Financial Markets and Economy
These charts have Jeff Gundlach convinced bonds will end 2015 right where they started (Business Insider)
Jeff Gundlach doesn't think there's a good chance we'll see the Fed hikes rates this year.
In his latest presentation on the economy and the markets, the so-called "Bond King" talked about the high-yield market, the Fed, and the potential the nominal GDP could be set to turn higher.
China stocks will have to wait to join big MSCI index (Market Watch)
Global stock-index compiler MSCI Inc. MSCI, +0.08% said late Tuesday that it will wait to add mainland China-listed shares until “a few important remaining issues related to market accessibility have been resolved.”
In a statement posted on its website, the company said it “expects to include China A-shares in its global benchmarks” once those issues are worked out, and that it plans to form a working group with Chinese stock regulator China Securities Regulatory Commission to address the concerns.
Wednesday: Q1 Quarterly Services Report (Calculated Risk)
Mortgage rates bounced back up to the highest levels of 2015 today. …
Most lenders remain at 4.125% for conventional 30yr fixed quotes on top tier scenarios, but an increasing number of them moved up to 4.25% today.
What falling utilities are telling investors about the stock market (Market Watch)
While the stock market has been treading water since the beginning of the year—with the S&P 500 as a proxy— below the surface, there has been something violent churning.
Over the past six months, the benchmark index S&P 500 SPX, +0.04% gained a paltry 1%, but a closer look at the 10 main sectors in the index reveals that investors have continued to move out of one sector into another, or so-called rotating, in an anticipation of an interest-rate hike this year and subsequent rise in borrowing costs.
Bill Gross Tweets Trade Update, Might Have Called All Time Market Bottom (Value Walk)
Bill Gross took to Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) today and once again enlightened the investing masses regarding his investment wisdom. The issue is: was he talking about a trade he actually made or was it a trade he publicly recommended but didn’t execute?
Asia shares wallow near three month lows on Greece, Fed anxiety (Business Insider)
Asian shares languished near three-month lows on Wednesday as the spectre of higher borrowing costs in the United States and concerns about the apparent lack of progress in talks between Greece and its creditors sapped confidence.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged down 0.1 percent in early trade after having slipped to a three-month low the previous day. Japan's Nikkei was up 0.4 percent, after big fall on Tuesday to three-week lows.
Dollar Set for Three-Day Loss as Traders Seek Impetus for Rally (Bloomberg)
A gauge of the dollar against major peers headed for a three-day drop, its longest slide in almost a month, as traders sought signs continued gains are justified.
A U.S. retail sales report on Thursday may help vindicate dollar bulls betting that the economy is strong enough for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this year for the first time since 2006. The greenback has lost ground since jobs data on June 5 beat forecasts. President Barack Obama on Monday denied expressing concern about the currency’s advance in private conversations at a Group of Seven summit.
CoreLogic: "Number of Loans in Foreclosure Lowest Since 2007" (Calculated Risk)
CoreLogic reported today that the national foreclosure inventory fell by 24.9 percent year over year in April 2015 to approximately 521,000 homes, or 1.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage. This marks 42 months of consecutive year-over-year declines … Also in April 2015, the 12-month sum of completed foreclosures continued to decline, dropping by 19.8 percent to 538,000 since April 2014. The seriously delinquent inventory fell to 1.4 million loans, a 22.1-percent year-over-year decline.
Corporate Buybacks; Connecting Dots to the F-word (720 Global)
With the Fed and other government authorities providing cover and Wall Street endorsing the approach, share buybacks are being driven by a desire to both manipulate stock prices in the short term and increase already egregious executive pay. Share buybacks are the mechanism by which value creation is being buried by corporate executives seeking value extraction.
Trading
Trading Performance and Experimentation (TraderFeed)
If trading is a business, what is the product? What is the world class manufacturing process? Where is quality control?
Achieving different results requires asking different questions…and a willingness to experiment.
Strictly following your processes will give you the same results. Continually improving processes requires experimentation…and learning.
Politics
Vladimir Putin Tests the Limits of Pope Francis’ Powers (Time)
Vladimir Putin is no longer welcome at the G7, thanks to his government’s continued incursions into Ukraine’s territory. But two days after the meeting of Western powers in Germany, the Russian leader has a meeting with another world leader: Pope Francis.
The Bishop of Rome may not represent the United States or Germany, but he is increasingly a superpower in his own right, and the Wednesday meeting is a diplomatic test of how Francis will use his influence.
Obama May Send More U.S. Troops to Train Iraqi Forces (Bloomberg)
The Pentagon is preparing recommendations to send hundreds more U.S. troops to Iraq to speed training of the country’s military forces in response to a request from the White House, two U.S. officials said.
Top Republican Donor To Spend $175 Million To Get His Party To Take Climate Change Seriously? (Think Progress)
Usually the news that a major Republican donor will be dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on a campaign to influence voters on energy and climate change would make environmentalists worried. But not when that donor is spending $175 million to get Republicans to talk about clean energy and the solutions to the climate crisis.
Entrepreneur Jay Faison founded the ClearPath Foundation in December of last year in part to restore Republicans’ environmental legacy. Tuesday he announced that he will be investing $175 million on a public education campaign that will include a social media and online advertising to get Republicans to talk about market-based solutions to climate change. That includes $40 million through the 2016 cycle, and another $10 million as a seed fund for a political advocacy group. The foundation invested between $1 and $9 million in a few solar energy projects.
Technology
Google's venture arm showed off some of Google's coolest toys at its party today (Business Insider)
Google Ventures held a barbecue in Silicon Valley this afternoon, and some of Google's most advanced projects made an appearance.
Partner Dave Munichello tweeted out the pictures of Google's self-driving car.
The venture arm of Google is run independently from the rest of the business. Basically, it's like any other VC firm, but instead of raising funds from a variety of limited partner investors, it has only one: Google.
Health and Life Sciences
New, potent cholesterol-lowering drug gets FDA advisory approval (CNN)
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee on Tuesday recommended approval of a new type of experimental cholesterol-fighting drug that could be more potent and carry fewer side effects than statins, which are among the most prescribed drugs in the United States.
The agency will likely follow the advisory committee's advice when it decides whether to approve the drug, alirocumab (Praluent) from Sanofi SA and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., for patients later this summer. On Wednesday, the advisory committee will discuss a second drug in the same class, evolocumab (Repatha) from Amgen Inc.
The Next Big Drug to Treat Heart Disease (Time)
There’s a well accepted dogma in heart disease: too much cholesterol flowing through the blood vessels can jam up heart byways and lead to heart attacks, stroke and other problems. So lowering cholesterol, by eating fewer high-fat foods or taking advantage of drugs that can keep levels under control, can protect you against heart trouble.
A drug that promises to drop cholesterol levels to unprecedented levels—some say to as low as those found in infants—has to be a good thing. That’s what a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee decided after reviewing data on the first candidate in a new class of heart drugs since the cholesterol-lowering statins emerged in the 1980s. The committee looked at studies involving alirocumab, developed by Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and will do the same for a similar compound, evoluocumab from Amgen, on Wednesday.
Scientists gain first glimpse of new concepts developing in the brain (Science Daily)
Scientists have — for the first time — documented the formation of a newly learned concept inside the brain and show that it occurs in the same brain areas for everyone. The results from this study also indicate that it may be possible to use a similar approach to understand the 'loss' of knowledge in various brain disorders, such as dementia or Alzheimer's disease, or due to brain injuries. The loss of a concept in the brain may be the reverse of the process that the study observed.
Life on the Home Planet
'Blood cells' found in dino fossils (BBC)
The work could shine a light on long-standing questions about dinosaur physiology, including whether specific species were warm- or cold-blooded.
Chemical analysis revealed similarities between blood cells from fossils and those from living emu.
The work appears in the journal Nature Communications.
Examining part of a fossilised dinosaur claw, the Imperial College London researchers identified tiny ovoid structures with an inner denser core that resembled red blood cells.
How a Storm Chaser Captured a Terrifying Double Tornado (Wired)
PHOTOGRAPHER AND STORM chaser Kelly DeLay was in the absolute right place at the absolute right time, and he finally caught his unicorn.
DeLay was chasing a tornado under a supercell thunderstorm through the Colorado plains a few days ago when he spotted a second tornado growing out of the same system. Even more surprising, one of them appeared to be rotating anticyclonically, or clockwise, a rare occurrence in the Northern Hemisphere.
