Financial Markets and Economy
Here comes JOLTS … (Business Insider)
The April report on job openings and labor turnover is set for release at the top of the hour.
Expectations are for the JOLTS report to show job openings rose 5.044 million in April, up from 4.994 million in March.
China Said to Weigh Margin Finance Rule Change Amid Stock Boom (Bloomberg)
China’s securities regulator is considering a change to its margin finance rules in a move that could quell volatility should the country’s world-beating stock-market rally falter.
NFIB: Small Business Optimism Index increased in May (Calculated Risk)
The Index of Small Business Optimism increased 1.4 points to 98.3 … May is the best reading since the 100.4 December reading but nothing to write home about. The 42 year average is 98.0 … Eight of the 10 Index components posted improvements.
Monsanto plans to move headquarters from US to UK (The Guardian)
Monsanto, the US seed and agrochemicals group known for its genetically modified crops, wants to switch its headquarters from the US to the UK as part of a complex merger deal designed to unlock tax savings for shareholders.
The group, which was founded in St Louis, Missouri in 1901, is circling Swiss rival Syngenta with a so-called “corporate inversion” proposal that would involve setting up a new UK company.
It won't be easy to get oil out of Iraq (Business Insider)
After a slow start in 2015, Iraq's south is expected to export more oil over the next few months. But there are obstacles standing in the way.
In recent years, it's become apparent that Iraq's crude oil "will not age with grace," according to Credit Suisse's Thomas Adolff.
Gold aims for second day of gains (Market Watch)
Gold futures gained ground for a second consecutive session Tuesday as they continued to rebound from a mid-March low.
Gold for August delivery on Comex rose $5.80, or 0.5%, to $1,179.40 an ounce, while July silver gained 2.1 cents, or 0.1%, to $15.98 an ounce.
The stock market seems to have gotten over its addiction to QE (Business Insider)
In the post-financial-crisis era, a lot of stock-market watchers have attributed the market's gains to the Federal Reserve's ultra-easy monetary policy.
And these folks had some evidence. They observed that whenever the Fed discontinued a quantitative-easing (QE) program, volatility would spike and stock prices would fall. QE involved the monthly purchases of billions of dollars worth of bonds, an effort that brought liquidity to all of the markets. Less liquidity typically means more volatility, so this made sense.
The Warren Buffet Economy——Why Its Days Are Numbered (Part 1) (David Stockman's Contra Corner)
During the 27 years after Alan Greenspan became Fed chairman in August 1987, the balance sheet of the Fed exploded from $200 billion to $4.5 trillion. Call it 23X.
Labor Force Participation Rate: There are few "Missing 41-Year-Olds" (Calculated Risk)
Every month, with the release of the employment report, we see commentary that says "the labor force participation rate is at or near a 30 year low". Duh! That was expected based on demographics and is not worth reading (Note: the participation rate might move sideways for a couple of years, but is projected to decline for another decade or more).
Oil gains on driving season demand, China stimulus hopes (Business Insider)
Oil prices gained on Tuesday as higher seasonal demand in developed economies offset the impact of a large global supply overhang.
Expectations of a fall-off in U.S. shale oil production and a weaker dollar also underpinned prices.
Brent for July delivery was up 95 cents to $63.64 a barrel as of 08:46 GMT (04:46 EDT), having settled down 62 cents in the previous session.
Draghi Economy Fails to Stoke Cash Machine for Europe Stocks (Bloomberg)
Europe’s economy is expanding under Mario Draghi’s stimulus, profits are rising, and the market is up. And yet the proportion of income companies are poised to return to shareholders in 2015 will probably be the lowest in five years.
According to estimates by Bank of America Corp., European firms are likely to spend 30 percent of their cash flow on dividends and share buybacks this year, the least since 2010. Only 1 percent will go to repurchases, the lender projected in a note to clients on June 5.
European Stocks Suffer Longest Losing Stretch In 2015; US Futures Down (zero Hedge)
After a quiet Asian session, where not even the latest Chinese CPI miss was enough to push the SHCOMP to new multi-year highs, all eyes were on Europe where a few hours ago the European Commission announced it had received not one but two new proposals from Greece according to EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs Pierre Moscovici, with the Greek government adding that it considers proposals submitted last week as remain basis for political negotiations. According to Bloomberg, the freshly submitted documents contains alternative proposals to close differences with creditors on fiscal gap with; proposals to create a debt viable sustainability plan for country. What they do not contain is an agreement to engage in pension cuts as the Troika demands so this is most likely another dead end path.
Trading
How to Protect Yourself From a Summer Stock Market Correction or Crash (24/7 Wall St)
It is now June, and the echoes of “sell in May and go away” are still ringing. In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average went negative for the year on June 8. With the bull market now more than six years old, and with equity valuations being high, at least some of the cautious investors are starting to worry that the market could be ready for a big tumble.
Politics
Senator Unveils New Obamacare Attack, Immediately Becomes A Laughingstock (Think Progress)
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) probably wishes that he’d thought twice before debuting a new attack on the Affordable Care Act on Twitter.
This month, the Supreme Court is expected to decide King v. Burwell, a case which asks the justices to read one sentence of the law out-of-context in order to render millions of people’s health insurance unaffordable. The lawsuit is funded by a conservative organization, promoted by conservative think tanks and conservative law professors, and backed by many top Republicans including several of Thune’s Republican colleagues.
Top Campaign Watchdog Petitions Her Own Agency to Do Its Job (Mother Jones)
The Federal Election Commission should just do its job already.
That's not a #hottake. It's the formal opinion of the chairwoman of the FEC itself.
In a sign of how bad things have gotten at the government watchdog tasked with keeping federal elections clean, chairwoman Ann Ravel and fellow Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub filed a petition with their own agency this morning pleading for campaign finance rules to be enforced this election cycle.
Technology
9 things you'll love about iOS 9 (CNN)
Of all the upcoming iOS 9 features for the iPhone and iPad, the biggest updates are coming to Siri
Siri is going to become "proactive," predicting what you want to know before you even ask it. It's a feature similar to Google Now or Microsoft's Cortana.
The new, proactive Siri will display relevant information based on your location, search history, emails, calendar and habits.
Inside GoPro’s Ambitious Plan To Connect Their Cameras To The Cloud (Tech Crunch)
GoPro doesn’t want to be known just as a camera company. Instead, as I learned from GoPro’s CEO and Founder Nick Woodman, GoPro wants to be a lifestyle media company. To that end, the company is looking to cloud services to give owners an easier way to share all that rad action footage and build a new business based on content, not hardware.
GoPro cameras are designed to survive the harshest conditions possible. Yet they suffer from the same fundamental flaw as traditional cameras: content gets stuck on the SD cards inside the cameras. Smartphones address this problem by allowing pictures and videos to be shared instantly but users still have to go through several steps to share content, something Nick Woodman aims to reduce.
Health and Life Sciences
Evolution is unpredictable and irreversible, biologists show (Science Daily)
Evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould is famous for describing the evolution of humans and other conscious beings as a chance accident of history. If we could go back millions of years and "run the tape of life again," he mused, evolution would follow a different path.
A study by University of Pennsylvania biologists now provides evidence Gould was correct, at the molecular level: Evolution is both unpredictable and irreversible. Using simulations of an evolving protein, they show that the genetic mutations that are accepted by evolution are typically dependent on mutations that came before, and the mutations that are accepted become increasingly difficult to reverse as time goes on.
How Obese Moms May Wire Kids for Obesity (Time)
Kids of obese moms are more likely to be obese, and the latest research suggests that influence may begin in the womb
In a report presented Tuesday at the American Diabetes Association, researchers say that children born to obese moms may be predisposed to being obese due to their womb environment.
Scientists led by a team at University of Colorado School of Medicine analyzed stem cells taken from the umbilical cords of babies born to normal weight and obese mothers. In the lab, they coaxed these stem cells to develop into muscle and fat. The resulting cells from obese mothers had 30% more fat than those from normal weight mothers, suggesting that these babies’ cells were more likely to accumulate fat.
Life on the Home Planet
The Animals of the Serengeti Get Caught in Surprise Selfies (Wired)
ALEXANDRA SWANSON WAS on a singular mission. Driving her Land Rover through the grassy savannahs of the Serengeti in 2010, the ecologist traveled over 400 square miles, passing lions, wildebeests, and the rare zorilla (yes, there is a thing called a zorilla). Every once in a while, she’d stop to mount a camera on a tree or a steel rod—one of 225 she sprinkled across the region. When animals approached, they would trigger the cameras’ heat and motion sensors, capturing images of Serengeti National Park’s sometimes-endangered species without the interference of human photographers.
