Financial Markets and Economy
Boeing says China and cheap oil haven't hurt demand as its stock gets pummeled (Business Insider)
Boeing stock closed down 9% on Wednesday after the company announced that its projected 2016 revenue of $93 to $95 billion will miss analyst expectations of $97.3 billion.
Shares of the airplane maker took a beating thanks to concerns that a slowdown in the global economy and cheap oil would stifle future growth.
Apple’s Buybacks: Still iDiotic (iBankCoin)
Last August during the China meltdown Apple CEO Tim Cook skirted SEC rules by sending an emailing to CNBC star Jim Cramer. The goal was reassuring investors.
Currency Markets Tell Kuroda He Can't Turn Back the Clock on Yen (Bloomberg)
Amundi SA and JPMorgan Chase & Co. say more stimulus would only slow yen’s more than 1% rally this year, not reverse it, in part because BOJ is running out of bonds to buy.
eBay's stock is tanking after its Q4 earnings report (Business Insider)
eBay's stock is taking after a Q4 earnings report in which the ecommerce company said that revenue during the crucial holiday shopping quarter was flat year over year and provided a soft business outlook for the current quarter.
The kiwi is getting crushed (Business Insider)
The New Zealand dollar — also known as the kiwi — was getting crushed on Wednesday afternoon after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand elected to keep interest rates unchanged.
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Earnings take a dark turn as profit warnings, sales misses mount (Market Watch)
Earnings season took a dark turn on Wednesday, when the majority of companies reporting numbers for the December quarter missed on sales and lowered their outlook for the rest of the year.
Coming after Apple Inc.’s AAPL, -6.57% revenue miss from late Tuesday, the news was a grim reminder that corporate America is struggling to generate growth after years in which massive sums were spent on share buybacks instead of investing for growth.
Whichever Way You Slice It, These Are Wild Days for Asia Stocks (Bloomberg)
It's been three years since Asian stock investors faced volatility this severe.
Activist Investors May Have Met Their Match: A Down Market (NY Times)
The stock market slump has hit activist hedge funds particularly hard, raising the question of whether shareholder activism can survive a down market.
The Fed just put global financial markets on notice (Business Insider)
The Fed didn't budge.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve kept its benchmark interest rates pegged at 0.25% to 0.50% — as was expected.
So, effectively, not much has changed.
The market is freaking out about the wrong oil companies (Business Insider)
The bond market is freaking out about the wrong oil companies.
Fed's Nod to Global Risks Lowers Chance of March Rate Increase (Bloomberg)
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues have opened the door to a change in their outlook for the economy this year, and possibly a slower pace of interest-rate hikes that would make a move in March less likely.
”The Fed is really in a wait-and-see mode,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “They want to see if everything in the global economy and financial markets is really going to bleed through and affect inflation and their outlook for the economy.”
NYSE's $2 Trillion ETF Business Sees Heightened Competition (Bloomberg)
NYSE Group Inc. may still be the king of exchange-traded funds among U.S. stock markets, but challengers to the throne are gaining ground.
If it looks like a bear market, and walks like a bear market … (Business Insider)
…then it's probably a bear market.
About That Oil & Stock Market Correlation (A Wealth of Common Sense)
The price of oil seems to be at the forefront of every market and economic conversation these days. That tends to happen when one of the most important commodities on the planet falls 80% in a short period of time. Is it too much supply? Not enough demand? The pricing in of future technological advancements? Speculators? No one really knows, but it’s likely not one factor that’s caused this massive repricing.
Gold Investors in Longest Fund-Buying Spree in a Year Before Fed (Bloomberg)
Investors bought gold through funds for a seventh day, the longest stretch in a year, before a Federal Reserve statement which may give clues on the pace of U.S. interest-rate increases.
Who’s afraid of cheap oil? (Economist)
Along with bank runs and market crashes, oil shocks have rare power to set monsters loose. Starting with the Arab oil embargo of 1973, people have learnt that sudden surges in the price of oil cause economic havoc. Conversely, when the price slumps because of a glut, as in 1986, it has done the world a power of good. The rule of thumb is that a 10% fall in oil prices boosts growth by 0.1-0.5 percentage points.
S&P 500 Profits Silenced as China, Oil Obsession Commands Stocks (Bloomberg)
An earnings season billed as make-or-break for the stock market has been almost completely drowned out by lockstep moves steamrolling everything from equities to oil.
Politics
Sanders says Obama has been impartial in Democratic primary (Market Watch)
Sen. Bernie Sanders said Wednesday that he believes President Barack Obama has remained neutral in the increasingly contentious Democratic presidential primary and emphasized that he has fought at the president's side on most of his political battles.
Emerging from a 45-minute Oval Office meeting, the Vermont senator told reporters that both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden "have tried to be fair and evenhanded in the process, and I expect they will continue to do that."
Trump Changes the Game of Debates (Bloomberg View)
So it turns out that the presidential debates are a noncooperative game. There are advantages to a strategy of cooperating with others, but if you see a way to improve your position by defecting, nobody can force you back in. Maybe Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Republicans’ final televised debate before next week’s Iowa caucuses will even improve his standing in the polls. After all, it’s not like the news media will be talking about some other Republican candidate over the next few days. And if, as the months go by, other candidates follow Trump’s lead, we’ll likely see the end of the cattle-call-style debates that so depressingly saturate the electoral landscape.
Technology
How A Tesla With Autopilot Forced Us To Take The Road Trip Of The Past (Gizmodo)
The weird thing about the road trip of the future is that it’s much more like the road trips we used to take in our past than anything else. My coworkers and I just did 1400-odd miles in an electric Tesla Model S that could also drive itself. It wasn’t just the trip of the future. It was the way things used to be, too.
The Rise of Digital Daycare (PSFK)
A diverse range of new technologies are being designed to help today’s busy or single parents take care of their kids, from virtual story time to easy-to-monitor playtime.
As more and more parents join the freelance economy, or companies empower their employees with greater flexibility to work from anywhere, work permeates outside of its traditional office confines and presents event greater challenges to dedicate one’s full attention to any single activity.
Health and Life Sciences
Multitasking by Brain Wave (Scientific American)
Although our bodies stay stubbornly stuck in real time, our minds can flit between the past and future and jump large stretches of time in just a moment. Such feats rely on the brain’s ability to continuously store information as it happens while also retrieving dramatically condensed versions of past events. Until now, scientists weren't sure how the brain simultaneously handles these competing tasks.
52 gene variants tag macular degeneration risk (Futurity)
Age-related macular degeneration can start with blurry or fuzzy vision, or with the weird sense that straight edges—like doorframes or windowsills—actually curve. Eventually, it can lead to a total loss of sharp, central vision, leaving those affected legally blind.
Life on the Home Planet
Inside An Icebreaker Ship (Popular Science)
We launched conversations rather than a helicopter this time around.
As I board the Norwegian Coast Guard's icebreaking ship the KV Svalbard, officers greet me with salutes. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to salute back, or if that would be impolite, so I just say hello (or the Norwegian "hei hei," to be more specific). The officers crack a smile in reply.
