Financial Markets and Economy
Here’s why market bears are now in control (Market Watch)
Short sellers today are happier than a grizzly that has spotted a slow, overweight hiker.
It’s punishment time for stock-market bulls, who may be wondering if we could just skip ahead to 2017, given how this year is going so far.
OPEC Crude Oil Plunges Below $30 for First Time Since 2004 (Bloomberg)
The price of crude sold by OPEC members slid below $30 a barrel, the lowest level in almost 12 years, as turmoil in Chinese markets deepened the global commodities rout.
Apple shares are getting whacked again (Business Insider)
Stocks around the world are getting slammed on Thursday and so is the world's biggest company.
Oil Prices Decline More Than 5 Percent as Stockpiles Increase (NY Times)
Oil prices plunged again on Wednesday by more than 5 percent as investors paid more attention to signs that global stockpiles are growing than to increasing instability in the Middle East and North Africa.
The decline in the global Brent oil benchmark price to below $35 a barrel, the lowest level since the depths of the 2008-9 economic downturn and a decline of nearly two-thirds since summer 2014, helped push stock markets lower.
With smartphone sales booming, Huawei eyes U.S. market (Market Watch)
Huawei Technologies Co. 002502, +1.59% boasted of dramatic gains in the global smartphone market as it launched a new flagship handset that signals its ambitions in the lucrative U.S. market.
The Chinese company’s telecom networking equipment for carriers, such as routers and switches, has effectively been banned in the U.S. because of national security concerns. But Huawei’s other businesses such as consumer products like smartphones aren’t blocked at all.
Global Markets at the Beginning of a Crisis, George Soros Says (Bloomberg)
Global markets are facing a crisis and investors need to be very cautious, billionaire George Soros told an economic forum in Sri Lanka on Thursday.
China is struggling to find a new growth model and its currency devaluation is transferring problems to the rest of the world, Soros said in Colombo. A return to positive interest rates is a challenge for the developing world, he said, adding that the current environment has similarities to 2008.
Stocks are getting crushed (Business Insider)
Stocks are getting slammed for the third time this week as more chaos in China's stock market has given investors more than enough to worry about.
China Turmoil Has Traders Cutting Odds of Fed Rate Move by April (Bloomberg)
The resurgence of Chinese stock-market turmoil in 2016 has investors increasingly betting that Federal Reserve officials will lose some of their resolve and delay future interest-rate boosts.
You have to go back to the 1930's to find a worse commodities rout (Business Insider)
Investors in commodities have been on a huge losing streak in the past few years.
Deutsche Bank Capital Concerns Fade as Barclays Upgrades Stock (Bloomberg)
Deutsche Bank AG co-Chief Executive Officer John Cryan is convincing some analysts that he can lift the companys capital levels without a share sale.
Poundland is taking a dive (Business Insider)
Sometimes there's just no pleasing people.
Wall Street Promotion Logjam Endures With Fleming Latest to Exit (Bloomberg)
Morgan Stanley is demonstrating how rising to the top of a big U.S. bank is getting even harder, as chief executive officers stay on after guiding their firms through the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Mitsubishi to close U.S. auto plant after failing to find buyer (Business Insider)
Mitsubishi Motors said on Thursday it would close its sole production plant in the United States as the Japanese automaker cuts losses on dwindling sales in North America and a strong U.S. dollar, which has stymied returns.
Mitsubishi Motors confirmed a report in Japan's Nikkei newspaper on Thursday, which said that the automaker was unable to find a buyer for its factory in Normal, Illinois, and take on its workers.
For Valeant's Ailing Chief Executive, It Wouldn't Pay to Leave (Bloomberg)
If Michael Pearson leaves Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. now, it would be without a parachute.
Crude Oil Is Having Its Worst-Ever Start to the Year: Chart (Bloomberg)
As if the 30 percent drop in 2015 wasnt bad enough, crude oil is having its worst ever start to the year since trading began in New York three decades ago.
Charting the Markets: China's Plunge Again Rattles Global Markets (Bloomberg)
Chinese stocks sink by the 7% daily limit for a second time this week, crude tumbles to a 12-year low and U.S. Treasuries rise for a sixth day.
U.K. Stocks Drop Second Day as Miners Head for Lowest Since 2004 (Bloomberg)
The rout in global mining shares is sending Britains commodity producers toward their lowest levels in more than a decade, leading losses in the national benchmark gauge.
U.S. Index Futures Tumble as China Stocks Halted After 7% Rout (Bloomberg)
U.S. stock-index futures sank, extending declines after a China-led rout continued to spread to equities around the globe.
Politics
Bernie's Bad Break (Bloomberg View)
In some quarters of the Democratic Party, apparently, it's no longer enough to call for the breakup of the big banks: You have to pledge to do it faster than your rivals. That may explain Bernie Sanders's promise on Tuesday to "break 'em up" within his first year in office.
This is hardly a model of thoughtful policy making. For one, the government is not the best judge of how financial institutions could be efficiently divided.
Trump-Cruz will be the Republican presidential ticket (Market Watch)
In my 2016 predictions column, I said the bull market in U.S. stocks would end, oil would fall into the $20s, and the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates three or four times.
But what got the most attention was my claim that real estate magnate Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz would be the Republican Party’s presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
Can Hillary Outflank Bernie on Wall Street Reform? (The Atlantic)
If there’s one issue in the Democratic presidential primary on which Bernie Sanders’s advantage over Hillary Clinton should be clear-cut, it is Wall Street reform.
The Vermont senator has made his name on assailing the monied interests, calling for breaking up big banks and blaming corporate corruption and greed for the nation’s widening gap between the rich and the poor. And Clinton is vulnerable on the issue. She and her husband have been famously cozy with Wall Street barons, first during Bill’s business-friendly administration and then during Hillary’s eight years representing New York in the Senate.
Technology
Big Idea: Killer Robots Are Coming (Popular Science)
In August, Stewart Russell, a computer scientist at University of California at Berkeley, authored an open letter calling for the ban of “lethal autonomous weapons.” To those outside the military-industrial complex, this could seem a bit premature, sort of like calling for a ban on Star Trek phasers or the Death Star. Reality says otherwise.
Carmakers show off tech innovations at CES (LA Times)
Speed and cars go hand in hand, whether you're talking acceleration, tight turns in the corners or how high the speedometer will go.
Speed and car companies? Not so much.
Health and Life Sciences
Diet and Exercise Benefit People With Heart Failure (Medicine Net Daily)
Lifestyle changes that include a healthy diet and regular exercise appear to improve heart function and exercise capacity in people with a particular form of heart failure, a new study reports.
Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF) is a form of heart failure that's on the rise. It most often affects overweight and obese older women. This type of heart failure leads to fatigue and shortness of breath during activities, which can affect the ability to exercise, according to the study authors.
Are diet drinks a no-go? (BBC)
It's rare in life to have your cake and eat it. But are low-calorie sweeteners the guilt-free way to be naughty?
Nobody is going to claim that regularly drinking full-sugar pop is good for you with a 500ml bottle of cola containing around 200 calories.
Life on the Home Planet
The $2.4 Billion Plan to Water California by Draining the Mojave (Wired)
Scott Slater has a plan. It is not a popular plan, but he wants to pump 814 billion gallons of water from under the Mojave desert to Los Angeles and other drought-stricken communities in southern California, and make more than $2 billion doing so.
“Yes, it’s quite a lot of money,” Slater, the 57-year-old chief executive of Cadiz Inc, says as he stands in front of a scale model of the project in the foyer of the company’s office on the 28th and top floor of a LA city centre office block.
Food Crisis Looming in Ethiopia After Worst Drought in 50 Years (Bloomberg)
Tekle Birhan clutched her malnourished infant son as she waited to get a food supplement and treatment at an Ethiopian health clinic in early December. It was their third trip in as many months to the facility, located about an hour’s walk from her family farm that has seen almost no rain since July.
