Financial Markets and Economy
U.S. Stocks Sink in Worst Week Since 2011 as China Revives Angst (Bloomberg)
Volatility erupted anew in financial markets as a fresh year brought jarring swings, anxiety about global growth and the worst start on record for equities both in the U.S. and in the world.
One Market Prediction Is Sure: Wall Street Will Be Wrong (NY Times)
The stock market ended 2015 with a whimper and began the new year with a shudder. Even before Wall Street showed up for business on Monday morning, stocks fell 7 percent in China, and the turmoil that started in Asian markets cascaded around the world.
2015: A Merger Bonanza (The Atlantic)
In the last 100-odd years, there have been six waves of rapid merger activity in the U.S. At the turn of the 20th century, horizontal mergers, which united companies in the same industry (such as steel or oil) and formed monopolies, were common. Another wave, this one in the 1960s, saw companies trying to diversify, with mergers that created conglomerates such as General Electric, which had businesses ranging from manufacturing equipment, to television, and even financial services. In the 1990s, deregulation and globalization led to another wave, one that was heavily concentrated in the banking and telecommunications industries.
China market tsar in spotlight amid stock market turmoil (Business Insider)
Xiao Gang, China's stock market tsar, once remarked that the only thing he'd done right in life was marry his wife.
No doubt the self-effacing Xiao, chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), has done many other things right. Managing the stock market, though, might not be a high point of his career.
World's Richest Lose $194 Billion In First Trading Week of 2016 (Bloomberg)
The worlds 400 richest people lost almost $194 billion this week as world stock marketsbegan the year with a shudder on poor economic data in China and falling oil prices.
The Muted Delight of the Forthcoming Recession (Economic Prism)
“The worst-ever start to a year for Chinese shares triggered a trading halt in more than $7 trillion of equities, futures and options, putting the nation’s new market circuit breakers to the test on their first day.
Achieving Distinctive Trading Returns by Trading Distinctively (Trader Feed)
How are you going to succeed?
After all, the WalMarts of the world can buy in greater bulk and negotiate better prices with food companies than you could. You're not going to beat them on price.
China’s Hunger for Commodities Wanes, and Pain Spreads Among Producers (NY Times)
Chile is expanding its largest open-pit copper mine below the northern desert to dig up 1.7 billion additional tons of minerals, even as metal prices plummet around the globe.
Dollar's Fate Hangs on Whether Jobs Gains Outweigh China for Fed (Bloomberg)
For dollar bulls, policy makers in China navigating currency and stock market turmoil may compete with U.S. economic performance for attention from the Federal Reserve.
Bad Week for U.S. Stocks Dims Outlook (Wall Street Journal)
The Dow industrials tumbled more than 1,000 points this week, marking the worst first five days of any year, as volatility across the globe rattled investors.
Traders said they are bracing for further big swings in the weeks to come.
Shanghai Gold Exchange Year End Gold Withdrawal Numbers (Jesse's Cafe Americain)
As of the end of the year the Shanghai Exchange has delivereed 2,596 tonnes of gold bullion.
Pound Traders Expecting Passive BOE Look to China for Impetus (Bloomberg)
When Bank of England policy makers meet in London to set monetary policy next week, pound traders may still be taking their cue from events about 5,000 miles away.
Israel's Best-Performing Tech Stock Hasnt Sold a Single Product (Bloomberg)
Occupying a small, second-floor space in the same office park as 3D printing giant Stratasys, a tiny Israeli upstart is trying to sell investors on a future in which physical objects materialize with the press of a button. Nano Dimension is nowhere near achieving that goal, yet somehow has become Israel’s best-performing technology stock in 2015.
Bond Traders' Confidence in Fed Path Weakens After Chaotic Week (Bloomberg)
Treasuries surged to start the year as turmoil in China’s financial markets damped global risk appetite and emboldened bets that the Federal Reserve will fail to lift interest rates in 2016 as much as policy makers envision.
Politics
Muslim woman says Trump backers are supporting 'hateful rhetoric' (Reuters)
A U.S. Muslim woman who was ejected from a Donald Trump rally in South Carolina while engaging in a silent protest said on Saturday she wanted to make the Republican presidential candidate's backers recognize they are supporting "hateful rhetoric."
A Century of Political Spin (Wall Street Journal)
As the 2016 election starts for real next month, one complaint that unites Americans left and right—and helps to explain the rise of outsiders like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders—is that our political process has become shallow and scripted, manipulated at every turn. We gripe about the suffocating presence of “spin”: the policies tested by pollsters and focus groups, the slogans and laugh lines penned by speechwriters, the staged photo ops and town-hall meetings. To find examples of a nobler, more authentic politics, we can only look to the past: the irrepressible Theodore Roosevelt, the austereCalvin Coolidge, the jaunty Franklin Roosevelt, the unrehearsed Harry Truman, the unprepossessing Dwight Eisenhower.
Technology
The Triumph of Email? (The Atlantic)
Email, ughhhh. There is too much of it, and the wrong kind of it, from the wrong people. When people aren’t hating their inboxes out loud, they are quietly emailing to say that they’re sorry for replying so late, and for all the typos, and for missing your earlier note, and for forgetting to turn off auto-reply, and for sending this from their mobile device, and for writing too long, and for bothering you at all.
Health and Life Sciences
Creative people’s brains really do work differently (Quartz)
What makes highly creative people different from the rest of us? In the 1960s, psychologist and creativity researcher Frank X. Barron set about finding out. Barron conducted a series of experiments on some of his generation’s most renowned thinkers in an attempt to isolate the unique spark of creative genius.
Heart doctors are listening for clues to the future of their stethoscopes (Washington Post)
The stethoscope is having a crossroads moment. Perhaps more than at any time in its two-century history, this ubiquitous tool of the medical profession is at the center of debate over how medicine should be practiced.
Life on the Home Planet
Tensions High on Korean Border as North Raises Threat of War (Bloomberg)
Tensions remained high on the fortified border dividing North and South Korea as the resumption of propaganda broadcasts prompted Pyongyang to raise the risk of war, overshadowing diplomatic efforts to respond to North Korea’s surprise nuclear test.
