From Bloomberg:
Shell to Sell Twice as Much LNG as Exxon, Chevron After BG Deal
Royal Dutch Shell Plc will become a dominant player in the liquefied natural gas market through the $70 billion acquisition of BG Group Plc, amassing twice the sales of its nearest competitors. (More)
Dudley Says Fed Should Err on Side of Raising Rates Late 
Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley said the central bank should err on the side of waiting too long as it considers when to raise interest rates for the first time in almost a decade.
“Our intention would be to be conservative,” Dudley said in remarks on Wednesday at an event hosted by Reuters in New York. “I think there are strong arguments for being a little on the late side.” (Continue)
Low-Ball Analyst Estimates Mean Don’t Write Off U.S. Profits Yet
Analysts say a streak of U.S. profit growth dating to 2009 will finally die in the earnings season that starts today. Based on their record of accuracy, it’s too early to seal the coffin.
Estimates have a history of pessimism that could be this quarter’s salvation. Going back five years in data compiled by Bloomberg, the earnings predicted by analysts for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index were on average 5.1 percent lower than the final quarterly results. (Here)
While the Shanghai Stock Market Keeps Surging, Some Investors Are Getting Out
Wednesday trading brought some puzzling signals from China’s equity markets. On the one hand, the Shanghai Composite Index briefly exceeded the psychologically important 4,000 threshold, before closing at 3994.81 for the day. On the other hand, Chinese mainland investors used their entire 10.5 billion yuan daily quota to shift funds to Hong Kong. (Continue)
Market Dream Is Fink’s Nightmare as Fed Seen Delaying Rate Hikes
Bond markets are still cheering at the prospect of Federal Reserve stimulus even as a chorus of doomsday voices gets louder.
Consider this: On April 3, the U.S. Labor Department released data showing that employers in March added the fewest workers since December 2013. Since then, U.S. junk bonds gained 0.5 percent and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index advanced a similar amount. (Continue reading)
Other Energy Stocks Are Surging After the Huge Shell-BG Deal
After the news that Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to buy BG Group Plc in the biggest oil and gas deal in at least a decade (valued at $70 billion), BG and other energy names in Europe are following suit as pressure may rise on other firms to consolidate.
First, here's a three-day chart of BG Group, which is up massively today (More)
Google Plots New YouTube Subscription Service as Soon as This Year
Google Inc. plans to offer a subscriber version of YouTube as soon as this year, letting viewers see millions of videos without having to sit through ads.
Revenue from the new feature, which will put Google into more direct competition with streaming services such as Netflix Inc. and Hulu LLC, will be shared with video creators, Google told them in an e-mail that was obtained by Bloomberg. The service may debut by the end of the year, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren't public. (Full article)
The U.S. Government's $800 Billion Gamble on Student Loans 
One of the big potential costs to U.S. taxpayers over the next years is an enterprise that's currently estimated to be even a bit profitable for them: financing student loans.
Right now, the federal government borrows money at interest rates that are lower than the rates it charges students. That means the U.S. makes about 14 cents on every dollar lent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (More here)
It's Only Taking a Few Years to Flip a NYC Condo for Huge Profits
Tom Vitale bought a small Manhattan condo in August 2012, planning to keep the investment for about four years, or long enough to make at least a 15 percent return. When he listed the apartment ahead of schedule, the gain was more than double his target. (Here)
For Some Wisconsin State Workers, ‘Climate Change’ Isn’t Something You Can Talk About 
Discussing climate change is out of bounds for workers at a state agency in Wisconsin. So is any work related to climate change—even responding to e-mails about the topic. (More)
Where You Grow Up Makes a Huge Difference in Your Salary as an Adult
Where you grow up is a big determinant of where you're headed in life, at least when it comes to Americans' chances of climbing from the bottom of the income ladder to the top. (Here)
Oil Is Diving After the Biggest Inventory Build in 14 Years
America's oil in storage just hit another record after rising by the most since March 2001. Crude prices fell as much as 5.9 percent today. (Full article)
U.S. Federal Reserve Meeting Minutes for March 18 (Text)
Following are the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee meeting that concluded on March 18. (Full article)
Desperate from Drought, California Turns to Desalination 
As California battled its last severe drought in the early 1990s, Santa Barbara spent $34 million on a desalination plant that proved too costly to keep running when rain returned. Now, the city can’t afford to keep it idle.
“Show me how we conserve our way out of this if these conditions continue,” said Joshua Haggmark, water resources manager for the city, located 100 miles (161 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, during a tour of the facility he’s working to reboot by the end of next year. “If a business doesn’t have the water it needs to do whatever it needs to do, they’re going to find it somewhere else and they’ll leave.” (Continue reading)
From Bloomberg View:
U.S. Dot-Com Bubble Was Nothing Compared to Today’s China Prices
The world-beating surge in Chinese technology stocks is making the heady days of the dot-com bubble look tame by comparison.
The industry is leading gains in China’s $6.9 trillion stock market, sending valuations to an average 220 times reported profits, the most expensive level among global peers. When the Nasdaq Composite Index peaked in March 2000, technology companies in the U.S. had a mean price-to-earnings ratio of 156. (More)
Clean Energy Revolution Is Ahead of Schedule
The most important piece of news on the energy front isn't the plunge in oil prices, but the progress that is being made in battery technology. A new study in Nature Climate Change, by Bjorn Nykvist and Mans Nilsson of the Stockholm Environment Institute, shows that electric vehicle batteries have been getting cheaper much faster than expected. From 2007 to 2011, average battery costs for battery-powered electric vehicles fell by about 14 percent a year. For the leading electric vehicle makers, Tesla and Nissan, costs fell by 8 percent a year. This astounding decline puts battery costs right around the level that the International Energy Agency predicted they would reach in 2020. We are six years ahead of the curve. It's a bit hard to read, but here is the graph from the paper (More here)
Shell Will Buy BG Group for $70 Billion in Cash, Shares
Royal Dutch Shell Plc agreed to buy BG Group Plc for about 47 billion pounds ($70 billion), making Europe’s largest oil company the pre-eminent player in global natural gas and adding fields in Brazil. (Continue)
Forget Interest Rates, the Fed Has Another Big Decision to Make in the Next Year
In case exiting years of zero interest rates won’t be hard enough, Federal Reserve officials have another challenge approaching quickly: when to begin unwinding trillions of dollars of bond purchases that constitute the world’s largest fixed-income portfolio. (Here)
Stop Calling Shell an Oil Company 
Can we stop calling Royal Dutch Shell an oil company, or even an oil and gas company? The majority of its proved reserves have long been in natural gas, not oil. If its $70 billion acquisition of the company formerly known as British Gas (BG Group) goes through, the reserves breakdown will be 8.9 billion barrel-of-oil equivalents of natural gas to 7.8 billion barrels of oil (that includes synthetic crude, bitumen and natural gas liquids). It’s a gas and oil company! (Full article)
JPMorgan Algorithm Knows You’re a Rogue Employee Before You Do
Wall Street traders are already threatened by computers that can do their jobs faster and cheaper. Now the humans of finance have something else to worry about: Algorithms that make sure they behave. (More)
From Business Insider:
Too many times in recent months, headline writers have had reason to write that "Coke is losing its fizz."
Pepsi-Cola surpassed Diet Coke to become the second-biggest soda brand in the US, Coca-Cola's biggest market, Beverage Digest reported last month. Diet Coke had been the second-biggest soda brand by volume in the US since 2010, but Pepsi's shift back to No.2 provided evidence of America's growing dislike for diet sodas — and that is at a time when Americans are drinking less soda overall than in the 1980s. (Read more)
The Fed is split on when to raise rates 
The Minutes from the latest FOMC meeting show that the Fed is split on when to raise interest rates. (More here)
Microsoft just made an aggressive move against Google in the cloud wars
There's a war going on between Microsoft, Google, and Amazon that's almost entirely invisible to the majority of the world that doesn't code.
Each of the three technology giants has a cloud platform, where applications can run at tremendous scales more efficiently in their own data centers. (Continue here)
This chart shows why everyone is scared about China's economy
China's economy is not in a good place, and a chart just published by Oxford Economics puts that in perfect perspective.
China's broad money growth — which includes physical currency, some sorts of deposits in banks, and some sorts of very liquid securities — has slowed to the point at which it is actually slower than that of the US. Growth in money supply is definitely not perfect, but it provides a rough measure of economic activity in the medium term, so acceleration in the US would generally be a good signal, and the slump in China is a very bad thing. (Full article)
From The NYTimes:
Apple Watch Review: Bliss, but Only After a Steep Learning Curve 
It took three days — three long, often confusing and frustrating days — for me to fall for the Apple Watch. But once I fell, I fell hard.
First there was a day to learn the device’s initially complex user interface. Then another to determine how it could best fit it into my life. And still one more to figure out exactly what Apple’s first major new product in five years is trying to do — and, crucially, what it isn’t. (Continue reading)
