Financial Markets and Economy
Goldman Sachs raises the possibility that oil will fall to $20 a barrel (Market Watch)
Goldman Sachs is very bearish on crude oil prices. The bank has cut its 2016 forecast to $45 a barrel from $57—and it’s leaving open the possibility that prices could go much lower than that.
Nine Weekly Reversals Show S&P 500 Traders Have No Clue on Fed (Bloomberg)
Trying to divine a signal on Federal Reserve interest rate policy from the U.S. stock market right now probably isn’t going to work.
Market Extra: Apple expected to drive tech earnings despite late release of iPhone 6S (Market Watch)
Apple Inc.’s next earnings report is not due until mid-October, but expectations for another blockbuster quarter are already building.
FactSet projects that the tech giant will be the main positive contributor for tech earnings in the third quarter, even though new iPhones won’t be released until very late in the quarter.
KKR, Apollo Global seek to buy GE's inventory finance arm (Business Insider)
KKR & Co <KKR.N> and Apollo Global Management <APO.N> are seeking to acquire General Electric Co's <GE.N> inventory finance arm, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
The buyout firms made bids two weeks ago for GE Capital Commercial Distribution Finance, a unit with $11 billion in assets, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
These Millennials Are Socking Away 15% of Their Salary (Bloomberg)
When you're young and hellbent on saving for retirement.
Disney bought $2.4B of its own stock in market freakout (CNN)
When Disney (DIS) and other media stocks crumbled last month, the home of Star Wars seized on the opportunity to buy back its stock at what looked like dirt cheap prices.
Disney went big, aggressively repurchasing $2.4 billion shares, Thomas Staggs, the company's chief operating officer, told analysts at a conference on Thursday.
GOLDMAN: Here are 19 great stocks shoveling tons of cash to their investors (Business Insider)
Investors don't have to sell a company's stock to make money off of it.
Dividends and share buybacks help increase value for people holding a stock, and there's a lot of money to be had as companies shovel record amounts of cash back to shareholders.
In a note to clients Thursday, Goldman Sachs' Amanda Sneider gave insights into a lot of the firms's investment strategies including the "Total Cash Return to Shareholders Basket," which identifies the company's that return the most cash to their investors.
Here's what happened to markets the last 15 times the Fed tightened (Business Insider)
Ever since the release of the minutes from the Federal Reserve's most recent policy meeting – which surprised markets by striking a hawkish tone – one question has gripped investors perhaps more than any other: when will the Fed start tightening monetary policy, and what will happen when it does?
CEOs with cushy stock perks may put your safety at risk (Market Watch)
Want to avoid buying products that will later get recalled? One way may be to look at how the company’s chief executive gets paid, a new study suggests.
Generous stock-option awards for CEOs increases the likelihood of a company’s experiencing a product recall in the future, according to a recent study conducted at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and published in the Strategic Management Journal. The study, which doesn’t identify specific companies or executives, analyzed product-recall data during the tenures of 386 chief executives at FDA-regulated (to ensure that all companies faced similar regulatory environments) public companies from 2004 to 2011.
Oil rig count tumbles for a 2nd week (Business Insider)
The US oil rig count declined again this week, according to driller Baker Hughes.
Oil rigs fell by 10 to a total of 652, and combined with gas rigs, the total count was down 16 to 848.
These funds may be to blame for a rare stock-market phenomenon (Market Watch)
Here’s one thing about the current volatility on Wall Street that stands out from previous periods of market turbulence: the tendency of individual stocks to move in the same direction.
Over the past three weeks, stocks moved together in waves, either with the vast majority moving up or the vast majority falling. Bespoke Investment Group describes such moves—when 400 or more of the S&P 500 issues move in the same direction—as “all or nothing days.”
Global Stocks Edge Lower (Wall Street Journal)
Shares in the U.S. capped their biggest weekly gains in almost six months with an advance Friday, as expectations for a rate increase faded further.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 102.69 points, or 0.6%, to 16433.09. The Dow’s weekly increase of more than 2% was the largest since the end of March.
Treasury Department shows federal budget deficit headed toward Obama-era low (Market Watch)
The federal budget deficit looks like it’s heading for a fresh Obama-era low.
Figures released Friday by the Treasury Department show the deficit through August at $530 billion. That’s 10% below the same period last year, and is thanks mainly to higher revenues.
Politics
The 2016 U.S. Presidential Race: A Cheat Sheet (The Atlantic)
It’s time for Rick Perry to pull his boots on one more time and ride off into the Texas sunset. (OK, not actual boots.) The former governor of the Lone Star State is the first Republican contender to drop out of the 2016 race.
In remarks to Phyllis Schafly’s Eagle Forum Friday evening, Perry announced the news.
Technology
Most cars will soon have automatic brakes (CNN)
Audi, BMW, Ford (F), General Motors (GM), Mazda, Mercedes-Benz (DDAIY), Tesla (TSLA), Toyota (TM), Volkswagen (VLKAF) and Volvo will make this kind of technology available as standard equipment in all car, truck and SUV models they sell.
It's currently available, either as an option or as standard equipment, on mostly luxury cars and higher-end models. Combined, the manufacturers account for over half the new vehicles sold in the United States.
The world's biggest manmade wave (BBC)
At the Deltares Research Institute, just outside the city of Delft in the Netherlands, engineers are carrying out the final tests on their new machine.
In a huge concrete tank, colossal wave after colossal wave crashes down with an ear-splitting roar.
This is the Delta Flume, and it can create the largest artificial waves in the world.
Health and Life Sciences
Addiction risk differs with tiny nicotine ‘hits’ (Futurity)
Some first-time users of even small doses of nicotine are far more vulnerable to addiction than others, a study of nonsmokers demonstrates.
The researchers say they have described the body’s reaction to the first, tiniest “hits” of nicotine. The results, they say, should lay groundwork for future revelations about genetic or other biological factors that make people vulnerable to nicotine addiction.
Sleep Well For A Healthy Heart (Forbes)
Providing even more evidence that sleep is an essential activity for bodily health, a new study finds that an improper amount of it is linked to markers of heart disease. Previous studies have certainly suggested similar results, but this new one measures the health of the arteries in a couple of different ways, and suggests some possible mechanisms for the connection. Like other studies have found, there seems to be a Goldilocks effect for the right amount of sleep: Seven hours per night seems to be the sweet spot. But sleeping much less or much more than this both seem to pose some problems.
It’s My Nervous System That’s Lazy (NY Times)
The human nervous system ensures that the body reserves its energy and expends as few calories as possible with every movement. Now, a new study reports that the nervous system performs this optimization in real time.
“Many of us perceive that we’re consciously lazy, but that seems to extend down to our subconscious nervous system,” said Max Donelan, a neuromechanist at Simon Fraser University in Canada and one of the study’s authors.
Life on the Home Planet
Migrants face inhumane, degrading treatment (CNN)
Video has emerged that shows police throwing bags of food into crowds of refugees from behind a barrier at a migrant transit camp in Hungary, a country at the forefront of Europe's migrant crisis.
Men, women and children can be seen being pushed and jostled as the crowd surges to try to catch the plastic-wrapped sandwiches, lobbed by helmet-clad police from behind a line of fellow officers, some wearing hygiene masks.
