Financial Markets and Economy
How a Fed Hike Could Hurt Your Credit Card Debt (Bloomberg)
Any rise in the federal funds rate will flow into most credit card annual percentage rates.
High-yield risks shed doubts on strength of U.S. economy (Business Insider)
The selloff in the bellwether high risk corporate debt market is spreading fears that the U.S. economy is on less sound footing than investors thought.
On Monday, the widely-traded iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF – essentially a basket of junk debt -expanded its losses for the year to 12 percent. A competitor product, the SPDR Barclays High Yield Bond ETF, expanded its losses for the year to 13.4 percent.
Have iPhone Sales Peaked? Analysts Predict a Slump Ahead (Bloomberg)
Is Apple Inc.’s iPhone finally reaching its peak? In the past few weeks, a slew of analysts have predicted that sales of Apple’s best-selling product may slump in 2016, based in part on supply chain issues and partly on weaker demand, especially from saturated developed markets.
It is going to be even worse than we thought on Wall Street (Business Insider)
Some of Wall Street's most senior bankers lined up last week to issue a grim forecast: trading revenues in the last three months of the year would be down by double-digits.
Those predictions are already out of date.
Australian Bonds Follow Treasury Drop on Fed as Crude Rebounds (Bloomberg)
Oil’s failure to hold below $35 a barrel was a shot in the arm for equities, with Australian stocks rallying with U.S. index futures as the countdown to the Federal Reserve’s anticipated interest-rate hike begins in earnest. Bonds in the region retreated.
Toshiba to cut up to 7,000 jobs: Nikkei (Business Insider)
Toshiba Corp is looking to cut up to 7,000 jobs, as it looks to streamline operations in the wake of an accounting scandal, the Nikkei business daily reported.
Most of the 6,000-7,000 job cuts will be in the company's lifestyle segment, which includes consumer appliances, the newspaper said.
Wal-Mart Could Be the Big Winner as Oil Drops Below $35 a Barrel (Bloomberg)
As oil tumbles below $35 a barrel for the first time since 2009, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is looking like one of the big winners.
FTSE WIPEOUT — Stock market hits 3-year low (Business Insider)
Britain's top stock market closed at its lowest level since December 2012 on Monday.
Boeing Boosts Dividend by 20%, Increases Buyback to $14 Billion (Bloomberg)
Boeing Co. boosted its quarterly dividend 20 percent and expanded a share-repurchase plan to $14 billion to enable investors to cash in on soaring airliner deliveries.
Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – Stille Nacht (Jesse's Cafe Americain)
FOMC meetings with an announcement on Wednesday at 2 PM.
Chinese Backpedal From U.S. IPO Market as Mainland Deals Surge (Bloomberg)
Initial public offerings by Chinese companies in the U.S. have plunged this year as new listings on the mainland skyrocketed.
Oil prices keep falling, and they’re taking down a lot of other stuff with them (Quartz)
Oil prices keep on falling. On Monday (Dec. 14), US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude briefly touched a new 2015 low, falling below $34 a barrel, and international benchmark Brent crossed $37 a barrel, a hair above its financial crisis-era low.
Junk Bond Misery Backs Fed Case for Gradual Rate Rise, No Delay (Bloomberg)
Junk bonds wont stop Janet Yellen from raising interest rates this week, but they may provide an added incentive for the Federal Reserve chair to communicate clearly that future tightening will come gradually and will signal confidence in the economy.
General Electric valuation hits lofty levels after stock surge (Yahoo! Finance)
General Electric Co (GE.N) shares are trading at their highest valuation in more than a decade, reversing discounts to other industrial rivals and adding pressure on the U.S. conglomerate to show it can drive profits in line with its newfound market premium. After a big run this year, GE shares sit at 20 times forward 12-months earnings projections, their highest level since 2005, according to Thomson Reuters data.
GoPro Tumbles Most in Six Weeks After Morgan Stanley Cuts Target (Bloomberg)
GoPro Inc. slumped the most in six weeks after Morgan Stanley cut its rating and price target on the stock, based on slower consumer pickup of drones and a later rollout of its next-generation action camera.
The Secret to Making Our Own Luck (Trader Feed)
This is an important post about luck and also an update of Flower's story. If you recall from the previous post, Flower was a young Maine Coon cat abandoned by her family and living on the streets of a neighborhood for 2-1/2 months. We went all out to find Flower a home. I posted to this blog; we put a listing on Craigslist; I networked with friends and colleagues; I asked them to network with their contacts.
Lockheed wins $1.09 billion contract for Patriot PAC-3 missiles (Business Insider)
Lockheed Martin Corp <LMT.N> has won a U.S. Army contract worth $1.09 billion to build PAC-3 missiles for the U.S. Army, South Korea, Qatar and Saudi Arabia for use in Raytheon Co's <RTN.N> Patriot missile defense system, the Pentagon said Monday.
Politics
Sixteen Questions for the GOP Debate (Bloomberg View)
Some free advice for the moderators.
Instead of just criticizing the presidential debate moderators after the fact, I've decided to suggest a few questions for them to ask on Tuesday night in Las Vegas. I don't know if the questions will be good for ratings, but I'd like to know the candidates' answers to them.
Trump is the most liberal Republican on economics since Nixon (Market Watch)
One presidential candidate wants to get rid of loopholes that help the “very rich” and “special interests.” He’s against foreign “sweatshops” that steal American jobs. He backs “prevailing wages” for U.S. positions filled by foreigners with special H-1B visas. And he says he’s the guy to rebuild America’s infrastructure, a job that could cost hundreds of billions of tax dollars.
Bernie Sanders? Nah. Try Donald Trump.
Technology
This robot hand will read your desires and swipe Tinder profiles for you (Mashable)
It’s easy for Tinder to become a robotic process. You spend four or five seconds looking at someone’s profile, and quickly decide to swipe left, swipe right and maybe swipe up. It’s repetitive and calculated, making it easy to become emotionally detached when you’re looking for a match.
Health and Life Sciences
How to pick the best painkiller (BBC)
Supermarket shelves are packed with different painkilling products, but do they all do the same thing? There are some simple ways consumers can check they are getting the right treatment and the best deal, Neal Patel, of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, says.
Nurofen, for example, contains 200 milligrams of ibuprofen per tablet.
How To Reduce And Deal With Holiday Stress (Forbes)
Even though songs such as 'Winter Wonderland' and 'Jingle Bells' can make the winter holiday season seem like a time for pervasive cheer and mirth, in actuality, holidays can bring stress, depression, and anxiety, which in turn can lead to physical problems such as weight gain and Holiday Heart Syndrome. But many people may be suffering in silence. After all we don?t have songs such as "Rudolph the Depressed Reindeer", "Santa Claus has Overeaten Again", or "Jingle Bell Stress" to raise awareness. So why may the holidays be stressful to you and what can you do about it?
Life on the Home Planet
Shanghai Warns People to Stay Indoors on Severe Air Pollution (Bloomberg)
Shanghai warned children and elderly to remain indoors and everyone else to avoid physical activity outdoors as air pollution levels worsened.
The city’s air was classified as “severely polluted,” the worst level of a 6-grade scale, as the air quality index hit 315 as of 6 a.m., the Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center said on its website.
Human's Sleep a Lot Less Than Any Other Primate (Gizmodo)
Forget studies that show that we are lazy, fried cheese-fed, cubicle dwellers. Or, at least forget the “lazy” part. Out of all the primates, humans distinguish themselves by getting the least amount of sleep.
