Financial Markets and Economy
China Sets a Strategy You Can Dance To (Bloomberg View)
There’s something mystifying about the animated pop video released this week by the Chinese Communist Party to illustrate President Xi Jinping’s “Four Comprehensives” policy a year after its announcement. If you’re expecting the loyalty dance of the Cultural Revolution, or the terrifying elegance of red flags being silently waved, you’re in for a surprise. The new video is cloyingly cute and almost self-consciously trivializing, without a shred of cultural pretension.
The clearest sign yet that job growth in the US is about to slow down (Business Insider)
US job growth has been rolling for most of the last two years.
Yen Shows Limit of Negative Rates by Wiping Out BOJ Drop in Days (Bloomberg)
Traders are reminding the Bank of Japan of the limits of monetary policy in weakening a currency.
The party's over: Madoff, Billions, and a sober new wave of financial dramas (The Verge)
After a national tragedy, we grieve, we process, we debate — and eventually, we dramatize. Five years after 9/11, Hollywood gave us not one but two feature films about deadliest attack on American soil. There was Paul Greengrass' United 93, a sober thriller set aboard a hijacked plane, and there was Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, which starred Nicolas Cage's mustache. Two years later came The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning look at the war America launched in response to the 9/11 attacks. Four years after that, Bigelow returned with Zero Dark Thirty, the story of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden. And in 2014, Clint Eastwood delivered the Iraq war veteran biopic American Sniper.
NYSE's July 8 halt pushed trading to other exchanges: U.S. SEC (Business Insider)
When the New York Stock Exchange came to a surprise standstill of more than three hours on July 8, trading simply migrated to other exchanges, according to an analysis released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
Trading halted at 11:32 a.m., raising fears that one of the world's largest stock exchanges had fallen prey to a cyber attack. Officials said a technical glitch caused the three-hour, 38-minute break.
Viacom investors anxiously await news after Sumner Redstone resigns at CBS (Market Watch)
CBS Corp. said late Wednesday that media magnate Sumner Redstone had resigned as the company’s executive chairman and the board tapped President and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves to be his successor.
Miners Go Gangbusters as Metals Rally, Dollar Drop Spark Rebound (Bloomberg)
Mining companies that have been pummeled by faltering Chinese demand surged the most in five months as a rally in metal prices signaled production cuts are starting to pay off.
Apple Has Wasted Billions on Buybacks (Fortune)
In the past several years, Apple’s leaders have been touting the benefits—and wisdom—of its gigantic stock repurchase campaign. That wisdom, given that Apple’s shares have tumbled 20% in the past six months, is looking pretty misguided. On Tuesday, Alphabet overtook Apple as the world’s most valuable company.
GoPro posts wider-than-expected loss: Guidance for Q1 revenues miss, shares tank 20% (Business Insider)
GoPro reported really ugly fourth-quarter results on Wednesday.
The digital-camera maker posted an unexpected earnings loss as its growth slowed and new products failed to catch on with consumers as expected.
GoPro reported an adjusted earnings per share loss of 8 cents and sales of $436.6 million for the crucial holiday quarter.
Picasso's Young Lover Canvas Fetches $27.6 Million at Sotheby's (Bloomberg)
A portrait of Pablo Picasso’s young lover fetched 18.9 million pounds ($27.6 million) at Sotheby’s in London on Wednesday.
The work led Sotheby’s evening auction of Impressionist and modern art, which tallied 78.3 million pounds. While the total surpassed rival Christie’s similar auction a day earlier, it fell short of the low estimate of 85.6 million pounds, and was 54 percent below what the auction house sold at the equivalent event a year ago.
When Diversification Works (A Wealth of Common Sense)
The S&P 500 has outperformed the MSCI World Index each of the past three years and six out of the last eight. This is quite a run when you consider how often U.S. stocks have outperformed the rest of the world’s markets over historically.
Managers Bleed Money as Investors Flock to BlackRock, DoubleLine (Bloomberg)
Money managers are having trouble hanging on to money.
Here's the latest sign that investors are anxious about Saudi Arabia (Business Insider)
Saudi Arabia's leaders are nervous about the future.
Bond Market Is Closer to No Fed Rate Increases Than One for 2016 (Bloomberg)
Bond traders are sending the clearest signal yet that they doubt the Federal Reserve will be able to raise interest rates this year.
US oil keeps flooding the market — and it's increasingly coming from the Gulf of Mexico (Business Insider)
US shale production is starting to decline amid lower oil prices.
Toxic Loans Around the World Weigh on Global Growth (NY Times)
Beneath the surface of the global financial system lurks a multitrillion-dollar problem that could sap the strength of large economies for years to come.
One trader has an interesting theory about why we might be seeing a bottom in oil prices (Business Insider)
One trader has an interesting theory about why oil may have bottomed.
Dollar Falls as Services-Industry Slowdown Dims Economic Outlook (Bloomberg)
The dollar plunged by the most since the Federal Reserve announced the start of its Treasury bond-buying program seven years ago, as signs of a slowing U.S. economy helped derail bets on diverging policies between global central banks.
Politics
Rand Paul's Exit Is Good for Democracy (Bloomberg View)
Once we had 17 officially declared Republicans running for president. With the departures of Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee this week, now there are only nine. Rick Santorum is expected to leave any minute now, and it wouldn't be surprising if Carly Fiorina did as well. And if Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich disappoint in New Hampshire's primary on Tuesday, they could be history soon too. (Kasich has said as much, and even some Bush supporters are saying New Hampshire may be the end for him unless he rallies strongly.)
More Clinton-Sanders debates are coming — including in Flint (Market Watch)
More debates between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are on the way, including in water crisis-stricken Flint, Mich.
Clinton, who eked out a victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses over Sanders, requested the debate in Flint to draw attention to the crisis. That debate, plus three others, are now scheduled after the campaigns of the two Democratic-nomination hopefuls reportedly agreed on a rough schedule.
Technology
Build a Robot Gecko That Climbs Walls Using Suction Cups and Pumps (Gizmodo)
Instead of using billions of tiny hair-like structures and Van der Waals forces to stick to walls and ceilings like a real gecko does, Thames & Kosmos new Geckobot kit employs tiny air pumps and suction cups to climb vertical surfaces without falling and smashing.
The biological science behind the kit might not be 100 percent accurate, but while building the Geckobot, which assembles not unlike a Lego Technic kit, kids will still learn about mechanical engineering, physics, and why they’ll probably never be able to stick to walls like Spider-Man can.
Health and Life Sciences
Cancer cells travel in packs to survive and spread (Futurity)
Cancer cells rarely spread on their own, preferring to travel in groups from their original tumor site, a new study with mice shows.
Collaboration seems to increase their collective chance of surviving to establish metastatic tumors elsewhere in the body.
Painkillers Don't Ease Disability Due to Nerve Damage: Study (Medicine Net Daily)
Taking prescription narcotic painkillers doesn't improve movement or reduce disability in people with pain related to nerve damage, researchers have found.
Life on the Home Planet
Higher Temperatures May Doom Many Trees (Scientific American)
Drought is projected to intensify in frequency and severity, bringing with it more wildfires, insect-induced tree mortality and a host of economic impacts as global temperatures rise, according to a comprehensive scientific assessment released by the U.S. Forest Service.
Simply put, the report released Monday synthesizes a growing body of research that finds that drought is not good for America’s forests.
Watch Nigeria's First Confirmed Drone Strike — Against Boko Haram (Popular Science)
This January 25, 2015 photo appears to show a Chinese made CH-3 drone, owned by Nigeria, which has crash landed upside down. The two AR-1 ATGMs attached to its wing pylons suggest that Nigeria is turning to drone strikes as the bloody war against Boko Haram continues.
