Financial Markets and Economy
In Parched California, a Farmer's Market is Emerging for Power (Bloomberg)
Californias record drought may be a boon to power companies.
Millennial investors are buying in volatile market (CNN)
The wild stock market gyrations may have scared many investors. But not the twenty-something newbies.
If anything, the young investors are doubling down, opening new accounts and buying stocks.
Robinhood, a stock trading app that is popular with Millennials, said the number of new accounts doubled on Aug. 24 when the stock market tanked over 1,000 points at the open.
A Chinese investment bank rates its own stock — thinks it's definitely a buy (Business Insider)
China Galaxy Securities, a $50 billion Hong Kong investment bank that has seen its share price drop more than 60% since late May, thinks its stock is a bargain.
BofA Investors Urged to Reject Moynihans Chairman Position (Bloomberg)
Bank of America Corp. shareholders should oppose a proposal allowing Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan to remain chairman, proxy adviser Glass Lewis & Co. said.
Moynihan, 55, became chairman in October after the second-largest U.S. lender amended shareholder-backed bylaws created in 2009 that require an independent chairman. The bank’s investors are scheduled to vote Sept. 22 on a proposal that would ratify that change.
If stock market hits this level, then get nervous (CNN)
There are those who say this is only the beginning. Get ready for a deeper crash. Then there are those who argue this is just a healthy blip and that stocks will keep going up. Goldman Sachs (GS), for example, still predicts the market will end the year higher (albeit modestly).
These charts show how US investment banks are crushing their rivals (Business Insider)
US investment banks are dominating their European rivals.
American banks are beginning to increase their global-investment banking market share for a number of reasons, according to a note from Morgan Stanley's Huw Van Steenis.
Pimco Total Return Falls Below $100 Billion, a Third of Its Peak (Bloomberg)
Pacific Investment Management Co.’s flagship fund fell below $100 billion in assets for the first time in more than eight years, leaving it with about a third of the money it managed at its 2013 peak.
Investors pulled $1.8 billion last month from the Pimco Total Return Fund. Withdrawals are slowing, as that redemption follows outflows of $2.5 billion in July, $3 billion in June and $2.7 billion in May, according to a statement by the Newport Beach, California-based firm. After 28 consecutive months of outflows, assets plunged to $98.5 billion as of Aug. 31 from a high of $293 billion in April 2013, when the mutual fund was the world’s largest.
Who wins when global currencies tumble? (CNN)
The Brazilian real has lost 28% against the dollar just this year. The Turkish lira 20%, Colombian peso 23% and the Indonesian rupiah is down 11% versus the dollar in 2015.
On the face of it, these are alarming moves. Yet, a lower currency value is something that some countries actually want.
Stocks bounce back: Here's what you need to know (Business Insider)
The US economy is still trudging along in a slowing world. The Federal Reserve's latest beige book, with anecdotes from its 12 districts, stated that economic activity is expanding at a modest pace. Overall, it didn't tell market participants anything that was groundbreaking, or particularly new. However, some interesting tidbits included that there were several mentions of "wage pressure", more than the prior two beige books. The strong dollar is hitting retailers near the Canadian and Mexican borders. And, rent is flat in Manhattan but climbing in some of New York City's other boroughs including Queens and Brooklyn.
Feds Beige Book Says Economy Expanded Across Most Regions (Bloomberg)
The U.S. economy expanded across most regions and industries in July and August, a Federal Reserve report showed, as tighter labor markets boosted wages for some workers.
Six of 12 Fed districts reported “moderate” growth, and five others said expansion was “modest,” according to the Beige Book, released Wednesday in Washington. The survey is based on reports gathered on or before Aug. 24 by regional Fed banks.
A historic manifestation of panic in the stock market (Business Insider)
One of the manifestations of panic in the financial markets is indiscriminate selling.
One Reason Market Turmoil Might Actually Make September the Ideal Time to Hike Interest Rates (Bloomberg)
A number of sell-side economists have pushed back their estimates of when the Federal Reserve will deliver its first interest rate hike in light of the chaos in global markets.
Tighter financial conditions—such as higher rates, a stronger U.S. dollar, wider credit spreads, and lower equity prices—tend to trickle through to the real economy and have a deleterious effect on growth.
The stock market is crazy. What should you do now? (CNN)
A 1,000-point Nestea plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average last Monday morning followed by a more than 600-point rally a few days later.
The Dow then kicked off September with a 470-point sell-off Tuesday — before a triple-digit point rebound on Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve says the US economy is still growing (Business Insider)
The US economy is still expanding, according to the Federal Reserve's latest Beige Book report.
The Beige Book is a collection of anecdotal economic observations from each of the Fed's 12 regions.
And all in all, Wednesday's latest report showed that things in the economy are more or less status quo, epxnaind as they were in the Fed's prior report.
As investors flee China, they should consider India (Market Watch)
The recent collapse of the Chinese stock market along with Beijing’s devaluation of the Chinese currency, the yuan, have intensified doubts over the prospects of the world’s second-largest economy. Despite unprecedented measures taken by Chinese authorities in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars to support the market, the Shanghai Composite equity index SHCOMP, -0.20% has tumbled by 17% in the past two weeks, with a staggering fall of 39% since its peak in June.
Chinese factory activity fell to a six-and-a-half year low in August, further substantiating the fact that China is still in the midst of an economic slowdown.
PayPal Launches Quick & Easy Millennial-Friendly Payment Service (Time)
On Tuesday, PayPal announced a new service called PayPal.me, designed to add some modern functionality to its old-by-Internet-standards payment platform.
The new offering takes a page from Venmo, the mobile payment app popular with millennials that PayPal acquired last year. Venmo lets users send and request money with the tap of a few smartphone buttons—a stark contrast to the comparatively byzantine experience of requesting money on PayPal, which requires users to log into a website and fill out a form.
Politics
From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton Scandal Primer (The Atlantic)
Another batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails, another string of recriminations, another … what, exactly?
The tranche of messages released Monday night represents the largest set the State Department has made public so far. In keeping with previous sets, the emails show somecringeworthy moments, some humorous oddities, some political intrigue, and a whole lot of dull, workaday exchanges. The closest thing to a smoking gun remains the question of classification—which, while important, is about as interesting as it sounds.
Anticorruption Reform In A Setting Of Widespread Corruption — The Case Of Malaysia (Forbes)
Top-down anticorruption reform measures in Malaysia are unlikely to be genuine as they undermine the basis of the ruling party’s access and control of patronage and power. This is compounded by the majority of Malaysians ambivalence towards patronage and corruption.
Transparency International warned that Malaysia is facing a major corruption crisis. It called on the Malaysian government to ensure independent investigation into corrupt allegations, and that prosecution and punishments are followed through, irrespective of who is implicated. Courageous words but misplaced.
Technology
What Will The Battleship Of The Future Look Like? (Popular Science)
Just like video killed the radio star, airplanes killed the battleship. After a few centuries of innovation, large, gun-firing ships suddenly found themselves in World War II outranged and outmatched by flat-topped vessels with no guns at all. Aircraft carriers could send their fighters and torpedo-bombers to attack at distances far beyond the reach of cannons. It was a sea-change in naval combat, and big battleships have yet to regain their prominence. That doesn’t mean they won’t someday.
Startpoint, a maritime think-tank and design team funded by Britain’s Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence, released concept art for the warship of 2050, and it’s a slick beauty that combines the best features of both battleships and aircraft carriers into one small, low-profile body.
The future of food is giant, floating solar-powered farms (Quartz)
The future is here and it is a floating farm.
The giant food industrial machine that feeds the world also pollutes it, and while the food movement has been imploring the masses to change their consumption habits for years, there might be a bigger, better, more ambitious solution than creating more farmers markets. Barcelona-based design firm Forward Thinking Architecture has proposed a 2.2 million square foot, solar-powered offshore floating farm, Smithsonian.com reports.
Health and Life Sciences
Children paralysed in polio outbreak (BBC)
Two children have been paralysed in the first polio outbreak in Europe for five years, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Both cases were in Ukraine where only half the children are fully immunised.
It is likely large numbers of other children have also been infected without developing symptoms.
Life on the Home Planet
Humans Have Eliminated Half the World's Trees (Gizmodo)
Human beings are having an overwhelming impact on Earth’s ecosystems, whether we’re pouring plastic into the ocean or filling the skies with carbon. But it’s not just modern society that’s to blame — our environmental legacy stretches way back into history. Since dawn of civilization, we’ve caused nearly half of the world’s trees to disappear.
That’s the depressing conclusion of a massive ecological study published today in the journal Nature, which offers the very first data-driven global tree census.
Longevity tips from 11 centenarians (CNN)
Science says that your diet, how much you exercise and your genes all play a role in determining how long you'll live. Those who have lived to blow out 100 candles, however, say they've used other strategies for achieving their old age. Here, longevity tips from 11 centenarians around the world — some legit, some hilarious and some downright bizarre.
