Financial Markets and Economy
Gold Rush Speeds Up as Fear Mounts (Bloomberg)
Investors scoop up precious metals, Treasuries, and money markets.
Worst Still Ahead for Mining Industry After Losing $1.4 Trillion (Bloomberg)
When you find yourself in a hole, the saying goes, stop digging. A simple lesson that arguably has bypassed a mining industry that’s wiped out more than $1.4 trillion of shareholder value by digging too many holes around the globe. The industry's 73 percent plunge from a 2011 peak is far beyond the oil industry's 49 percent loss during the same time.
Crude oil just had its biggest day in 7 years (Business Insider)
Crude oil just had its biggest day in seven years.
Battered Bank Stocks Reflect Not Just Jitters, but Mistrust (NY Times)
The bear market in big United States financial stocks has many people wondering: Are we headed for another banking crisis?
The KBW Bank Index, made up of 24 money-center institutions and top regional banks, certainly signals pain for this industry. The index has tumbled 19 percent this year and 26 percent since its peak in July.
What central bank failures mean for your investment strategy (Market Watch)
Go long on cash, gold, and volatility and avoid risky assets at all cost until China, commodities, credit and consumer spending improve, a strategist said Friday.
U.S. Stocks Stage Strong Rally, But End Week in the Red (Wall Street Journal)
Major stock indexes posted weekly losses, putting a damper on a rally Friday in recently battered commodities and banking shares.
The gains snapped a five-session losing streak for the Dow industrials and came on the heels of a particularly rough day for global stocks.
Nickel Climbs From 13-Year Low as Stocks Halt Week-Long Skid (Bloomberg)
Nickel climbed from a 13-year low, leading a rebound in industrial metals, as a rally for U.S. equities eased concerns over stalling economic growth. Shares of mining companies rose, with Teck Resources Ltd. posting the biggest intraday gain since August.
Visa discloses its stake in mobile-payments company Square (LA Times)
Visa Inc. took a significant stake in mobile-payments company Square Inc. prior to its initial public offering, according to a regulatory filing Thursday with theSecurities and Exchange Commission.
The global credit card and financial services firm acquired some 4.19 million Class B shares in 2011 that do not publicly trade. It has the right to convert 3.52 million of them to Class A shares, the filing by Visa said.
A Money Store of Diamonds Grows, and So Do the Questions (Bloomberg)
No one would ever mistake Zales for Tiffany.
Nikkei Plummets in Japan on Yen Strength (NY Times)
The Japanese stock market on Friday underwent its second major rout of the week, falling more than 5 percent and capping its worst single-week performance since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2008.
Why boomers are loading up on debt and millennials aren’t (Market Watch)
A new report from the New York Federal Reserve shows older Americans have been ramping up their debt while younger Americans have not.
Late-day buying could be start of turnaround (Business Insider)
As U.S. stocks continue to struggle in 2016, equities are showing some signs selling pressure may be reaching an end.
The S&P 500 is down about 13 percent from its record high in May, as oil remains mired below $30 a barrel, while concerns about stability among banks and uncertainty about the U.S. Federal Reserve's path of rate hikes have pushed investors away from risk assets.
What Investors Should Ask Themselves (Bloomberg View)
You are an investor with $10 million planning to cash out in 20 years. A genie appears and offers to send you the price of one but only one asset 20 years from now to inform your investment decisions (a stock, currency pair, commodity, equity index, etc.). What do you want to know?
This week was a disaster for Sotheby's (Business Insider)
It has been a disastrous week for Sotheby's.
The stock has crashed 14% over the past five days, and it is now down 54% in 12 months.
The latest dive started Thursday, when the stock fell 17% after dismal sales numbers out of London.
Calm Down, Activistas – Passive is a Drop in Ocean (Evidence Investor)
Make no mistake, the fund industry PR machine is in overdrive. Every day in the trade press I see articles dissing passive and extolling active management. Most of them are big on rhetoric and light on factual detail, and as such barely warrant attention. But I did spot one such article yesterday that is worth mentioning — if only for its entertainment value.
Just a fraction of the world's oil supply isn't profitable at $35 a barrel (Business Insider)
Oil prices are at a level not seen in over 10 years.
On Thursday afternoon the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil hit a low not seen since 2003.
However, a tweet from a Wall Street Journal reporter indicated that the oil cartel OPEC may be considering production cuts.
The last time inventories and sales were this out of line was in the last recession (Market Watch)
Business inventories relative to sales rose in December to the highest level since the last recession, reflecting slower economic growth toward the end of last year.
Inventories climbed a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in the final month of 2015, the Commerce Department said Friday. That was a bit below the MarketWatch forecast of a 0.2% gain.
Philly Fed ADS Index: No Recession (Capital Spectator)
The battle between macro and markets rages on. Yesterday’s update of the ADS Index—a US business-cycle metric published by the Philadelphia Fed—remained comfortably in growth territory, in part due to yesterday’s upbeat report on jobless claims (one of the index’s six components). A markets-based estimate of the US economic trend, by contrast, continues to price in a new recession, based on the Macro-Markets Risk Index (MMRI), which aggregates four corners of the financial and commodities realm in an effort to gauge the crowd’s outlook. (Seehere for MMRI’s design details.)
Oil rig count falls for 8th straight week (Business Insider)
The US oil rig count plunged by 28 to 439 this week, according to driller Baker Hughes.
JP Morgan says there's a 92% chance of recession within 3 years (Business Insider)
Despite seemingly strong fundamentals and a chorus of economists saying "relax", the chances of a US recession may be larger than you think.
A Positive Divergence at Last (The Reformed Broker)
Technicians don’t crack snake eggs into a bowl and whip an elongated pinky fingernail through the yolk to make proclamations about the market’s future.
Politics
A Messy Election Like Lincoln Had in Mind (Bloomberg View)
It's the parties choosing their candidate. In almost all other nations this is done quietly, and we don't pretend the people have a say. This is just more of a show to give the illusion of choice.
In the end, you have two choices: the person the Republicans pick or the person the Democrats pick.
The Dark Heart of ASEAN (Project Syndicate)
Next week's meeting between US President Barack Obama and the leaders of the ten ASEAN countries – the first US-ASEAN meeting on American soil – signifies America’s growing interest in Southeast Asia. The question is whether, by engaging with all members of ASEAN, the US is allowing its interests to overwhelm its principles.
The Edge: The End of Gilmentum (The Atlantic)
Republican presidential candidate Jim Gilmore ended his campaign. Donald Trump threatened to sue Ted Cruz for not being a natural born citizen. The heads of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches met for the first time in nearly 1,000 years. The U.S. government plans to open commercial flights to Cuba. Secretary of State John Kerry announced an upcoming temporary ceasefire in the Syrian civil war. Two high-school students were killed in a shooting in Glendale, Arizona. And President Obama has designated three new national monuments.
Technology
New Sea Legs For A Robot Firefighter (Popular Science)
Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR) In Testing
Where there’s smoke, there should be firefighting robots. At least ,that’s the aim of the humanoid Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR, yes, pronounced “safer”) in development by the Office of Naval Research. The Navy demonstrated the robot last winter, and it was one of the competitors at DARPA’s robotics grand challenge last summer. To help SAFFiR walk a little better, the Navy just awarded a $600,000 grant to Worcester Polytechnic Institute to teach the robots how to walk better.
A new earthquake-sensing app just hit the Google Play Store (The Verge)
Scientists have a new way to predict earthquakes, harnessing the combined power of the world’s smartphones. An app called MyShake is arriving today on the Google Play Store, alongside an accompanying paper in Science Advances. Created by a team of scientists from UC Berkeley, the app turns your phone into a background quake-detector, scanning the phone’s accelerometer data in real time and forwarding any rumblings that fit the profile of seismic activity. With enough phones networked together, researchers hope they can build a kind of distributed seismograph, stitching together thousands of rough readings into a more comprehensive data source than researchers have ever had.
Health and Life Sciences
Ask Well: Are Pomegranates Good For You? (NY Times)
Pomegranates are rich in micronutrients with potential antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects and are often compared favorably with red wine and green tea in terms of health benefits. But there’s little good evidence that the level of nutrients found in the fruit translates into true gains for human health, said Dr. Brent Bauer, director of the Mayo Clinic’s complementary and integrative medicine program, because few clinical trials have been done.
Alzheimer's preventative drug hope (BBC)
Scientists have detected a number of drugs which could help protect against Alzheimer's disease, acting like statins for the brain.
In experiments on worms, University of Cambridge researchers identified drugs which prevented the very first step towards brain cell death.
Life on the Home Planet
Russians Want To Launch An ICBM At A Near-Earth Asteroid And Nuke It In 2036 (Gizmodo)
Russian scientists want to modify existing intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver a nuclear warhead that will supposedly obliterate near-earth asteroids that measure up to 50 meters across. They want to test this capability against Apophis, a well known near-earth asteroid that will pass close to Earth in 2036.
I mean, what could go wrong, right?
Farmers on alert for livestock virus (BBC)
Farmers are being warned to expect an outbreak of a highly infectious livestock disease known as bluetongue this summer.
The disease, carried by a biting midge, can be fatal to sheep and cows.
'Finally!' Pope and Russian Patriarch meet for the first time in 1,000 years (Mashable)
With a hug and an exclamation of "Finally!" Pope Francis met Friday with Patriarch Kirill in the first ever meeting between a pontiff and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, a historic development in the 1,000-year schism that has divided Christianity.
