Financial Markets and Economy
Five Charts Show How Bad the Emerging-Stock Rout Really Is (Bloomberg)
Here's a technical analysis look at the current state of the selloff across developing markets.
Gold production has peaked at 3,155 tonnes (Business Insider)
The price of gold could rise substantially this year, as a supply crunch takes hold.
Global gold production is expected to fall 3% this year, according to a report by Thomson Reuters' GFMS metals research team, cited by the Financial Times.
That would end a seven-year streak of rising gold supplies, which peaked in 2015 at 3,155 tonnes.
What are China’s stocks really worth? No one knows for sure (Quartz)
Last Thursday (Jan. 14), the Shanghai Stock Exchange briefly fell below even the lowest point of last year’s rout. And yet by the day’s close, it was up by a neat 2%.
It is unlikely that such a miraculous turnaround came from a change in investor sentiment. More likely is the possibility that the government stepped in to force regulators and major funds to buy stocks and prop up the market, as it did last year.
Dollar stabilizes after Tokyo stocks pare losses (Market Watch)
The dollar strengthened against the yen during Asia trade Monday as investors sold the Japanese currency, walking away from its perceived safety after losses in Tokyo stocks narrowed.
Biggest Miners Not Blue Chips Anymore as Volatility Whips Stocks (Bloomberg)
They're some of the worlds biggest mining companies with operations spanning the globe, thousands of employees and decades of history. In the market, theyre being whipped around like the latest speculative hot stock.
The ruble is about to hit an all-time low (Business Insider)
The Russian ruble is getting crushed on Monday morning, and could hit its lowest level of all-time against the dollar as oil's continuing rout bites.
Worried about sub-$20 crude? Some sellers are already there (Yahoo! Finance)
An end to sanctions on Iran has driven global crude futures to 12-year lows and brought sub-$20-a-barrel oil in sight, although for some producers that is already a painful reality. Producers of certain crudes from Mexico, Venezuela, Canada and Iraq are bracing for worse to come as Iran – now free of international sanctions – prepares to offload hefty supplies of heavy sour grades onto export markets. This could act as an additional weight on benchmarks Brent (LCOc1) and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) (CLc1) futures, which have slumped roughly 20 percent since the start of the year to prices under $29 a barrel.
China Hits a Bump, or Two, on Road to an Internationalized Yuan (Bloomberg)
China's latest measures to shore up its currency and plug an outflow of capital risk setting back the long-held goal for an internationalized yuan.
Here's your complete preview of this 4-day week's big market-moving events (Business Insider)
Maybe it's a good thing that the US markets will be closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
In 2016, traders around the world have spent most of the markets' open hours dumping assets.
The S&P 500 is down 8% since the beginning of the year in what has been the worst first ten days of trading in history.
Shell's Earnings to Show Depth of Rout as Oil Extends Losses (Bloomberg)
Royal Dutch Shell Plc will this week reveal how deep the oil rout goes as energy companies reel from the worst market crisis in decades.
Shell will on Wednesday become the first major oil producer to announce annual earnings as it enters the final stages of its plan to buy BG Group Plc in the industry’s biggest deal in years. Investors will scrutinize those preliminary numbers for signs Europe’s largest oil company is doing enough to justify the acquisition as crude drops below $30 a barrel.
One of Africa's most promising economies is facing a fundamental problem (Business Insider)
Ethiopia, which has averaged double-digit GDP growth over the past decade and enjoys a close strategic relationship with the US, is one of Africa's emerging economic and political powers and an example of a country that's improved its economic fortunes without opening its political space.
A January 11 Bloomberg News story hints at a huge problem the country might be facing moving forward.
Casino Shares Decline as S&P Says It May Cut Debt Rating to Junk (Bloomberg)
Casino Guichard-Perrachon shares slumped after Standard and Poors said its considering cutting the French grocers debt rating to junk, citing concerns about leverage and a poor environment in Brazil and Asia.
The Unfair Opacity of Credit Cards Peddled to the Poor (The Atlantic)
When a company takes on the task of providing financial services to people overlooked by large banks, that would seem to be a good thing: Such customers need bank accounts, debit cards, and credit just like everyone else.
In 2013, nearly 10 million American households didn’t have any interaction with a bank, and nearly 25 million households had bank accounts but used alternative financing options (such as prepaid debit cards, alternative credit cards, or payday loans) to make ends meet.
What Investors Need to Know About Entering Iran's Stock Market (Bloomberg)
One of the world’s hardest-to-enter stock markets just became more accessible to international investors.
As financial sanctions are eased against Iran, foreigners can enter a bourse in Tehran with almost as many listed companies as Istanbul. Inflows may reach as much as $1 billion after six to eight months, estimated Reza Soltanzadeh, a founding partner at ACL Assets Management, an investment firm that focuses on Iran.
Oil Bears Boost Short Interest on Sembcorp Industries to Record (Bloomberg)
Bearish bets against Sembcorp Industries Ltd. are at the highest level ever as investors speculate the stock has further to plunge with slumping oil prices continuing to pressure the offshore rig industry.
Oil Bears Boost Short Interest on Sembcorp Industries to Record (Bloomberg)
Bearish bets against Sembcorp Industries Ltd. are at the highest level ever as investors speculate the stock has further to plunge with slumping oil prices continuing to pressure the offshore rig industry.
Emerging Stocks Drop to Six-Year Low Amid Oil Slump; Yuan Gains (Bloomberg)
Emerging-market stocks fell to the lowest level since 2009 as concern about faltering global economic growth and the slump in oil prices sapped risk appetite. Chinas offshore yuan gained.
Money Management in Trading: Gaining the Upper Hand by Playing Your Hand Correctly (Trader Feed)
It's easy to become so caught up in short-term market action that we fail to pace ourselves through the market year. Many times we make poor decisions, not because we lack effort or discipline, but simply because we've depleted our resources and no longer have the concentration and energy level to properly identify and pursue opportunity.
Russia's Two Oil Giants Diverge in Bond Market Amid Sub-$30 Oil (Bloomberg)
They’re both Russian, they’re both oil giants and they’re both grappling with the lowest crude prices in more than a decade. Yet for some investors, the similarities between Rosneft OJSC and Lukoil PJSC end there.
Hedge Fund Bets Signal There's More Pain Ahead for Commodities (Bloomberg)
The commodity meltdown that pushed oil to a 12-year low and copper to the cheapest since 2009 isnt over yet. At least, thats how hedge funds see it.
Dollar Pegs Seen Bending While Reserves Keep Them From Breaking (Bloomberg)
Countries with currencies pegged to the dollar are coming under increasing attacks by traders who bet that it has become too expensive for policy makers to continue defending exchange rates amid a soaring greenback and a collapse in commodities prices.
Politics
Bernie Sanders unloads on Hillary Clinton for ties to 'corrupt' finance system (Business Insider)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) took a shot at Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during the Sunday-night presidential debate when asked about the contrasts between himself and Clinton on dealing with Wall Street.
"The first difference is I don't take money from big banks. I don't get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs," Sanders jabbed.
The burn generated light claps and at least one boo.
The U.K. Can Survive a Trump Visit (Bloomberg View)
Surely the British Parliament has a better way to spend three hours.
On Monday, MPs will debate the merits of a petition signed by more than 500,000 Britons demanding that the government block Donald Trump from setting foot on their sceptered isle. It might be the worst idea since London Mayor Boris Johnson decided to ride a zipline during the 2012 Olympics — and to his credit, Prime Minister David Cameron’s government has declared there’s no chance of it happening.
Hillary Clinton widens lead over Bernie Sanders, poll finds (Market Watch)
Hillary Clinton has widened her lead to 25 percentage points in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.
The former secretary of state leads Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders 59% to 34%, a slightly larger margin than the 19-point gap in December.
Technology
When Good Drones Go Bad (Wired)
Late in the summer of 2014, surveillance footage of Syria’s Tabqa air base showed up on YouTube. That it was taken by ISIS forces is unremarkable. That it was shot with a DJI Phantom FC40—a popular consumer drone at the time, the kind you might have found under the Christmas tree—certainly was.
Robots, automation and AI will replace 5 million human jobs by 2020 (Business Insider)
Significant technological advances have reshaped society as we know it.
However, the World Economic Forum warned that while this is pushing us into "the fourth industrial revolution" and is transforming the labour markets beyond all recognition from decades ago, it will lead to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020.
Health and Life Sciences
How Sleep Quality May Be Tied To What We Eat (Forbes)
As more and more studies are showing, the old saying “you are what you eat” may need an addendum: “you sleep how you eat.” A small new study from Columbia University Medical Center finds that over just a few nights, diet can make a difference in sleep quality: People who ate higher-fat, lower fiber diets were more likely to sleep poorly that night than when they ate a healthier diet. They were in a sleep lab, of course, and not in their natural habitats. But if the results are applicable to us at home, too – and it’s likely that they are – then a new tenet of sleep hygiene might be not to have a lot of fatty food before we go to sleep.
How Can I "See" Memories? (Scientific American
What you are describing is termed mental imagery, or the ability to create a mental picture of a person, place or experience without any external cues or stimuli. People differ greatly in the extent to which their recollections are visual.
Constructing a mental image relies on coordinating several different processes in the brain. The hippocampus, long regarded as the main storage site for memories of complex events, has recently—and perhaps surprisingly—been found to be important for imagining new or fictitious events.
Life on the Home Planet
Car bomb in Yemeni port city kills four, injures others: witnesses (Reuters)
Four people were killed and several others injured on Sunday when a suicide car bomb exploded outside the home of the director of security for the southern Yemeni port city of Aden, eyewitnesses and medics said.
The four men killed were guards for Brigadier General Shalal Ali Shayyeh, who survived a car bomb attack on his convoy on Jan. 4 amid an escalating wave of assassinations against security forces in the city.
