Financial Markets and Economy
Oil Prices Stopped Falling at $40 a Barrel for Chinese Consumers (Bloomberg)
For consumers in China, the benefit of oils crash stops at $40 a barrel.
JPMorgan shuffles senior ranks at European investment bank (Business Insider)
JPMorgan <JPM.N> has bolstered the senior management team at its European investment bank as it seeks to increase its advisory business amid a buoyant M&A market, according to a memo seen by Reuters on Monday.
The Wall Street bank, which announced forecast-beating quarterly profits last week, has created three new vice chair roles and promoted other senior bankers to larger roles within the investment banking business.
Luxury stocks like LVMH, Burberry poised to climb 20% this year, Goldman Sachs says (Market Watch)
A double-digit jump in share prices looks to be in store for the European luxury-goods sector over the next year, says Goldman Sachs, but the investment bank is still cautioning that sales are set to slow down in 2016.
“We see 20% upside over 12 months for the luxury sector,” after underperforming the Stoxx Europe 600 index SXXP, -0.36% and following a recent sell-off, said Goldman analysts William Hutchings and Isabel Zhang Zhang, in a Monday note.
Asian Stocks Set for More Losses as Traders Brace for China Data (Bloomberg)
Asian markets shifted into wait-and-see mode, as index futures signaled a mixed day for the region’s stocks, while contracts on copper climbed ahead of a swathe of Chinese economic data. U.S. oil traded around $29 a barrel.
'None of us were as smart as we thought we were' (Business Insider)
It wasn't that long ago that investors couldn't get enough of biotechnology stocks. Now it seems as if they can't get out of the sector fast enough.
J.P. Morgan goes totally bearish on oil, slashes 2016 crude forecast to $31.50 (Market Watch)
In the latest string of oil-forecast cuts, J.P. Morgan just became the most bearish among major banks on Wall Street.
In a report published on Monday, the bank’s commodity research team led by David Martin, dramatically slashed its outlook for both crude CLG6, -1.73% and BrentLCOH6, -0.69% saying the oversupply in the market will keep prices from bouncing back until late this year. Its new forecast calls for crude to average $31.50 a barrel in 2016, down from $48.88 expected previously, and for Brent to trade around $31.25 a barrel, down from $51.50.
How To Be Your Own Trading Coach (Trader Feed)
Your best trades are your role models. By reviewing your best trades, you ground yourself in your best practices. If you are mindful of your best practices–if you know how you make money–you're more likely to be consistent in drawing upon those best practices.
Your worst trades are role models also, but in a reverse way. By reviewing your worst trades, you become mindful of the mistakes you make and the patterns of your poor trading. It is much easier to interrupt our negative patterns if we're aware of them in the first place.
Bidders, Please Be Rational: China Land Hunt Sparks Price Surge (Bloomberg)
In a tower with a golden facade that the local government uses as a venue for land auctions near Shanghai’s business district, a dozen Chinese developers were involved in a frenzied bidding war in October. Within 25 minutes, they pushed the price of a plot of land an hour’s drive from the city center almost 50 percent higher.
For HSBC investors, HQ debate eclipsed by identity issue (Business Insider)
As HSBC <HSBA.L> prepares to decide which country it should call home, a growing number of its investors want the bank to address a bigger question: what does it really want to be?
HSBC's board is due to meet later this month and is expected to discuss whether it should quit its UK headquarters and shift overseas, with Hong Kong seen as the most likely alternative.
This chart shows how long it could take Iran to get its oil production up to speed (Market Watch)
Oil prices sputtered along on Monday, as the beaten-down commodity market began adjusting to the harsh new reality of Iran’s inclusion in the global oil production fold.
Muting the Global Dialogue in Davos (NY Times)
The invitation was sent. And then, two weeks later, revoked.
The World Economic Forum, which on Wednesday begins its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, brings together political and business leaders to discuss the world’s most pressing problems. In years past, Vladimir V. Putin has attended. So has Bill Gates. This year, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will attend.
Rio Tinto Fourth-Quarter Iron Output Jumps 10%, Misses Estimates (Bloomberg)
Rio Tinto Groups fourth-quarter iron ore production surged 10 percent as the second-largest exporter pushed ahead with a strategy of boosting cargoes into an oversupplied market to increase market share.
Oil output fell in December, but don't expect prices to rise any time soon (Business Insider)
OPEC, the organisation for oil producing nations, pumped out less oil in December, but that doesn't mean that prices are going to start to rise again anytime soon.
OPEC dropped its monthly report on the state of the oil industry on Monday morning, which showed that the world's oil exporters produced 32.2 million barrels per day in December, down around 200,000 barrels from November.
China seen posting slowest economic growth in 25 years as policy risks grow (Reuters)
China is expected to report its weakest quarterly economic growth in nearly seven years on Tuesday, adding pressure on policymakers to take bolder steps to ward off fears of a sharper slowdown that are jolting global financial markets.
Chinese leaders have been struggling to put a floor under the economy, even as a fresh plunge in its stock markets and yuan currency CNY=CFXS have stoked worries from Washington to Wellington that conditions may be rapidly deteriorating.
No Calm in Sight as Volatility Surges From Stocks to Currencies (Bloomberg)
The rout that swept through asset classes, taking oil below $30 a barrel and European and Asian stocks into bear markets, shows no signs of abating.
Reshaping the Labor Landscape (Project Syndicate)
As the global economy changes at an ever-quickening pace, the labor market in many countries is not merely struggling to keep up, but seems to have broken down in important ways. Fortunately, four epochal forces are reshaping the world of work, helping to resolve contradictions and overcome dysfunction in the labor market.
Here's the smartest way to invest in stocks if you're convinced the market will keep crashing (Business Insider)
Financial markets have started 2016 in turmoil, with a particularly disastrous Friday seeing US stocks sharply down.
Fortunately for investors, there's a smart, time-tested way to keep investing even in the face of a crash, as long as you have a good long-term perspective.
Economists Can Tell You What You Should Want (Bloomberg View)
At its best, economics is the study of what makes people better off, and how they can have more of it. To be effective, though, economists may have to tackle a tougher question: what "better off"' really means.
For much of the past several decades, mainstream economics operated on the ambitious assumption that humans as a whole were perfectly rational, and would hence always do what was in their aggregate best interest. More recently, behavioral economists have made a lot of progress in disabusing their colleagues of that notion, as Richard Thaler describes in his book "Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics." The result has been a lot of useful policies that take into account people's irrational biases.
Politics
The Religious Right's Donald Trump Dilemma (The Atlantic)
There were many unbelievable moments over the course of Donald Trump’s speech on Monday at Liberty University, the evangelical college founded by the late Jerry Falwell.
There was his citation of the Bible: “Two Corinthians 3-17, that's the whole ball game. … Is that the one? Is that the one you like? I think that's the one you like.”
Ted Cruz: John F. Kennedy Would Be A Cruz Republican Today (Think Progress)
Just days after attacking the values of New Yorkers, GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) traveled to New England on Sunday and attempted to claim that he was heir to the mantle of one of the nation’s most beloved presidents, Democrat John F. Kennedy.
“JFK campaigned on tax cuts, limiting government and standing up and defeating Soviet communists,” he told a New Hampshire audience. “JFK would be a Republican today. He stood for religious liberty, and he would be tarred and feathered by the modern Democratic Party.”
Technology
Mini ‘force fields’ control tiny robot soldiers (Futurity)
Researchers are testing a way to control a single microbot that operates as part of a group. The robots are too small for batteries, so instead magnetic fields allow them to move independently while collaborating with a team.
The robots tested are magnetic disks about 2 millimeters in diameter—about twice the size of a pinhead—that slide across a surface. The goal is to create microbots that are around 250 microns in diameter, or roughly the size of a dust mite.
This Silicon Chip Will Monitor Your Brain and Dissolve in Your Body (Gizmodo)
Well folks, we’ve finally arrived at the long-anticipated future of brain-implantable chips. How many hundreds of science fiction novels have led us to this moment? No matter: the chips are here, and we’re getting a good look at ‘em today thanks to a study just out inNature.
Now, before you start panicking about government mind control, know that these chips were built with a benevolent purpose: helping doctors to monitor patients who recently suffered traumatic brain injury or underwent brain surgery.
Health and LIfe Sciences
Inside The Two Moonshots To Cure Cancer (Fast Company)
Key players agree that cancer cures are within reach. Two major, sometimes overlapping, efforts are underway—one public and one private.
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama announced a "moonshot" program to cure cancer. Obama named Vice President Joe Biden, whose son Beau died from brain cancer last year, to lead the government effort, which could even have bipartisan appeal. In 2015, House Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which raises funding and lowers barriers for audacious medical research.
New test kits in Brazil for Zika virus (BBC)
The Brazilian Health ministry says it's developed new testing kits to rapidly identify the presence of three viruses – Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya – all carried by the same mosquito.
Health Minister Marcelo Castro said priority for testing would be given to pregnant women.
Brazil has the largest known outbreak of Zika, which has been linked to a sharp spike in birth defects.
Life on the Home Planet
Argentina snake invasion forces beach closures (Phys)
An invasion of poisonous snakes washed downriver in recent floods forced authorities to close beaches to summer holidaymakers in northern Argentina, officials said Monday.
Floodwaters in the Rio Plata and Rio Parana carried a species of water lily and with it countless crawling, slithering creatures, south to beaches at the mouths of those rivers near Buenos Aires.
Synthetic biologist discusses the ethics of designing life to save nature (Venture Beat)
Synthetic life — or the design of nature, animals, and other living creatures — is not so far away. It’s not necessarily a new subject, but the degree of what’s possible in the industrialization of nature is starting to dawn on some leading thinkers in the field, according to Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, a designer, writer, and artist on the subject of synthetic biology, in a talk at the DLD tech conference in Munich.
