Financial Markets and Economy
Pimco Clients Pulled $2.5 Billion From Total Return Fund in July (Bloomberg)
Investors pulled $2.5 billion from Pacific Investment Management Co.s flagship fund in July, the 27th consecutive month of outflows from what used to be the worlds largest mutual fund.
Etsy is Crashing (Business Insider)
Etsy reported a quarterly loss on Tuesday evening, and the stock is getting crushed.
In after-hours trading, the stock fell by more than 11% after closing down 6% at $19.23 a share.
The online marketplace for craft makers reported a second-quarter loss of $6.4 million, or $0.07 per share, versus the consensus estimate for -$0.08.
Japan's Real Wages Just Plunged The Most In Six Years (Zero Hedge)
When it comes to Japanese wage data, that weakest link of Abenomics simply because real wages haven't grown in 24 consecutive months – and without wage growth no economy can ever possibly groq – there is little to add to what we said previously: all the data is not only fabricated, but manipulated to comply with policy. Recall our post from April in which we exposed just how Japan's Monthly Labor Survey adjusted all historical data so that the "rising" wages into Japan's election were subsequently revealed to be a lie and in fact Japan never had a single month of rising base wages in 2014!
Go-go economy becomes so-so economy: U.S. faces dimmer future absent big fixes (Market Watch)
Millions of Americans who want a full-time job still can’t find still one. Worker paychecks are barely keeping ahead of inflation. And governments at all levels are struggling to prevent future costs from spiraling out of control.
All of these ailments can be traced to one malady: slow economic growth.
Why the Group Most Affected by Obama Power Plan Doesn't Hate It (Bloomberg)
Opponents of President Barack Obamas plan to cut emissions blamed for climate change say utilities will be among the casualties of the new regulations.
US Shale: How Smoke And Mirrors Could Cost Investors Millions (Oil Price)
In this post I present what I found from applying R/P (Reserves divided by [annual] Production) ratios for Light Tight Oil (LTO) for 3 big companies in Bakken/Three Forks/Sanish.
There is one big winner from all this market volatility (Business Insider)
Market volatility due to uncertainty in Greece has been great for one US company: the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
That is according to a note from UBS' Alex Kramm, which said that surging volatility spurred increased activity on America's largest options exchange last month.
There may never be a ‘second’ Greece (Market Watch)
The International Monetary Fund’s acknowledgment that Greece’s debt is unsustainable could prove to be a watershed moment for the global financial system. Clearly, heterodox policies to deal with high debt burdens need to be taken more seriously, even in some advanced countries.
Ever since the onset of the Greek crisis, there have been basically three schools of thought. First, there is the view of the so-called troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF), which holds that the eurozone’s debt-distressed periphery (Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) requires strong policy discipline to prevent a short-term liquidity crisis from morphing into a long-term insolvency problem.
Netflix Rises 9.1% After Analyst Issues Buy With $160 Target (Bloomberg)
Netflix Inc., the pioneering online video service, rose as much as 9.1 percent to an all-time high after Guggenheim Securities recommended the stock with a price target of $160.
How Talent Pulls One Over on the Capitalists (HBR)
Last week I got a call from the founding CEO of a startup in which I am an angel investor. Outside investors, including me, had provided its $10 million in risk capital about three years ago. The founding group of managers, including the CEO, took sweat equity in the business. He was calling to get my consent to sell the company for $31 million. That sounded pretty good – a threefold payoff on a three-year investment.
Chart Of The Day – Americans Are Not Happy (Liberty Blitzkrieg)
Readers of this site don’t need me to tell you, but the following statistics from the Wall Street Journal prove that despite record stock prices and non-stop propaganda, fewer and fewer people are believing the hype.
One of Wall Street's most bullish forecasters has a bold new call for the stock market (Business Insider)
Laszlo Birinyi thinks the S&P 500 can hit 3,200 by 2017.
That would be a 52% jump from where the benchmark index was trading on Tuesday afternoon.
"Most people don't realize that we are now in the second greatest S&P rally in history, and we are actually ahead of the 1990 rally. And if the market continues to gain 11 basis points a day as it has for the last six years, two years out or so, we're going to be over 3,000. So it's more a matter of guidance. What we're really trying to tell people is stay with it. Don't let the bad news shake you out. We've heard all the bad news before … there's no reason why we can't keep on going."
"Please Ignore Oil" (Zero Hedge)
How many times have we been told "excluding oil-related firms" everything is awesome? Well, we have one question, why did Factory orders ex-transportation just plunge a depression-like 7.5% YoY – the worst since the great recession in 2009…?
Dollar soars to finish higher after Lockhart backs Sept. rate hike (Market Watch)
The dollar finished higher against its rivals Tuesday, reversing earlier losses after Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, suggested that Fed policy makers are prepared to raise the Fed-funds rate in September.
Lockhart’s remarks were published in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Foxconns Gou to Modi: Build Infrastructure to Win Investment (Bloomberg)
Foxconn Technology Group is prepared to invest as much as $2 billion on technology projects in India over the next decade if the government addresses infrastructure deficiencies, Chairman Terry Gou said in New Delhi.
“The government needs to improve infrastructure,” Gou, founder of the Taiwanese company that manufactures Apple Inc. iPhones, said at a press conference Tuesday. He specifically mentioned electricity, transport and supply chain management.
Greek Bank Stocks Crash Again Amid Fresh Signs Of Economic Disintegration (Zero Hedge)
After trading limit-down on Monday when Greek stocks opened for trading for the first time since PM Alexis Tsipras called a referendum that would later prove to be a complete waste of time, shares of Greek banks once again flirted with the daily 30% loss limit on Tuesday as there were simply no bids for a set of institutions that everyone knows is insolvent.
Panicking is a horrible investment strategy (Business Insider)
Investing in the stock market isn't for everyone, especially the faint-hearted who can't handle the downs as well as the ups of the market.
Gold finish above $1,090, but stumbles on rate fears (Market Watch)
Gold prices finished higher in Tuesday trade but encountered late pressure from the U.S. dollar, which rallied after remarks from a Federal Reserve official pointed to a September interest-rate hike.
Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said it would take “a significant deterioration in the economic picture” to persuade him to vote against raising key interest rates, which have remained at ultralow levels for about a decade. Lockhart made his remarks Tuesday afternoon in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Volume Eruption for Apple Shares as 200-Day Line Gives Way (Bloomberg)
Think technical analysis is irrelevant? Apple Inc. investors might beg to differ.
Twitter's stock has lost more than half its value since early 2014 (Business Insider)
Twitter's stock hit an all time low yesterday, and although it's rebounded about 1% this morning, the stock is still trading below $30 per share, making the company worth around $20 billion. That could make it an attractive acquisition target, although some analysts think it will have to lose another $10 billion in market cap before pontential buyers like Google and Facebook take a serious look.
The Devastation in Global Commodity Currencies is Far From Over (Bloomberg)
A bounce in crude oil and other commodity prices Tuesday halted a plunge in currencies of countries linked to natural-resource exports. The respite will be short-lived, according to OppenheimerFunds Inc.
Goldman Is Confused: If The Economy Is Recovering, Then How Is This Possible (Zero Hedge)
Following last week's news that household formation jumped and was revised higher, the logical consequence is that young Americans living in their parents' basement must finally be moving out.
They are not.
This map shows Europe's colossal debt division (Business Insider)
Europe's economic problems are partly down to debt — in short, though all the countries use and borrow in the euro, credit ratings agencies think some nations are far more reliable debtors than others.
To show that split, Fitch just released their "Eurozone Sovereign Snapshot," which displays the different countries in the currency union and their credit ratings. There's a stark geographic division.
Politics
2016 presidential hopefuls vow to ‘get America moving again’ (Market Watch)
Fifty-five years ago, a young World War Two veteran from Massachusetts vowed to “get America moving again.” And 20 years after that an aging former Hollywood star from California made the same pledge to a frustrated nation.
Like Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980, the person who captures the White House in 2016 will win by persuading the public that he or she knows how to get America moving again.
Politicians Seek Short-Term Advantages By Lecturing Capitalists About The Long Term (Mises)
Hillary Clinton’s latest campaign salvo attacked “quarterly capitalism,” the supposedly irresponsible corporate focus on short-term results at the expense of long-term growth. She promised government fixes.
Short-Termism, Share Prices, and Incentives
Is there too much short-termism in business firms? To answer this, let’s look at participants’ incentives.
The Failure of Politics: Merkel's Euro Debacle? (The Globalist)
It may be the great magic trick of the management consulting world: No matter how complex the situation and how iffy the outcomes may appear to be, just draw a two-by-two box for your client. Define what options to write on the x and y axes – and then the client can decide.
Of course, a good consultant will carefully pre-shape the answer options, so that the answer the client will arrive at is more or less given. Best of all, the magic trick works, whether it concerns a pure business situation or a matter of public policy.
Technology
Lexus lets skateboarders put its hoverboard to the test (Engadget)
After weeks of teasing, Lexus is finally showing off its latest Amazing in Motion project in full. The Slide video posted today shows skateboarders riding the company's superconducting hoverboard at a specially built skate park in Spain. Similar to the $10,000 Hendo hoverboard before it, this board only works if you have the combination of a liquid nitrogen cooled cryostat onboard and a special magnetic track, so no — it's not for sale. As you can see in the video, skaters who got their crack at it pulled off some cool gliding tricks (including one across a stretch of water), but it's still not quite the same thing as the decks that they're used to, and seemed to have less control available than the Hendo board. Back to the Future it ain't, but it's real, and it's cool (-197°C).
See The World Through Bionic Eyes With This Incredible Simulation (Popular Science)
New visual simulations give us a glimpse of what it might look like to see the world through bionic eyes.
Since the FDA’s approval of the world’s first bionic eye system, the Argus II, more and more people who were once blind can now see (more than 80 by March 2014, according to a study in Neuroscience Letters). Although researchers estimated that the vision would be close to a grainy black and white film with a visual acuity of 20/1260, as opposed to general healthy vision of 20/20, there wasn’t a very robust model to back this up. In a study published in Philosophical Transactions B researchers have created realistic video simulations of what restored sight might look like.
Health and Life Sciences
For chronic insomnia, mix in placebo pills (Futurity)
As little as half the prescription sleeping pills could do the job for the roughly nine million Americans who take them for chronic insomnia, a new study reports.
In addition, placebos could be effective as part of their treatment plans.
The study, published in the journal Sleep Medicine, starkly contrasts with the standard prescribing practices for chronic insomnia treatment.
The New Ebola Vaccine Is Related To Rabies. Is It Safe? (Forbes)
An experimental vaccine offers total protection against Ebola, according to preliminary results from a large clinical trial.
Among 4,000 vaccinated people, there were no cases of infection. The study concluded that the vaccine – known as ‘rVSV-ZEBOV’ – is “highly efficacious and safe in preventing Ebola virus disease”.
Life on the Home Planet
Brazil Would Like Its Four Legged Snake Fossil Back (Gizmodo)
Remember that adorable (horrifying?) four legged snake fossil that made such a sensation last month? Well, not everyone’s tickled pink about it. Brazilian officials suspect the fossil was stolen from their country, and if it was, they’d like it back, thank you very much.
The controversial leggy snake in question, Tetrapodophis amplectus, hails from the Crato Formation in Brazil. The 100-million-year-old fossil became an international hit after scientists reported the find in the journal Science on July 24th. And how could it not have risen to fame and glory? It’s a freakin’ four legged snake!
