Financial Markets and Economy
BP Profit Drops 40% on Lower Oil Prices, Beating Estimates (Bloomberg)
BP Plc reporteda 40 percent drop in earnings in the third quarter after average crude oil prices dropped to the lowest since 2009.
UK GDP just came in weaker than expected in Q3 (Business Insider)
The British economy grew by 0.5% in the third quarter of the year, a weaker pace than was forecast.
Analysts were expecting a 0.6% increase from Q2, down from 0.7% previous. Some had even revised their estimates down as various economic data points came out in October — the UK's services PMI, for example, showed its slowest expansion in two and a half years in September.
Chinas Stocks Drop on Concern Slowing Economy to Hurt Profits (Bloomberg)
Chinas stocks fell for the first time in four days, led by material and technology shares, amid concern the slowing economy is curbing profit growth.
Ford Profit Soars in 3rd Quarter, Propelled by F-150 Truck Sales (NY Times)
Driven largely by stout sales of its hot-selling Ford F-150 pickup truck,Ford Motor reported on Tuesday third-quarter earnings of $1.9 billion, up $1.1 billion over a year ago.
It was the automaker’s best quarter ever in North America, the company said. Improvements in Europe and South America also contributed to the positive report.
Pfizer revenue falls about 2 percent on strong dollar (Business Insider)
U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc <PFE.N> reported a 2.2 percent fall in quarterly revenue, hurt by a strong dollar.
The company's net income fell to $2.13 billion, or 34 cents per share, in the third quarter, from $2.67 billion, or 42 cents per share, a year earlier.
Risk-Taking Miners Work Through Civil Wars for Africa Gold Boom (Bloomberg)
When rebel soldiers overthrew the Mali government in 2012, coup leaderAmadou Konare closed the border to everyone except the employees of Randgold Resources Ltd.
Alibaba revenue rises 32 percent, beating expectations (Business Insider)
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's second-quarter revenue rose 32 percent, beating analysts' estimates, even as the value of goods transacted on its platform grew at a slower pace.
Revenue rose to 22,171 billion yuan in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with the average analyst estimate of 21,245.29 billion yuan, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Doves Circling Polish Central Bank Spell More Trouble for Zloty (Bloomberg)
The odds are stacking up against the Polish zloty as a landslide victory by the opposition party puts interest-rate cuts back on the central banks agenda.
If Valeant stock is tempting, Gilead Sciences offers a cure (Market Watch)
In a classic scene from the movie “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” the protagonist’s (deliciously antagonistic) wife explains to their child what her Wall Street-titan daddy does for a living:
“Daddy doesn’t build roads or hospitals or anything really,” Judy McCoy says faux-sweetly. “Imagine that a bond is a slice of cake…Every time you hand a slice of that cake to someone else, little crumbs fall off…A lot of golden little crumbs. And you have to imagine Daddy running around picking up every little golden crumb he can get his hands on.’’
Asia turns cautious as central bank decisions loom (Business Insider)
Asian share markets paused for breath on Tuesday after a four-week romp higher, as investors took cover ahead of central bank meetings in the United States and Japan later in the week.
BOJ Decision Seen as Almost a Coin Flip in Economist Survey (Bloomberg)
Economists remain split on whether the Bank of Japan will boost its already record stimulus at a meeting on Oct. 30.
A Significant Deal for Automakers, Unions (Business Insider)
For nearly a decade, new workers hired at unionized auto plants across the country have started their jobs knowing a troubling fact: They made less than their colleagues, sometimes half as much. And no matter how hard they worked, they could never earn the wages of the people standing next to them on the assembly line.
This was the result of concessions the United Auto Workers (UAW) made in a series of negotiations with the Big Three automakers: General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler (now called FCA after being acquired by Fiat).
Gold Investors Getting Ready for a Rally Before Fed Meeting (Bloomberg)
If you’re looking for a sign on what gold investors are expecting from this week’s Federal Reserve meeting, look no further than open interest.
This is the scare investors should be bracing for (Market Watch)
Oil is proving a finicky factor for this stock market. Yesterday, Wall Street found it could not move past another sharp drop in crude prices, and with oil down again this morning, stocks may struggle again.
Charting the Markets: The Two-Day Fed Meeting Looms Large (Bloomberg)
The yen rose against all 31 of its major peers, and natural gas in New York sank below $2. A plunging BASF showed the struggles facing global industrial giants.
European stocks on track for second day in the red (Market Watch)
European stocks fell Tuesday, with a mixed round of corporate earnings reports and a drop in oil prices putting the market on course for a second straight losing session.
The Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP, -0.56% was down 0.4% at 374.51. No sectors traded higher. The health care, oil and gas SXEP, -1.70% and basic materials sectors SXPP, -2.02% posted the sharpest losses. The index on Monday fell 0.4%.
The Oil Market May Need to Wait Until 2016 for Iran Supply Boost (Bloomberg)
Irans crude exports are likely to remain restricted until the first half of next year, when its reasonable to expect international sanctions against the OPEC producer to be lifted, according to a U.S. government official.
Yen gains vs. dollar as U.S. Navy patrol heightens tensions (Market Watch)
The yen strengthened against the dollar and other rivals early Tuesday, as investors bought the perceived safety of the Japanese currency on news that a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed near artificial islands claimed by China.
The U.S. dollar USDJPY, -0.68% recently traded at 120.44 yen, down about 0.5%. That compares with 121.10 yen late Monday in New York.
Politics
The Drama Behind The Next Republican Debate (Think Progress)
There seems to be just a little less excitement than usual surrounding Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate. It is, after all, the third of twelve debates scheduled this season, and the candidates are the same as last time, minus Scott Walker. The New York Times even hinted at the routineness of it all, its most recent debate-related headline focusing on the “familiar risks” the candidates face.
How Trump and Carson Benefit From the Backlash Against Corruption (The Atlantic)
The success of Donald Trump and Ben Carson has turned the members of the GOP elite into anthropologists, struggling to understand those ordinary Republicans who now resemble an exotic and hostile tribe. “I have no feeling for the electorate anymore,” George H.W. Bush’s former chief of staff John Sununu told the New York Times last Saturday. “Their priorities are so different that if I tried to analyze it I’d be making it up.” On Monday,Politico quoted a GOP donor from Florida who fretted that, “I look at this party now, and I hardly recognize it. I never would have thought there would be so much mistrust of the establishment.”
Technology
How time-saving technology has completely backfired (Quartz)
In the digital age, time is a precious commodity. Many technological innovations, from email to instant messengers to productivity apps, promise to make our lives faster, easier and more efficient.
Yet many of us feel more busy and harried than ever. We vacillate between regarding these technologies as the reason we feel so pressed for time and turning to them as a solution.
How UI/UX Design Will Map The Future Of Self-Driving Cars (Fast Company)
Hyundai and Artefact team up to show how the driving experience needs to evolve for the future of autonomous vehicles.
When Tesla released a software update earlier this month that gave its Model S electric cars a new self-driving AutoPilot mode, Elon Musk cautioned that drivers "should keep their hands on the wheel just in case." With good reason. Just a few days later, Model S owners began posting videos to YouTube, showing their Tesla's veering dangerously and making other strange decisions when using the beta software.
Health and Life Sciences
The truth in traditional medicine (BBC)
One of the recent winners of the Nobel Prize for medicine discovered a breakthrough drug after poring over 2,000 ancient herbal recipes.
Dr Tu Youyou's discovery, the anti-malarial artemisinin, derived from wormwood, is credited with saving millions of lives.
The other benefit to eating less red meat (CNN)
The just-released report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer judging processed meat as clearly carcinogenic and red meat as probably carcinogenic has caused consternation among meat producers and consumers.
Life on the Home Planet
Did Humans Evolve to See Things as They Really Are? (Scientific American)
One of the deepest problems in epistemology is how we know the nature of reality. Over the millennia philosophers have offered many theories, from solipsism (only one's mind is known to exist) to the theory that natural selection shaped our senses to give us an accurate, or verdical, model of the world. Now a new theory by University of California, Irvine, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman is garnering attention. (Google his scholarly papers and TED talk with more than 1.4 million views.) Grounded in evolutionary psychology, it is called the interface theory of perception (ITP) and argues that percepts act as a species-specific user interface that directs behavior toward survival and reproduction, not truth.
The Science Behind Lightning’s Electric Shows (Wired)
The star of thunderstorm theatrics, booming and flashing, is lightning: ever-gorgeous and destructive. Flashing four million times a day around the world, lightning can transform landscapes—starting wildfires in remote forested areas. It can also bring cities to their knees, as when a lightning strike to a power station in Brazil caused a blackout in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero that affected 97 million people and shut down both cities. And depending on where you choose to stand during a thunderstorm, lightning can kill you.
