Financial Markets and Economy
U.S. Drivers Can See $1.50 Gasoline for First Time Since 2009 (Bloomberg)
American drivers are within shouting distance of $1.50 a gallon for the first time since 2009.
Wall Street's deal machine is shutting down (Business Insider)
It's been a rough start to the year for Wall Street dealmakers.
There hasn't been any of the blockbuster M&A activity that we saw last year.
What Leonardo DiCaprio Can Teach You About Surviving The Bear Market (Fortune)
Seriously, gang—could there possibly be a more appropriate film up for Best Picture this year than The Revenant?
The protagonist has his body ripped apart by a bear and then spends the next two hours trying to heal himself and survive extreme hunger and cold. How apropos of what’s going on in the global economy and the US stock market! It’s like we’ve been sucked in to Leonardo DiCaprio’s world on screen.
Oil's Plunge Won't Drag Down the U.S. Economy (Bloomberg View)
U.S. real gross domestic product grew at a 0.7 percent annualized pace in the fourth quarter of 2015, the government announced today.
Now, forget that number. It is the “advance estimate,” and the Bureau of Economic Analysis will revise it again and again over the coming months and years. These revisions tend to be especially big at points where the economy tips from growth into recession, or vice versa. Consider what happened to GDP growth estimates for the first quarter of 2008, which turned out to be the beginning of the Great Recession.
Hedge fund traders found a new way to pass on inside information (Business Insider)
The Bank of Japan stunned financial markets, taking official interest rates into negative territory.
The central bank announced that it will charge an interest rate of -0.1% for excess reserves parked at the bank by financial institutions.
This is how to diversify your investments as hedge funds do (Market Watch)
When you hear about George Soros or other hedge fund managers placing bets against a country’s currency and making a lot of money, do you get jealous?
A big advantage for hedge funds is that they can be as diversified as they want to be. That enables them to limit risk in ways stock index funds and many actively managed mutual funds cannot.
Investment in the US oil industry hasn’t been this weak in decades (Quartz)
The crude crumble rolls on.
Fed needs time to weigh global risks to U.S. economy: Kaplan (Business Insider)
The Federal Reserve needs more time to assess how global economic weakness and financial market turmoil will hurt the U.S. economy and will be patient about policy decisions, a Fed policymaker said on Friday.
In an interview with Reuters, Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan offered his explanation of the central bank's decision this week to drop a reference in its policy statement to "balanced" economic risks.
US Growth Slows Sharply In 2015’s Fourth Quarter (Capital Spectator)
US economic output weakened in last year’s fourth quarter, according to this morning’s initial estimate of GDP. The pace decelerated to 0.7%, down from Q3’s 2.0% rise (seasonally adjusted annual rate). That’s the slowest pace since last year’s first quarter. The softer trend was broad based, showing up in virtually every corner of the major components in the calculation of the GDP data.
Dow, S&P posts most 1% swings in January since 2008 meltdown (Market Watch)
Take a breath, Wall Street investors. Not only has January been one of the worst stretches of trading in history, the frenetic swings in the S&P 500 SPX, +2.48% the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +2.47% and the Nasdaq Composite IndexCOMP, +2.38% made for one of the most harrowing months since the 2008 financial crisis.
Market Jumps as Tech Shares Climb and Japan Cuts Rate (NY Times)
Stocks soared on Friday, the last trading day of January, and Microsoft, Visa and other tech stocks made the biggest gains in a broad market rally.
Oil rig count falls for sixth straight week (Business Insider)
The US oil rig count fell by 12 this week to 498, according to driller Baker Hughes.
Short-Term Thinking With Long-Term Capital (A Weath of Common Sense)
Information is a double-edged sword in the investment industry. Investors now have access to more opinions, analysis, real-time prices and research than ever before. It cannot be overstated how much this has changed the investment landscape when you compare it to how things once were in the pre-Internet stone age of insider tips, expensive research subscriptions, phone calls and a lack of useful historical market data.
Apple is the only big tech company complaining about the global economy (Business Insider)
This week was huge for tech company earnings.
Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all reported highly-anticipated quarterly results.
The results were mixed, with both Apple and Amazon disappointing compared to expectations.
Stocks are rallying and the yen is getting crushed (Business Insider)
Stocks are up today.
Birchbox Cuts 15% of Staff Amid Tech Startup Belt-Tightening (Bloomberg)
Birchbox Inc., a startup that sells subscriptions for personalized beauty samples, said its cutting 15 percent of staff and suspending operations in Canada.
Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – BoJ Shocks, Silver Inventory Drops (Jesse's Cafe Americain)
Gold and silver were stronger than expected today as the US dollar was soaring on the shocker that the Bank of Japan is going negative on yen interest rates.
Politics
Is Bernie Going Negative? (The Atlantic)
It was the first promise Bernie Sanders made as a presidential candidate.
“I’ve never run a negative ad in my life,” Sanders told reporters at the Capitol exactly nine months ago, at the brief press conference he held to declare his candidacy. “I hate and detest these ugly, 30-second negative ads.”
Trump's One-Man Show Is a Smash (Bloomberg View)
The competing spectacles put on by Republican presidential candidates in Iowa on Thursday night should put to rest any remaining doubts that the party's 2016 nomination contest is a show business phenomenon, and has little to do with the boring realities of governing after Election Day.
Technology
LG's 'White Card' could replace all your credit and debit cards (Mashable)
Remember Coin, the electronic card that promised to replace your credit cards, debit cards and rewards cards? Yeah, it was a flop, but LG is now reportedly cooking up a similar version of the all-in-one payment card.
Health and Life Sciences
Are You at Risk for Sexually Transmitted Infections? (NY Times)
If you’re having sex, you’re at risk for sexually transmitted infections. But what are the chances you’ll actually get one?
A quick sex quiz from researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine will give you a better idea. It asks your age along with five questions about your love life, and clinical trials show it works pretty well — particularly for women, not quite as well for men.
Can Secondhand Smoke Lead To Weight Gain? (Forbes)
You may want to hold your breath. No, not because there is flatulence around you (although there may be.) Prior studieshave shown that smoke from people smoking around you (otherwise known as secondhand smoke) can lead to many of the same medical problems that smokers face, such as lung cancer and heart disease. Now a recent study published in Childhood Obesity suggests that secondhand smoke exposure can be associated with obesity and impaired thinking in 7-to-11-year-old children.
Life on the Home Planet
Mali's Desert Elephants Face Extinction in 3 Years (Scientific American)
Mali's elephants, one of just two remaining desert herds in the world, will be gone in three years unless the government does more to protect them, a conservation group said on Thursday.
Poachers have taken advantage of the chaos from a growing Islamist insurgency and other unrest in the lawless north to step up ivory trafficking – a trade that the United Nations says funds militants.
