Bonds Beating German Peers Signals Wagers on Stimulus (Bloomberg)
Spanish government bonds were set for a second weekly advance relative to their German peers as improving market sentiment and speculation of more European Central Bank stimulus boosted demand for the euro region’s higher-yielding assets.
Zinc prices explode after Glencore takes 500,000 tonnes off the market (Business Insider)
Mining giant Glencore is cutting its zinc production by a third in order to boost the price of the metal — and the move is doing exactly that.
SABMiller Increases Cost Savings Target as AB InBev Circles (Bloomberg)
SABMiller Plc doubled a pledge to cut costs as it seeks to rally shareholders around its rebuttal of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, the larger rival seeking to buy the U.K. brewer for a record 65.2 billion pounds ($100 billion).
Annual savings in the 12 months through March 2016 should exceed $430 million and reach $1.05 billion by 2020, the brewer said Friday in a statement. The company had previously targeted about $500 million in annual savings by 2018.
Wage growth may be disappointing, but workers are getting more expensive (Business Insider)
Labor is simply getting more expensive.
In the last several months as economists have tried to judge how much "slack" remains in the labor market, the lack of wage growth has been pointed to as a sign that there is still a ways to go before we're at a "full employment" inflection point that would, among other things, prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
Asian markets rise after Fed minutes cast doubt on rate hike (Market Watch)
Markets across Asia rallied Friday after details from the U.S. central bank’s latest meeting cast further doubt on the prospect of higher interest rates this year.
Hopes for easier monetary policies from global central banks have been building, spurring gains earlier this week in shares and emerging-market currencies that were pummeled by fears of capital flight. Easing concerns about oversupply lifted some commodities, giving a boost to energy stocks and currencies of commodities-exposed emerging markets, too.
Russia Markets Find Sweet Spot as Politics Take Back Seat to Oil (Bloomberg)
As Russian military planes pound Syria, the ruble, stocks and bonds are projecting an uncommon level of giddiness on the part of traders.
Buyer Beware as Nobody Trusts the Rally in Emerging Currencies (Bloomberg)
This month’s advance in emerging-market currencies is turning into the rally no one seems to like.
An index of 20 developing-nation exchange rates is at an almost two-month high, recovering from a record low on growing speculation the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates near zero until next year. Yet Credit Suisse Group AG, Pacific Investment Management Co. and Citigroup Inc. say the gains will prove fleeting, and most forecasters agree: All 23 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg are projected to weaken against the dollar by the first quarter, according to the latest analysts’ forecasts.
FTSE 100 Winning Streak Erases Most of August Rout; Miners Jump (Bloomberg)
Britains shares clawed back most of the slump suffered by global equities over the summer, as miners extended a rally after posting longest streak of gains since 2003.
Futures Signal European Stocks to Extend Rally After Fed Minutes (Bloomberg)
Rallies in energy and mining shares buoyed European stocks today, sending them toward their biggest weekly gain since Mario Draghi announced quantitative easing in January.
U.S. Gas Bulls Say Too Much Bad News Can Be a Good Thing (Bloomberg)
Natural gas bulls are herding together.
A BlackRock Salesman's $2 Trillion Quest in the Land of No Yield (Bloomberg)
Pick a spot on a map of Japan, and odds are that BlackRock Inc.s Riku Takewaki has been there this year.
Japanese Stocks Head for Best Week Since July After Fed Minutes (Bloomberg)
Japanese stocks rose, poised for the biggest weekly advance since July, after Federal Reserve minutes indicated the central bank isnt in a hurry to raise interest rates.
Ferrari IPO could value the automaker at over $12 billion (Business Insider)
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles plans to spin off Ferrari in an IPO later this month. And the value of the Italian maker of exotic, sexy sports cars just keeps going up.
"Ferrari’s coveted status as a maker of cars for the super rich is helping push up its value in an initial public offering to as much as 11 billion euros ($12.4 billion), according to people familiar with the matter," reported Bloomberg's Tommaso Ebhardt, Manuel Baigorri and Ruth David.
Politics
House Republicans Start Over (The Atlantic)
First Eric Cantor. Then John Boehner. Now Kevin McCarthy.
Conservatives in and out of Congress have, within a span of 15 months, tossed aside three of the four men most instrumental in the 2010 victory that gave Republicans their majority in the House. When the leaderless and divided party gathers on Friday to begin anew its search for a speaker, the biggest question will be whether that fourth man, Paul Ryan, will take a job that for the moment, only he can win.
Tea Party wave that lifted Republicans threatens to engulf them (Reuters)
In Washington, Republicans are rudderless after their candidate to lead the House of Representatives drops out. On the campaign trail, seasoned conservatives struggle in the presidential race while a reality TV star alienates the nation's fastest-growing slice of the electorate.
Since 2010, Republicans have harnessed the anti-establishment energy of the Tea Party movement to win control of Congress and recruit a deep field of candidates for the November 2016 presidential election.
Technology
China Shoots Missile at Typhoon (Popular Science)
The SY-400's anti-missile defense maneuvering makes it great for flying over a storm, and dropping a bunch of meterological payloads to observe typhoon conditions.
Dubbed the Heavy Sword, the SY-400 is a large, 1 ton, 180-200km Chinese guided rocket that uses its advanced rocket motor, maneuverability, sensors and datalinks, and body mounted airstrikes and fins to evade enemy missile defense systems and drop munition payloads throughout its flight. In 2014 On October 3, China fired a SY-400 at Typhoon Mujigae, a Category 4 storm, which had swept into Guangdong Province, killing 20 people and causing $3.66 billion in damage. But the launch into Mujigae wasn't a military attack of retalition, but instead a science mission.
Health and Life Sciences
China faces smoking 'death epidemic' (BBC)
A new study has warned that a third of all men currently under the age of 20 in China will eventually die prematurely if they do not give up smoking.
The research, published in The Lancet medical journal, says two-thirds of men in China now start to smoke before 20.
Ask Well: When Sitting Can Be Good for You (NY Times)
This question reveals a common and persistent misconception about the dangers of sitting, for which I may be partly to blame, since I have so frequently written about those dangers. (See here and here and here.)
But while prolonged sitting is known to increase the risks for conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, liver disease and premature death, the actual culprit behind the risks, scientists believe, is not the posture of sitting, but the immobility of your muscles when you are in that position.
If 'breast is best' for newborns, where's the support in hospitals? (CNN)
If Amanda Rodriguez could do it all over again, she would do her homework and select a different hospital for the birth of her first child, one that was much more supportive of nursing.
Life on the Home Planet
The story of a man who recorded every detail of his life for five years (Quartz)
Some of the tirade is against technology, which many claim stops us from making connections with each other. The bigger worry is that, in our attempts to capture memories that we fear may be lost forever, we don’t live in the moment.
