Financial Markets and Economy
Apple concerns, cord cutting lead this week’s biggest business stories (Market Watch)
Shares of Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.34% have fallen 12% since July 21, just before the company published fiscal third-quarter results.
Apple beat analysts’ forecasts for the quarter, while sales increased 33%, net income rose 38% and earnings per share surged 45%. But a lower-than-expected sales outlook for the fiscal fourth quarter, the refusal by CEO TIm Cook to provide detail about sales of the Apple Watch and concern that the company’s fast pace of growth in China will stall, have weighed heavily on investors’ minds.
China's July exports slump 8 percent, raises pressure for more stimulus (Business Insider)
Chinese exports tumbled 8.3 percent in July, their biggest drop in four months and far worse than expected, reinforcing expectations that Beijing will be forced to roll out more stimulus to support the world's second-largest economy.
Imports also fell heavily from a year earlier, in line with market forecasts but suggesting domestic demand might be too feeble to offset the weaker global demand for China's exports.
Fonterra Proposes Price Floor for Not Sustainable Milk Market (Bloomberg)
Fonterra Co-Operative Group Ltd., the world’s biggest dairy exporter, wants a price floor to support a global milk market that Chief Executive Officer Theo Spierings calls “absolutely not sustainable.”
Milk prices are at “a very low level, below the bottom” and face “a bumpy ride for another six to 12 months,” Spierings said in an interview with New Zealand’s TV3 news Saturday.“We have to make sure that we get through with minimum damage,” he said.
Focus on Fed, euro zone's economic health (Business Insider)
The search for clues to whether the Federal Reserve will raise U.S. interest rates in September for the first time in nearly a decade is set to intensify next week.
U.S. employment rose at a steady clip in July and wages rebounded after unexpectedly stalling in June, signs of an improving economy that could open the door wider to a rate hike soon. But Friday's data did not cement expectations the Fed will act next month.
Twitter Reveals How Little the GOP Debate Focused on Small Business (Inc.)
You could forgive small business owners for feeling unloved in last night's Republican debates.
Apart from a single question taken from the audience via Facebook–a partner with Fox News for the event–about the one thing candidates would do to make the economy more favorable for small business owners, entrepreneurs got scant attention.
Verizon is ditching annual cell phone contracts (CNN)
Verizon is ditching annual contracts. The No. 3 mobile carrier is switching to month-to-month plans starting Thursday.
Current Verizon (VZ, Tech30) customers with annual contracts can keep their plans or switch over to one of four new options.
High-yield bond investors head for exits (Market Watch)
These are tough times for high-yield bond investors.
For the third week in a row mutual funds and ETFs reported outflows from risky asset classes, including stocks and high-yield bonds, analysts at Bank of America said Friday. This week, outflows from high-yield bond funds totaled $820 million after $1.31 billion in the prior week.
After this week's jobs report, the Fed is in control (Business Insider)
The Fed is now firmly in control of its own destiny.
On Friday, the July jobs report came in largely in line with expectations.
Nonfarm payrolls grew by 215,000 (225,000 expected), and the previous month's print was revised up to 231,000 from 223,000.
Schedule for Week of August 9, 2015 (Calculated Risk)
The key economic report this week is July Retail sales on Thursday.
For manufacturing, the July Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization report will be released this week.
Are You Living Your Calling? (Trader Feed)
I have met many people who work hard from day to day, but never define and realize a dream. Too, I have met many people who espouse their visions and dreams, but never seem to wake up and actually sustain directed effort toward those. When dreams are expressed with purpose, we no longer simply have a job or even a career. We live a calling.
Are you living your calling? Few questions are more important.
To find our dream and live it with purpose on a daily basis requires that we make and sustain positive changes. But how do we become change agents in our own lives, as well as the lives of those that matter to us? Important clues come from this recent Forbes article: we change from both top-down and bottom-up. From top-down, we adopt a different perspective; redefine who we are and what we're meant to do. From bottom-up, we turn that fresh perspective into a guide for daily actions.
Is China's 'Black Box' Economy About To Come Apart? (Peak Prosperity)
After 30 years of torrid expansion, perhaps the single most consequential factor in China’s economy is how much of it is a “black box”: a system with visible inputs and outputs whose internal workings are opaque.
Gibson's Paradox: The Consequences For Gold (Gold Money)
The best way to illustrate the puzzle is through two charts, the first showing empirical evidence that interest rates correlate with the price level.
JPMorgan Defends Wix Amid Rout as CFO Plots Next Super Bowl Ad (Bloomberg)
Wix.com Ltd's decision to splurge on a Super Bowl adearlier this year resulted in the Israeli Internet company attracting a record number of new users last quarter. Investors responded by dumping its shares.
Politics
Why I love that Donald Trump is running for president (Market Watch)
It seems everyone has a Donald Trump story these days. So let me tell mine.
Actually, it’s not so much a single story as a few of them. I covered The Donald upon occasion as a reporter for The Palm Beach Post in Palm Beach County, Fla., where the billionaire entrepreneur has his Mar-a-Lago mansion-turned-club. And I returned in 2013 for a story about how Mar-a-Lago had become the setting for, of all things, an equestrian competition: It was the first time in years that the blue-blooded community had allowed horses on the island; as always, Trump seemed to relish playing the role of establishment-bucker, pointing out to me that horse manure is “the purest form of fertilizer.”
If Donald Trump is elected president, Carl Icahn will be his Treasury chief (The Verge)
Carl Icahn, the outspoken investor who has made a habit of issuing unsolicited advice to tech companies in recent times, is now ready to embrace a new role: Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. That's the job that Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump nominated Icahn for back in June, though it was an offer that Icahn initially declined. "I am flattered but do not get up early enough in the morning to accept this opportunity," wrote a self-effacing Icahn.
Technology
How Computers Are Changing the Way We Explain the World (Wired)
IMAGINE IT’S THE 1950s and you’re in charge of one of the world’s first electronic computers. A company approaches you and says: “We have 10 million words of French text that we’d like to translate into English. We could hire translators, but is there some way your computer could do the translation automatically?”
Google's Project Fi cell phone service is simple, until it's not (The Verge)
Google's Project Fi, if you don't recall, is the innovative new cell phone service that combines Wi-Fi calling, service that works on either Sprint or T-Mobile's network (whichever is faster), and a cheap and nicely predictable pricing plan that starts at $20 for voice and text and costs $10 per gig of data. It also only works on the Nexus 6. I just got mine set up yesterday, and I'm pleased with it so far, though there are complications I'm still trying to wrap my head around.
Health and Life Sciences
Cancer research gets a better look at ‘zombie cells’ (Futurity)
A new yeast model lets scientists study a gene mutation that disrupts DNA duplication, causing massive damage to a cell’s chromosomes yet somehow allowing the cell to keep dividing.
The result is a mess: Zombie cells that by all rights shouldn’t be able to survive, let alone divide, with their chromosomes shattered and strung out between tiny micronuclei. Sometimes they’re connected to each other by ultrafine DNA bridges. (Imagine tearing apart a hot pizza—these DNA bridges are like strings of cheese still draping between the separated pieces.)
The Body Electric (The Atlantic)
Chao Wang didn’t always work on artificial skin. When he came to Stanford to work in the electronics lab, his background was in chemistry, specifically in making polymers. One day, he burned his hand in the kitchen, not badly, but enough to take a few days to heal. “After several days my skin came back,” he said, “and I started wondering if we could bring this self-healing back into our electronics.”
Life on the Home Planet
Droughts and Other Disasters: A Scientific American Reader (Scientific American)
“With your permission,” began a letter to the editors of this magazine published in 1855 (pdf), “I will lay before you numerous and scientific readers what I imagine to be the cause of drought. I believe it is caused by the burning of coal; that the smoke arising therefrom is injurious to vegetation, to the soil, to the air and to the clouds.” The editors replied, haughtily but justifiably, “Our correspondent has not given us a single reason for his belief in coal smoke being the cause of drought….”
Precious animals eat icy treats to stay cool in the summer (Mashable)
Humans can reach for a popsicle or Mister Softee cone when the summer heat turns sweltering.
But our beloved animal friends aren't as lucky. Though most animals are born with unique natural cooling mechanisms – elephants can radiate heat from their ears and toads go into a state of dormancy to avoid overheating or drying out – some still rely on human help to cool down. Enjoy that popsicle, chimpanzee!
Five Places Where People Have Turned the Water a Crazy Unnatural Color (Gizmodo)
On Thursday, a spill during an acid mine cleanup effort sent a million gallons of wastewater seeping down the Animas River. Overnight, the popular waterway was abandoned as its color quickly changed from blue to an acrid, neon orange.
It’s not the first time we’ve managed to turn a large body of water an eerie and surprisingly pretty toxic hue. Here are a few other striking instances in which pollution and industry have shown us their artistic sides.
