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Friday, March 29, 2024

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Financial Markets and Economy

Deutsche Bank Said in Early Stages of Mulling Bond Buyback (Bloomberg)

Deutsche Bank AG is considering buying back some of its bonds, potentially countering this month’s selloff over concern that Germany’s biggest bank will struggle to make payments on its riskiest debt.

Rates markets, at odds with Fed, seek clarity from Yellen (Business Insider)

While Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is the one tasked with delivering a message over the next two days when she speaks to Congress, financial markets are keen to know if she has absorbed their message to her: stifle your rate hike plans.

World's Negative-Yielding Bond Pile Tops $7 Trillion: Chart (Bloomberg)

More than $7 trillion of government bonds offered yields below zero globally as of Monday, making up about 29 percent of the Bloomberg Global Developed Sovereign Bond Index.

One of Only Analysts Still Covering Sears Says It Isn't Viable (Bloomberg)

Sears Holdings Corp., the department-store chain run by hedge-fund magnate Eddie Lampert, plunged as much as 8.9 percent after an analyst warned that the company is no longer viable as a retailer in its current form.

Bank of America sees 25% chance of a U.S. recession in 2016 (Market Watch)

Despite increased chatter about the probability of an economic contraction, the odds of the U.S. slipping into a recession in the next 12 months are only about 25%, according to economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Tuesday.

Hedge Funds Make a Back-Up Plan (Bloomberg)

Hedge funds are bracing for another round of upheaval in the investment banking industry, judged by their closest day-to-day relationship.

star warsDisney crushes earnings expectations thanks to Star Wars but ESPN profits decline (Business Insider)

Disney reported quarterly results on Tuesday evening, crushing expectations for profits.

The company posted $1.63 in adjusted earnings per share for the first fiscal quarter. Revenues grew 14% to $15.2 billion. 

The FV Shuffle: Giant ETF Trades? No Problem! (ETF)

You’d think with the amount of hyperbole being thrown around about how ETFs are going to completely destroy global capitalism, flipping billions of dollars around inside the First Trust ETF complex might expose the cracks in the system—or at least raise a few eyebrows.

Goldman Sachs Abandons Five of Six 'Top Trade' Calls for 2016 (Bloomberg)

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has exited five of six top trading recommendations for the year after they were thwarted by financial-market turmoil linked to signs of a slowdown in global economic growth.

Here’s what technical analysts are saying about the turmoil in stocks (Market Watch)

Some chart watchers say a recently completed bearish pattern could portend more pain for stock investors over the short term.

The stocks Wall Street analysts love most are getting crushed this year (Business Insider)

Wall Street analysts are paid to study companies and recommend winners to investors.

2 9 15 Markets COTD

Taco Bell Would Be Yummy Alone (Bloomberg)

It was only a matter of time before Taco Bell merged its quesadilla and chalupa offerings into the new "Quesalupa," which it unveiled during the Super Bowl. It was a no-brainer to combine the overwhelmingly cheesy goodness of a quesadilla with the chalupa shell's perfect crunchiness.

How a huge Chinese ‘Ponzi scheme’ lured investors (Washington Post)

Kang Weiwei considers herself cautious. When China’s stock market took off, she stood on the sidelines. She steered clear of financial products that she couldn’t really understand.

The oil-trading 'god' has been burned by his bullish bet, but he's not giving up (Business Insider)

Prominent oil trader Andrew J. Hall, who runs $2 billion energy and commodities hedge fund Astenbeck Capital, has gotten burned on his bullish bet on oil prices.

Who's Afraid of a Falling Yuan? (Bloomberg View)

Everyone from buttoned-down Japanese central bankers to ex-slugger Jose Canseco (or whoever hacked his Twitter account) seems to be worried about the sliding value of China's currency, the yuan. The fear is that a cheaper yuan will spur other export-dependent countries to devalue as well in order to remain competitive, sparking a global currency war. Meanwhile, ordinary Chinese will presumably race to move their money out of the country and Chinese companies will struggle to pay back loans taken out in dollars. A truly uncontrolled dive threatens to cause havoc throughout China's opaque financial system.

The single most important thing an economics course can teach you (Quartz)

Two extraordinary things happened to the economics profession in the last 20 years. Economics became the most popular course at many universities and the financial crisis seriously damaged the field’s credibility.

The Great Corporate Debt Scare (Bloomberg)

A lot of people are worried about corporate leverage. Years of cheap credit have encouraged corporate borrowing, and credit spreads have widened recently on fears of a global slowdown — all of which makes for a potentially explosive cocktail. By one measure — the debt-to-earnings ratio — corporate leverage is at a 12-year high.

Shelves are stacked with merchandise at a Wal-Mart Stores Inc company distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas June 6, 2013.     REUTERS/Rick Wilking U.S. wholesale inventories, sales fall in December (Business Insider)

U.S. wholesale inventories slipped in December for a third straight month as businesses continued to reduce unsold merchandise, suggesting the advance fourth-quarter economic growth estimate could be revised slightly lower.

Markets Don't Work as Well as We Thought (Bloomberg View)

One of the big unanswered questions in the finance world is: Do returns reflect risk or mispricing? Defenders of the efficient markets hypothesis say that you can’t get higher returns without taking more risk, while behavioral finance says that there are often unexploited anomalies that will let wise, patient or deep-pocketed investors beat the market without taking on more risk.

Treasury Market’s 10-Year Inflation Forecast Falls To 7-Year Low (Capital Spectator)

Yesterday’s tumble in US equities fueled another leg down in Treasury yields. As the bear market in stocks rolls on, the crowd continued to rush into the safe-haven trade, pushing the 10-year yield down to 1.75% yesterday (Feb. 8)–the lowest level in about a year, based on daily data via Treasury.gov. Meanwhile, the 2-year yield—considered the most sensitive spot on the yield curve for rate expectations—tumbled to 0.66%, the lowest in nearly four months.

t.2.10.2016-02-09

Checking In On JP Morgan’s ETFs (ETF)

It has been roughly a year and a half since J.P. Morgan first entered the ETF market with the launch of the JPMorgan Diversified Return Global Equity (JPGE | C-73). The huge bank, known largely for its footprint in the actively managed mutual fund space, has since rolled out a few more ETFs, and is now getting ready to debut its first active exchange-traded fund.

Stock Rout Stalls Amid Mixed Asian Outlook; Oil Back Above $28 (Bloomberg)

Japanese stocks fell a second day, sliding with shares in Australia as persistent concern over market volatility and the global outlook helped the yen solidify its ascent. Crude oil climbed back above $28 a barrel before an update on U.S. stockpiles.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts – Funny Markets, Ugly Insiders (Jesse's Cafe Americain)

Stocks continued to wobble today, swooning lower on the poor economic both at home and abroad.  Although the happy talk about The Recovery™ that resonates particularly from the Democratic establishment is a bit disorienting to those with a firmer grip on reality outside the Beltway.

Politics

What Republicans Lose If Jeb Bush Fails (Bloomberrg View)

There's an opening in the Republican race for president. Donald Trump seems to be losing interest after losing Iowa. Ted Cruz may be the top choice of conservative Christians who support carpet-bombing, but he still unnerves many mainline conservatives.

The Kids Are for Bernie (The Atlantic)

Twenty-three minutes into his typically rambling, hourlong stump speech in the arena here, at a private liberal-arts college on the Massachusetts border—after he had decried the Koch brothers and the prescription-drug companies, after he had accused Wall Street of bribing its way to deregulation, after he had called out the corporate media and the political establishment—Bernie Sanders turned to the bleachers behind him, which were filled with college students waving blue signs and chanting his name.

Technology

The device is a little larger than a quarter.MetaSensor’s Sensor-1 is like a Bluetooth keyfinder made for spies (The Next Web)

Losing stuff sucks. Having something stolen is even worse. But technology can help us, and that’s precisely what MetaSensor is trying to do with its first product, the fittingly named Sensor-1.

It’s something like a Bluetooth keyfinder – think Tile… on steroids. 

Russian Truck SwimSome Russians have built the perfect apocalypse survival vehicle (The Verge)

Someday, civilization will collapse. It is with that knowledge that a group of Russians — who might know more than most about the perils of that collapse — have built the Sherp. It's an all-terrain vehicle that can easily climb over barriers more than 2 feet high. Water is no obstacle, making it truly all-terrain. Oh, and it can be yours for less than $70,000.

Health and Life Sciences

Brain Activity for Attention and Memory Tasks Changes with the Seasons (Scientific American)

Seasonal variations play a major role in the animal kingdom—in reproduction, food availability, hibernation, even fur color. Whether this seasonality has such a significant influence on humans, however, is an open question. Its best-known association is with mood—that is, feeling down during the colder months and up in the summer—and, in extreme cases, seasonal depression, a phenomenon known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Mutant sperm-factories spread in testes (BBC)

Mutant sperm-factories spread in men's testicles as they age to increase the risk of children with genetic diseases, researchers have shown.

Millions of spermatogonia produce a constant supply of sperm in the testes.

Life on the Home Planet

Cyanobacteria in a pond Green Slime Can See (Popular Science)

You don't need eyes to see–at least, not if you're a cyanobacteria.

In a paper published in eLife, researchers say that they've figured out how cyanobacteria and other single-celled bacteria can detect and move toward a source of light. It turns out that they use their entire body as an eye.

tiny pondTiny ponds are big source of greenhouse gases (Futurity)

The smaller the pond, the higher the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane, new research shows.

Although ponds less than a quarter of an acre in size make up only 8.6 percent of the surface area of the world’s lakes and ponds, they account for 15.1 percent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and 40.6 percent of diffusive methane (CH4) emissions.

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