Financial Markets and Economy
Things are about to get brutal on Wall Street (Business Insider)
The good news: You get to keep your job. The bad news: It's about to get a lot more cutthroat.
A number of Wall Street investment banks have moved toward cutting swathes of traders in recent months, with Morgan Stanley and Barclays set to be the latest to take the leap.
Europe Stock Divergence Only Grows as Draghi Adds to Despair (Bloomberg)
Even before Thursday’s selloff in European equities — among the worst this year — there was evidence investors were growing more skeptical that Mario Draghi’s measures would lead to stronger corporate-profit results.
10 stocks driving the rebound in the S&P 500 (Market Watch)
A day after disappointment with the European Central Bank’s stimulus plan and fear of rising U.S. interest rates sent the S&P 500 down by 1.4%, a stronger-than-expected November employment report caused quite a rebound Friday.
Chipotle just warned its sales are tanking right now (Business Insider)
Chipotle just warned that its sales are tanking.
Traders Caught Wrong-Footed With Fund Flows Before ECB Meeting (Bloomberg)
Global investors flocked to stock and bond funds in the week before the European Central Bank delivered a smaller-than-expected stimulus package, spurring hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
Bull market to stampede through 2016, Deutsche Bank predicts (Market Watch)
The U.S. stock market’s six-year bull run will extend into 2016, say Deutsche Bank analysts, who predict the S&P 500 will rally by double digits over the year.
America used to build things (Business Insider)
We used to build things in America.
Kinder Morgan to Review Dividend to Keep Investment Grade Rating (Bloomberg)
Kinder Morgan Inc., the weakest pipeline operator in the S&P 500 this year, may divert cash from dividend payouts as the worst oil-market collapse in a generation threatens its investment-grade rating. The company’s shares plunged 13 percent to an all-time low.
GoPro stock spirals to new all-time low (Market Watch)
Shares of GoPro Inc. stumbled to a new low on Friday after a disappointing outlook from key supplier Ambarella Inc. led analysts to cut quarterly revenue estimates for the maker of action cameras.
Yahoo board in final talks on fate of core business (Business Insider)
Yahoo Inc's <YHOO.O> board of directors on Friday is in the third and final day of meetings that could decide the future of one of Silicon Valley's most prominent but troubled companies.
One option on the table for the nine board members is whether to sell Yahoo's core business, which includes Mail, its sports sites, and advertising technology.
Samsungs $548 Million Check to Apple Is No Sign of Surrender (Bloomberg)
Samsung Electronics Co. agreed to pay Apple Inc. the $548 million a court ordered but that doesn’t mean they’ve come to a final resolution of their long-running patent battle over smartphones.
Samsung said in a court filing Thursday that it’s only paying the money because an appeals court refused to block a judgment ordering it to pay. The South Korean device maker said it will pursue reimbursement for at least some of the money if the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invalidates the patents and if the U.S. Supreme Court takes up its request for review.
Gold futures score first weekly gain in 7 weeks (Market Watch)
Gold futures rallied on Friday to tally their first weekly gain in seven weeks, as monthly data on U.S. employment showed strong growth, but didn’t provide any real surprises.
Goldman thinks oil prices could fall another 50% as the market spends another year sorting itself out (Business Insider)
The oil market is out of whack and Goldman Sachs doesn't see this situation sorting itself out for another year.
Big Oil Bracing for New Fight to Keep Government Payments Hidden (Bloomberg)
Big energy companies are bracing for the next round in their fight to stop U.S. regulators from making them reveal what they pay foreign governments for rights to extract oil, gas and minerals.
The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to vote Dec. 11 on a revised proposal for addressing a Dodd-Frank Act requirement that firms whose shares trade in the U.S. publicly report payments such as taxes, royalties and other fees, according to a notice posted Friday.
The Economy Is Growing, but Not Fixed Yet (NY Times)
The economy is performing almost exactly as the people paid to predict these things thought it would.
This makes the Federal Reserve’s decision on Dec. 16 an easy one: It will most likely raise its target for interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, away from the near-zero level where it has been lodged for seven years.
Oil rig count falls for 3rd straight week (Business Insider)
The US oil rig count fell by 10 to 545 last week, for a third period in a row, according to oil driller Baker Hughes.
BTG's $1.6 Billion Lifeline: Is It a Silver Bullet or Band-Aid? (Bloomberg)
Grupo BTG Pactual SA, the Brazilian bank whose CEO was arrested as part of a sweeping corruption scandal, got a lifeline Friday after the country’s privately backed deposit-guarantee fund gave it a 6 billion-real ($1.6 billion) credit line. Investors are left wondering if it’s a silver bullet or a Band-Aid.
SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts – Up, Up and Away (Jesee's Cafe Americain)
Now I am really glad that I shed all my index shorts and VIX longs yesterday.
Charting the Markets: ECB Hangover Ahead of U.S. Jobs Report (Bloomberg)
It's a case of the morning after the night before or, in this case, after theEuropean Central Bank meeting.
The recent rise and fall of the AR-15 (CNN)
Sales of the kinds of military-style rifles used in San Bernardino surged in 2013 following the Aurora and Newtown mass shootings. Today demand for them has waned, even as overall gun sales are soaring.
Politics
One of my 'real dreams' is to convince Apple to move its jobs to the US (Business Insider)
Real-estate mogul Donald Trump said Thursday night that one of his "real dreams" for the US is for Apple and companies like it to shift their manufacturing operations to the US.
The Republican presidential front-runner made the comments during a wide-ranging interview while promoting his campaign book, "Crippled America," at his Trump Tower headquarters.
Technology
This is what happens when an AI system learns to talk (Quartz)
Linguists and scientists have debated for decades whether humans are born with an innate ability for language, or whether we simply learn it from the examples of parents and peers.A new paper published Nov. 11 in PLOS ONE may hold a clue to the answer.
Robots Could Learn The Same Way Babies Do (Popular Science)
Babies learn by touching things, testing them out, playing around, and watching what adults do. But robots learn only when developers write some lines of code, or when someone manually models a desired movement on the robot. So computer scientists at the University of Washington paired up with the university's developmental psychologists to make teaching baby bots a little more like teaching baby humans. The team published their approach in PLOS One this past month.
Health and Life Sciences
Converted stem cells may one day restore vision (Futurity)
Researchers have found a way to efficiently convert human stem cells into a nerve cell critical for vision, which could open a path to restoring sight lost to disease.
Brain Study Seeks Roots of Suicide (Scientific American)
Suicide is a puzzle. Fewer than 10% of people with depression attempt suicide, and about 10% of those who kill themselves were never diagnosed with any mental-health condition.
Now, a study is trying to determine what happens in the brain when a person attempts suicide, and what sets such people apart. The results could help researchers to understand whether suicide is driven by certain brain biology — and is not just a symptom of a recognized mental disorder.
Life on the Home Planet
Women Belong in Combat. And in the Draft. (Bloomberg View)
The Pentagon struck a blow for both military preparedness and sex equality Thursday by opening all combat jobs to women. Allowing female troops who meet the same standards as men to fight the enemy improves a nation's ability to protect itself and its foreign interests.
