Financial Markets and Economy
Fear and Loathing of Negative-Yield Debt: Bond Trader's Dilemma (Bloomberg)
It’s not as if Christoph Kind relishes putting his clients’ money into bonds that often pay nothing in interest and can all but guarantee losses.
The next 'Big Short' trade has a lot of problems (Business Insider)
On February 11, Bloomberg reported that there is a new "Big Short"-style trade forming against subprime auto loans.
Bad coffee and a red Ferrari: Here are some of the 'red flags' at new hedge funds (Business Insider)
A group of hedge fund allocators revealed the biggest "red flags" that stop them from placing money with an emerging manager at the Absolute Return Symposium in New York on Wednesday.
One thing to look out for is the classic "red Ferrari syndrome." In other words, the emerging manager who goes out and buys a fancy sports car right off the bat is someone you probably want to avoid.
Good Times for Exchange-Traded Funds (NY Times)
Exchange-traded funds, or E.T.F.s, give investors access to a vast array of investment notions, from the obvious (stocks, bonds and commodities) to the less so (derivatives and opportunities to sell short just about anything).
Not dead, just resting (Economist)
In 1990 hedge funds were still rare birds; 500-odd funds managed around $40 billion, mostly for rich individuals. Few people understood what they did or bothered to find out. By the end of 2015, the sector had mushroomed to include nearly 9,000 funds managing roughly $3 trillion.
This is how to stay in the market when stocks spin out (Market Watch)
If you weren’t so worried about losing money, it might happen to you less often.
That’s because losses, according to a new study, occur when people are so desperate to avoid them that they blunder into them. Once that fear is in the mind, and you adjust your thinking to avoid it, the trouble starts.
Glut imperils North Sea oil industry, trade group says (Market Watch)
The U.K.’s decades-old offshore oil-and-gas industry is perched “at the edge of a chasm” amid a historic rout in oil prices that is pushing almost half of the sector’s producing fields into a loss and curbing investment in new ones, trade association Oil & Gas UK said in a report published Tuesday.
Fintech's Wake-Up Call (Bloomberg)
Banks are having a torrid time on the market, in the grip of falling revenue, rising regulatory costs and fears of an economic downturn. Surely this is music to the ears of bearded entrepreneurs in Hoxton and Silicon Valley, who are toiling away on finance start-ups designed to woo Generation Smartphone away from these creaky, out-of-touch behemoths?
They'd Rather Get Nothing in Bonds Than Buy Europe Stocks (Bloomberg)
The cash reward for owning European stocks is about seven times larger than for bonds. Investors are ditching the equities anyway.
The Divergence Of Small Value (The Irrelevant Investor)
When most investors think about different style boxes, whether it’s large cap growth stocks or small cap value stocks, they probably just take the label at face value. However, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll notice that just because funds share the same name, does not mean they are the same thing.
Will Last Week’s Rebound Make It Two In A Row This Week? (Capital Spectator)
Stock markets around the world bounced last week, based on a set of proxy ETFs representing the major asset classes. Breaking with the recent bias for selling risk, global equities (along with REITs and US high-yield bonds) posted solid gains for the shortened four-day trading week in the US through Feb. 19.
The relationship between stocks and oil prices (Brookings)
The past decade has been a roller coaster for oil prices, one that market participants have probably not much enjoyed riding (Figure 1). The period includes much volatility and two sharp crashes.
The Importance of Storytelling Ability (A Wealth of Common Sense)
I’ve always thought that the financial markets acted as something of a real world experiment on human nature. Markets are interactive, involve a wide range of individuals making decisions and provide a scorecard that’s available for people to track in real-time.
What The Music Industry Could Learn From 1920’s RCA (The Daily Beast)
The economic crisis in music has many facets, but the biggest problem can be summed up in simple terms. Tech companies have seized control of music from the record labels. Power has shifted from Hollywood to Silicon Valley, and most of the profits from music-making now enrich the coffers of Apple, Google, Amazon, Spotify, and other tech providers.
Politics
Bush’s Befuddled Goodbye and the Risks of Trump Denialism? (New Yorker)
It's tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious,” Donald Trump said of the Republican primaries, in his victory rally in South Carolina on Saturday night. He paused. “It’s beautiful. When you win, it’s beautiful.” Trump won the state with close to thirty-three per cent of the vote, beating Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who were virtually tied at 22.5 and 22.3 per cent, respectively. Trump asked for a few words from his wife, Melania (“an amazing place, South Carolina!”),
Expect a Few More Surprises From Ted Cruz (Bloomberg View)
The conventional wisdom now is that Ted Cruz has no chance to win the Republican nomination, but that he’ll fight on until the end anyway.
Both of those assumptions are jumping ahead of the facts.
Technology
The robots are coming for jobs that pay $20 an hour or less, White House finds (Market Watch)
It’s intuitive that automation will take low-wage jobs.
An Egg-Shaped Drone Built To Nestle Into A Backpack (Popular Science)
Drones mock the very existence of birds. These clumsy noisy human-built flying machines put human eyes into previously avian domains, scaring bears and provoking all sorts ofnatural animal rage. PowerVision Robot’s new drone isn’t just an attempt to usurp the sky from its feathered forebearers. No, their elaborate flying camera has the audacity to be egg-shaped, an affront to the entire lifecycle of the beasts of the sky.
Health and Life Sciences
Engineered Mini-Stomachs Could Be Future Of Diabetes Treatment (Forbes)
For decades, scientists have been trying to figure out how to replenish vital insulin-producing beta cells that are missing in type 1 diabetes, which affects an estimated 1.25 million children and adults in the United States. Indeed, major inroads have been made in engineering functional insulin cells in the lab that could be used as cell replacement therapies for treating diabetes. But one of the limitations of these experimental therapies is that, in type 1 diabetes, the body continues to inflict damage on native and transplanted insulin cells.
Not Every Drop of a Person’s Blood Is the Same, a Study Says (NY Times)
As diagnostic tests rely on ever-tinier amounts of blood, some scientists are striking a note of caution. As it turns out, not all drops of blood are identical.
Life on the Home Planet
A New Ukraine Revolution Nobody Needs (The Daily Beast)
The second anniversary of Ukraine’s pro-European (anti-Russian) Maidan revolution was meant to be the day to remember the victims, to lay flowers around the improvised memorials on Kiev’s Maidan Square, light candles and think of those who died—those who are now called the Heavenly Hundred.
Death Valley Experiencing Colorful 'Superbloom'… (NY Times)
Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth, is currently a riot of color: More than 20 different kinds of desert wildflowers are in bloom there after record-breaking rains last October.
