Financial Markets and Economy
The 300% Instant Gains on China IPOs Are Suddenly Vanishing (Bloomberg)
For months, it’s been a no-brainer for Chinese investors: buy shares of newly-listed companies, sit back and watch your money grow.
A limit-up gain of 44 percent on opening day was all but guaranteed, thanks to regulatory pressure on companies to keep offering prices low, and it didn’t stop there. Half of the initial public offerings this year through mid-May jumped more than 300 percent in their first month.
GOLDMAN: December (USD, TLT, SPY) (Business Insider)
Goldman Sachs now believes the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December.
In a note Wednesday, the firm pushed back its forecast for the first hike in eight years from September to December following the Federal Reserve's monetary policy update and press conference.
In its statement, the Fed maintained its outlook for inflation, cut its forecast for GDP growth, and raised its unemployment expectations for the year.
‘’Goldbug’’ Analysts Capitulation (Gold Broker)
The gold market has been in a profound lethargy (at least in dollar terms) for over a year. This is as frustrating for the bulls as it is for the bears. These days we are witnessing an avalanche of bearish commentaries on the price of gold for the coming 6 to 12 months. The psychological $1,000 threshold is attracting analysts like a magnet attracts iron dust, just because an almost four-year old trend ends up drawing everybody in it!
Metals Stocks: Gold prices up nearly 2% on Fed’s dovish tone (Market Watch)
Gold futures drove higher Thursday, helped by a pullback in the U.S. dollar as the Federal Reserve signaled it will raise interest rates at a gradual pace.
Gold for August delivery GCQ5, +1.86% climbed $20.30, or 1.7%, to $1,196 an ounce on Comex. Prices began climbing in electronic trade Wednesday as the Fed indicated that while it expects its benchmark fed funds interest rate to eventually rise to 3.75% in the “longer run,” the likely path to that level will be slow.
Greece Has Already Cost Investors $897 Billion This Year (Bloomberg)
How much has the Greece saga cost European equity investors? Try $897 billion, more than the value of benchmark indexes in Spain, Portugal and Ireland, combined.
What had been a record year is in danger of turning sour, with the Stoxx Europe 600 Index going from its biggest quarterly gain since 2009 to the worst month, June, in two years. A third of this year’s rally has been lost as the gauge dropped 7.8 percent from its all-time high on April 15.
Destroying The Data-Dependent Dot-Plots, Here's Janet Yellen's Real "Surprises" In 2 Simple Charts (Zero Hedge)
But don't worry Steve Liesman is certain it's all good in the 'dots'…
Surprise!!! (Soft data – surveys and business cycle indicators have collapsed)
Gold and silver are surging (Business Insider)
Gold and other precious metals are rallying.
On Thursday morning, Gold climbed nearly 2%, crossing the key level of $1,200 an ounce before settling near $1,198 per ounce.
The metal is now up $22 from the lows reached on Wednesday before the Federal Reserve updated its monetary policy statement.
Paul Volcker: The financial world is 'bigger than its britches' (CNN)
The American Dream is in trouble. And Paul Volcker knows a big reason why.
The former chairman of the Federal Reserve says the financial world has gotten "bigger than its britches." Attempts to regulate the industry have failed, he says, and the pay of financial executives has gone way up.
"I wasn't born yesterday," Volcker told CNNMoney's Christine Romans. Since World War II, he said he has seen "20 different substantial efforts to reform the regulatory system. None of them have moved the needle."
No signs of Greek debt deal at Eurogroup as deadline looms (Market Watch)
Eurozone finance ministers have another chance to break the deadlock in talks over Greece’s international bailout Thursday, but neither side has shown any sign of shifting its position, even as warnings grow of the potential impact of a Greek default and exit from the euro.
Gathering in Luxembourg for their monthly get-together, the finance chiefs will address an impasse in negotiations between Greece and the institutions overseeing its bailout—representing the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund—over policy overhauls and budget cuts Athens must undertake in exchange for sustained financing. But eurozone officials doubt a deal can be reached given what they say is limited progress in negotiations.
Inflation Rages on, Beef Hits New Record High – Nathan McDonald (Sprott Money)
As we reported last year, inflation was raging in food prices. This came at a time, when the FED had the audacity to claim that inflation was "too low".
Unfortunately, as is now common knowledge to anyone who follows reality or John Williams' Shadowstats, government numbers are manipulated, bogus and down right shady.
Fitbit could be worth $3.7 billion after IPO (CNN)
Fitbit users aren't the only ones in good shape.
Investors are giving the wearable fitness device company a clean bill of health, too. That's why Fitbit raised its initial public offering (IPO) price to $17 to $19 a share. That means Wall Street thinks Fitbit could be worth $3.7 billion, based on the midpoint of that range.
Oil prices rise on weak dollar, hopes of Greek deal (Reuters)
Oil prices rose on Thursday as a weaker dollar made fuel cheaper for holders of other currencies, and on hopes of a last-minute breakthrough that could keep Greece in the euro zone and help avoid a shock to European economic growth.
The dollar fell 0.5 percent to a one-month low against a basket of currencies .DXY after the Federal Reserve disappointed investors who had hoped for a clearer signal on when the U.S. central bank will lift interest rates.
This ‘Barbarian’ Banker Has Turned Into a Friendly Activist (Bloomberg)
Cliff Robbins used to be a barbarian -– one of those private-equity dealmakers at KKR & Co. who ended up in the book that defined the Wall Street of the 1980s.
Today he is making a mark as the practitioner of friendly shareholder activism.
Robbins doesn’t publicly deride his targeted companies or file lawsuits to force changes and has yet to wage a proxy war for board seats — all sticks activists typically use when confronting recalcitrant corporations. Instead, he buys into companies that are willing to listen to him.
For Luxury Car Markers, The Chinese "Cash Cow Is Dying" (Zero Hedge)
It’s no secret that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption has had a rather dramatic effect on VIP gambling revenue in Macau, which has fallen for 12 consecutive months.
But the pinch is being felt well beyond the Baccarat tables.
Waitrose launches 'pick your own offers' scheme for loyal shoppers (The Guardian)
Waitrose has launched a new salvo in the UK’s supermarket price war by giving loyalty card shoppers 20% off their 10 favourite items on every shop.
The “pick your own offers” scheme allows shoppers to choose the items on which they’ll get a discount from a list of 950 possibilities. The cost of the price cuts could add up to £260m a year or more, although Waitrose will split that cost with suppliers who have signed up.
Trading
Merrill Lynch Raises Price Targets on Top Cybersecurity Stocks to Buy (24/7 Wall St)
Every single day brings another security breach, and the top cybersecurity stocks jump again. Recently the Houston Astros baseball team was hacked, and the St. Louis Cardinals are the alleged perpetrators. The bottom line? This is not going away anytime soon, if ever.
In a new research report, Merrill Lynch does what probably should be expected. Because of the jump in stock prices for these top stocks to buy, the firm raises the price targets. The firm’s analysts say flat out that they continue to believe that stock investors should focus on security as a top theme for 2015, given the robust spending environment and the current data trends that are clearly showing sector momentum.
Analysts Stand by Oracle After Disappointing Earnings (24/7 Wall St)
Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) released its most recent financial results Wednesday after the markets closed as $0.78 in earnings per share (EPS) on $10.7 billion in revenue. That compared to Thomson Reuters consensus estimates of $0.87 in EPS on $10.95 billion in revenue.
Politics
Americans Remain Split Over Obama (The Atlantic)
Stuck in second gear.
That might be the best description of American attitudes toward President Obama’s performance and the economy’s direction in the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll.
Republican Presidential Hopefuls to Make Their Pitch at Evangelical Summit (Bloomberg)
The annual Faith & Freedom Coalition Policy Conference kicks off Thursday in Washington, giving top-tier presidential contenders as well as long shots such as former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal a chance to compete for the large evangelical Christian base in the crowded Republican primary contest.
Technology
The DxO ONE Is A Plug-In iPhone Camera With A 1-Inch Sensor (Tech Crunch)
Your iPhone camera is already one of the better mobile cameras available, but a new accessory from imaging technology leader DxO could up the iPhone’s game considerably. The Lightning-enabled DxO ONE has a super bright f1.8 aperture lens, and a 20.2 megapixel, 1-inch sensor. That sensor size is on par with the Sony RX100 series of compact camera, which produces amazing pictures in terms of image quality and noise in a small-body device, and should enable great effects like truly dramatic background blur.
Apple invented a new type of viral advertising that can track users in social media (Business Insider)
Apple has been granted a patent for a new viral advertising management system that can track ads or media content as it is shared via different methods, such as email, texts and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The patent also says that it can store users' names, addresses, and age in a database.
This does not mean that Apple is going to launch a viral advertising product — the company has a long history of focusing on devices and apps, not advertising. Nor does it mean that Apple is going to start tracking your consumption of social media.
Health and Life Sciences
Altering Embryo Genes, Safely, Should Not Be Off-Limits (Scientific American)
To rid families of the curse of inherited diseases, medical geneticists have dreamed about changing human DNA before birth. The dream is also a nightmare, however, because it raises the specter of designer babies or creating harmful mutations. Now a precision genome-editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 has brought both dream and nightmare to the edge of reality.
The technique makes snipping out troublesome DNA from a cell's nucleus incredibly easy and cheap, compared with other methods. Scientists have been testing whether it can be used to treat genetic diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, and other scourges, such as HIV, in mature human cells. But no one had attempted to edit cells that can pass DNA down through generations: those of sperm, eggs or very early stage embryos. Such cells belong to what is known as the germ line. In April a team at Sun Yat-sen University in China revealed that it had crossed that line.
Drug Accelerated Growth in Children With Dwarfism, Pharmaceutical Firm Says (NY Times)
An experimental drug, vying to become the first approved treatment for dwarfism, improved growth in children by a significant amount in a preliminary study, the drug’s developer, BioMarin Pharmaceutical, said on Wednesday.
In the study, the 10 children who got the highest dose of the drug grew at an average rate of 6.1 centimeters, or 2.4 inches, per year, about a 50 percent increase from the four centimeters per year they were growing before starting the drug. The growth rate while on the drug was similar to that of a child without the condition, the company said.
Life on the Home Planet
We Could Save 2 Million Lives Globally by Cleaning Up the Air (Mother Jones)
Nations around the world could save more than 2 million lives every year by cleaning up their air, a new study has found. Researchers identified major potential public-health gains not only in the most polluted places like China, but also in the United States and Europe.
If China and India alone met pollution targets set by the World Health Organization, they could avoid about 1.4 million premature deaths annually, according to a study published Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology. (For comparison, that would be nearly as many lives saved as if we cured everyone in the world who dies from an HIV-related illness every year.)
It’s Alive! Comet Lander Gets Ready to Do Some Science (Wired)
IN THE FIVE or so days since Philae, the washing machine-sized lander nestled in a shady ditch on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, called home, mission control has been a flurry of analysis and planning. “In everyone’s life there are a few days that count for more than the others,” says Jean-Pierre Bibring, lead lander scientist. For the team running Philae and its orbiting counterpart Rosetta, these have been those days.
Yesterday at a press conference Bibring and colleagues shared plans for the science their probes can now do.
Or rather, the science they hope it’ll do. There are, of course, problems…
60 Million People Fleeing Chaotic Lands, U.N. Says (NY Times)
Nearly 60 million people have been driven from their homes by war and persecution, an unprecedented global exodus that has burdened fragile countries with waves of newcomers and littered deserts and seas with the bodies of those who died trying to reach safety.
The new figures, released Thursday by the United Nations refugee agency, paint a staggering picture of a world where new conflicts are erupting and old ones are refusing to subside, driving up the total number of displaced people to a record 59.5 million by the end of 2014, the most recent year tallied.
So What Exactly Is The Pope’s New Encyclical On The Environment Anyway? (Think Progress)
A draft of Pope Francis’ new papal encyclical on the environment leaked Monday, outlining a sweeping vision for how the Catholic Church should respond to the issue of global climate change. The official version is set to be released this Thursday, but as journalists and theologians scramble to discern the finer details of the papal document, many others are wondering: what exactly is an encyclical, anyway?
Well, don’t you worry. ThinkProgress has you covered like the pope’s miter on Christmas.
Congressman Asks Californians How They Would Solve The State’s Drought (Think Progress)
As the California drought stretches into its fourth year, state officials are being asked to answer a difficult question: who gets water, and who doesn’t?
Throughout the state, that question has led to a mounting tension between farmers and environmentalists, because while agriculture takes up about 40 percent of the state’s water, environmental uses (scenic rivers, maintaining water levels for fish, etc.) require an even higher share, consuming half of California’s supply.
