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Thursday, March 28, 2024

News You Can Use From Phil’s Stock World

 

Financial Markets and Economy

Stocks steady, oil in flux, sterling suffers 'hard' Brexit fears (Reuters)

Asian stock markets rose on Tuesday while crude oil prices languished near three-week lows, with investors uncertain whether output cuts by some major exporters would be enough to offset increasing supplies from other producers.

China’s Clean Air Bid Scares Rivals in Duel Over Dirty Fuel (Bloomberg)

The Asian country’s road to cleaner air has been gradual, with lead-free gasoline only becoming a requirement in 2000, almost three decades behind the U.S. This month, China imposed new curbs on the amount of sulfur in vehicle fuels to about a fifth of the previous standard, putting it on par with Europe, which has the world’s strictest emissions controls.

It’s a Double Record for FTSE 100 Heading for 9th All-Time High (Bloomberg)

The FTSE 100 Index has closed at a record every day since U.K. markets reopened after Christmas — that’s eight trading days — a feat it has achieved only once before, in 1997. One more on Tuesday would mark another milestone for the benchmark: a record streak of consecutive all-time highs.

Oil Drillers Are Expanding Again After Losing Half-Million Jobs (Bloomberg)

The oil industry is expected to boost spending for the first time in three years after slashing almost half a million jobs globally during the downturn, according to industry consultant Graves & Co.

Egypt Urban Inflation Rises Fastest in at Least 6 Years (Bloomberg)

Egypt’s urban consumer prices rose the fastest in at least six years in December, fueled in part by a 28.3 percent increase in food costs following the central bank’s decision to abandon currency controls two months ago.

Goldman Sachs Sees China Using Fixing to Strengthen Currency (Bloomberg)

China’s central bank has altered its yuan fixing mechanism since the U.S. presidential election in favor of a stronger currency as capital outflows mounted and President-elect Donald Trump threatens to adopt protectionist trade policies, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Food prices rise as inflation returns to British supermarkets (The Telegraph)

Shop prices are rising across the UK's supermarkets once again for the first time since 2014, according to fresh industry figures by Kantar Worldpanel.

Three Economists Walk Into a Bar (The Wall Street Journal)

Why did God create economists? To make weather forecasters look good.

Too Much Wheat Is Forcing Its Farmers to Other Crops (Bloomberg)

Wheat is the weed that feeds. The grain-yielding grass is such a hearty plant that it is grown on more land than any other crop in the world. After four straight seasons of record harvests, bins are bulging from Kansas to Western Australia and prices are near the lowest in a decade.

Real estate all over the world could tank as China curbs capital outflow (Business Insider)

Property prices across the globe have benefitted from the demand of foreign buyers, a.k.a. China’s capital outflows. 2017 is about to find out how those markets will fare without them. China has issued unexpected rules on exchanging yuan for international currency. This will likely impact real estate around the world.

Morgan Stanley Says Investors Are Thinking About U.S. Corporate Credit All Wrong (Bloomberg)

The post-election rally in corporate credit could stage a sharp reversal, warn analysts at Morgan Stanley.

Inflation in a key component of China's economy is red-hot as commodity prices continue to surge (Business Insider Australia)

Chinese consumer price inflation moderated in December but upstream price pressures surged as a result of higher commodity prices.

How Emotion Over Pet Care Helps Explain Human Health Spending (NY Times)

In almost every year since the 1960s, health care spending has grown at least as fast as the overall economy, and often much faster. Health economists have long debated why.

A Dark Day for Chinese Inflation (The Wall Street Journal)

If the Chinese economy is a supertanker plowing through the waves, the narrative on the economy is more like a small dinghy, tossed about by every new data release. Expect Tuesday’s release, of inflation data for December, to be a case in point.

Goldman: Almost Everything Is Overvalued (Value Walk)

Goldman Sachs believes it is time for you to start understanding factor exposure. According to the bank’s quantitative equity analysts Robert D. Boroujerdi, Jessica Binder Graham, CFA, Deep Mehta and Ronny Scardino, “never has the need for fundamental investors to understand factor exposure has been at this acute.”

Cramer’s 12 stocks that could keep climbing past Dow 20K (CNBC)

While the market continues to focus on whether the Dow Jones industrial average will hit 20,000, Jim Cramer would rather look at how conceivable it is for the Dow to keep running after it does.

Rates Fall At Weekly US Treasury Bill Auction (Associated Press)

Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills fell in Monday's auction, with rates on six-month bills dropping to their lowest level since early November.

Another Year For Cockroach Investors? Parker Pessimistic On U.S. Equities (Value Walk)

It’s a widely-held belief that the Republican sweep of Congress and the Presidency for 2017 could inject fresh volatility into the S&P 500 and U.S. equities in general.

New York and Chicago's finances are among the worst in the US (The Fiscal Times)

Chicago and New York rank at the bottom of a new analysis of fiscal strength based primarily on data from 2015 financial reports issued by the cities themselves.

Mad Markets And Financial Mayhem (Danielle Park, CFA, Seeking Alpha)

Trumphoria has taken North American stock markets back to the brink over the past few months. This chart of the Canadian TSX since 2007 shows the wild ride and stagnate decade that has plagued Canadian stocks and the mutual funds, asset managers, pensions and ETFs that are designed to track it top to bottom, over and over again.

Trump Tweets – Peso Plunges (Financial Sense)

Trump tweets of taxes at the southern border and the Peso plunges. Mexico has abundant petroleum, cheap labor and a preeminent location for global companies to reach the largest consumption market in the world.

Companies

Google in Talks to Sell Its Satellite Business (The Wall Street Journal)

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is in talks to sell its satellite business to competitor Planet Labs Inc., a satellite-imagery startup that is seeking a new round of funding to help pay for the possible acquisition, according to people familiar with the talks.

Valeant to Sell Skin-Care Brands to L’Oréal (The Wall Street Journal)

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. agreed to sell three skin care brands including CeraVe to French cosmetics giant L’Oréal for $1.3 billion, the latest effort by the beleaguered drugmaker to unload assets and pare debt.

Technology

Marissa Mayer resigning from Yahoo board as remaining company renames itself Altaba (Tech Crunch)

Yahoo is hanging on to its 15 percent stake in Alibaba and its 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, and those assets will survive as an investment company under the new name Altaba Inc., as the rest of Yahoo integrates with Verizon. The assets had previously been nicknamed Remain Co.

Can AI Make The Sexiest 21st Century Job Obsolete? (Forbes)

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation is no longer seen as a threat to just menial, repetitive jobs. Already systems are being developed and deployed which have the potential to carry out work traditionally left to highly educated and skilled humans, such as doctors, lawyers and architects.

How to use an iPad as an external display and Touch Bar for your Mac [Video] (9To5Mac)

As an LG UltraFine 5K Display owner, I’ve been using my MacBook Pro in closed-clamshell mode for the last week. Closed-clamshell mode allows me to drive an external display with the MacBook’s lid closed.

Is Virtual Reality the Surprising Solution to the Fermi Paradox? (Singularity Hub)

Only decades into our “age of cosmology” — the moment when we earned the technological rights to peer deep into our cosmic home — we’ve learned that we live in a mega-palace of a universe. And we’ve also found something odd. We seem to be the only ones home! Where are the aliens? Was it something we said?

Parrot to cull its drone division by over a third (CNet)

Drone sales may be on the rise, but all is not well for the second biggest company on the US market, Parrot. In a press release from its Paris headquarters today, the company has revealed that its fourth quarter failed to meet targets by 15 percent, coming in at 85 million euros, not the expected 100 million.

Politics

Trump advisers to begin tax talks with Speaker Ryan (The Washington Post)

One of the biggest Republican projects of the year — tax reform — will begin Monday evening at the Capitol, with several top advisers to President-elect Donald Trump scheduled to hold a lengthy meeting with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and his team, according to two Trump associates familiar with the session.

Trump Vs. The Truth: The Russian Hacking Report (The Daily Show)

Even with the documents being made public, President-elect Trump blatantly misrepresents the U.S. intelligence report on Russia's interference in the 2016 election. 

Trump, Trapped in His Lies, Keeps Lying. Sad! (NY Times)

He hasn’t taken office yet, but Donald Trump is lost, wandering in a labyrinth of lies and trying to drag the country in with him.

Xi to Lead Delegation of China’s Wealthiest Executives to Davos (Bloomberg)

President Xi Jinping will become the first Chinese head of state to address the World Economic Forum, leading an entourage of business executives to Switzerland next week as the country seeks a larger role in shaping the global economic order.

Turkey is getting closer to massively expanding Erdogan's powers (Reuters)

The Turkish parliament voted on Tuesday to press on with debate about a constitutional reform package that would expand the powers of President Tayyip Erdogan, taking another step on the path towards an executive presidency.

Kellyanne Conway deflects bigly: “Why isn’t Meryl Streep talking about those Chicago teens instead?” (Salon)

Incoming White House counsel Kellyanne Conway has a tactic for talking about Meryl Streep’s takedown of Donald Trump for mocking a disabled reporter — deflect instead to the black teens from Chicago who were arrested for a gruesome video they livestreamed!

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel will challenge Angela Merkel in this year's elections (AFP)

German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel has decided to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in this year's election, the top-selling Bild newspaper reported Tuesday citing sources from his Social Democrats.

North Korea takes a swing at Trump, says it can test-fire missiles 'at any time' (Reuters)

North Korea declared on Sunday it could test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at any time from any location set by leader Kim Jong Un, saying a hostile U.S. policy was to blame for its arms development.

The death of a former president tilts the balance of power in Iran (The Economist)

TEARS always came easily to the lachrymose ayatollah. But those at a gathering on December 13th seemed more heartfelt than most. He was reading from his own biography of Amir Kabir, the Shah’s chief minister in the mid-19th century, when the blubbing began. Kabir had tried to open the Persian Empire up to the West, he wept, only to be frustrated by the hand of a hardline assassin.

Mitch McConnell’s Obamacare incoherence: The GOP Senate leader’s absurd case for quick repeal (Salon)

As the energy and enthusiasm for “repealing and replacing” the Affordable Care Act gains momentum among congressional Republicans, it’s worth pointing out as many times as possible that Republicans do not have a replacement plan.

In Humiliation For Beppe Grillo, Pro-EU Liberal Group Blocks Alliance With 5-Star Movement (Zero Hedge)

In what may have been this weekend's biggest surprise, and one which some have suggested demonstrated Beppe Grillo's true nature, in a blog published on Sunday, the founder of Italy's Five-Star Movement (M5S) said his political movement should ditch Nigel Farage's anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the European Parliament, and seek a hook up with the liberal pro-EU group Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, or ALDE, led by European Federalist Guy Verhofstadt, in an attempt to consolidated power in the European parliament.

Trump Calls Obama To Talk About The Golden Globes – CONAN on TBS (Team Coco)

CONAN Highlight: Trump calls Obama to make the argument that Tara Reid is a better actress than Meryl Streep.

A new rule quietly protects some lawmaker records from Congressional ethics inquiries (The Fiscal Times)

After congressional ethics experts, voters, and President-elect Donald Trump forced House Republicans to back down last week from a rules change that would have eviscerated the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, one important sentence quietly slipped through another rule change.

Muted Response From Health Lobby as Affordable Care Act Faces Repeal (NY Times)

The speed of Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act has stunned health industry lobbyists, leaving representatives of insurance companies, hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical makers in disarray and struggling for a response to a legislative quick strike that would upend much of the American health care system.

Life on the Home Planet

A surprise asteroid just zoomed past Earth, about 50% closer than the Moon (Science Alert)

Early Monday morning, while the US East Coast was pouring coffee, dropping kids off at school, and cursing in traffic, a space rock as big as a 10-story building grazed Earth.

The Hot Spots Where Bankers Love to Vacation (Bloomberg)

Want to do a little networking on your next vacation? Pick your vacation spot strategically. We’ve asked eight influential financiers to reveal their favorite places to unwind—and offered our own advice on how to recreate their trips.

NASA has discovered gigantic ice towers on Pluto, standing 500 metres tall (Science Alert)

It took NASA's New Horizons space probe almost a decade to trek its way across the Solar System for 2015's historic Pluto flyby – and when it got there, it discovered stunning towers of ice reaching 500 metres into the sky.

'Star Wars,' 'Justice League' And The Biggest Blockbusters Of 2017 (Forbes)

As I have done for the past two years, I will begin 2017 with a rundown of the year’s most likely “biggest” blockbusters. The would-be twist is that I will merely be declaring what I think will be the biggest hit of each particular month, although this year there is a certain "share the wealth" in terms of probable blockbusters in nearly every month.

Research suggests the stem cells in our teeth can be energized to fill in chips, cracks, and cavities (STAT)

The stem cells in our teeth can be energized to fill in chips, cracks, and cavities, researchers say, and the findings could one day possibly make dental cement obsolete.

 

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