Financial Markets and Economy
The US IPO market has almost completely dried up (Business Insider)
Nobody wants to go public anymore.
Wall Street's nightmare stock had a dream come true (Business Insider)
SunEdison, the solar manufacturing company that has been the bane of Wall Street's existence since it started crashing in July, had a wonderful day.
Pimco Adviser Sees ‘The Trade of a Decade’ in Emerging Markets (Bloomberg)
Emerging-market assets are so cheap that they may be “the trade of a decade,” according to Research Affiliates LLC, a sub-adviser to Pacific Investment Management Co., one of the world’s biggest money managers.
Bond Vigilantes Slap Oil CEOs With Junk Tag on $258 Billion Debt (Bloomberg)
They have sold off hundreds of oil fields, eliminated thousands of jobs and slashed millions of dollars from capital spending and dividends.
Natural gas just crashed to a 17-year low (Business Insider)
Natural gas prices fell to a 17-year low on Thursday.
Wall St.'s Debt Gain Gives Way to Pain (Bloomberg)
Helping companies sell debt had been one of Wall Street's brightest businesses in recent years, but that's starting to fade.
In an Improving Economy, Places in Distress (NY Times)
A new report by the Economic Innovation Group, based on an analysis of Census Bureau data, found that a number of cities in the old industrial heartland are still among the worst even as surrounding areas have improved markedly. By contrast, the pain has been more spread out in states across the Sun Belt.
Sovereign Bonds and Merger Misgivings (Bloomberg)
If you are an investment banker, your job, more than making money or avoiding risk or anything else, is to not miss deals. That is the measure of your worth as a banker and a person: If deals happen, did you do them? If they make money and are good deals, that is nice, but the important thing is that you were there.
Chasing Returns and Avoiding “Spaghetti against the Wall Fund Companies” (Alpha Architect)
Psychology research suggests that when we make predictions, we suffer from “representative bias,” and mistakenly overweight observations that fit a particular narrative, and fail to consider base rate probabilities. For example, if we flip a coin 5 times and it shows up H, H, H, H, H, we may assume that Hs is more likely, even though the probability is still 50/50. Consider a more tangible example associated with identifying a mutual fund. When reviewing a specific mutual fund’s performance, we may see several years of outperformance associated with a fund, and conclude that it will continue to outperform in the future, even though the evidence suggests that most active mutual funds are 1) closet-indexers and/or 2) have no skill, and their performance is highly mean-reverting.
SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts – Risk On, Have No Fears (Jesse's Cafe Americain)
VIX down, dollar down, stocks up.
Global Finance Leaders Meet as Economic Skies Darken (NY Times)
The global economy looks shaky. Markets for things as diverse as oil and European bank shares have plumbed new lows. The tried-and-true cures no longer seem to work.
The task for global leaders this week: Come up with Plan B.
First Word Asia: How to Respond to a Weakening Global Outlook (Bloomberg)
How should policy makers respond to a weakening global outlook?
Asia Stocks Follow U.S. Shares Higher as Japan Advances on Yen (Bloomberg)
Asian stocks followed U.S. shares higher ahead of a meeting of finance chiefs from the Group of 20 countries as a weaker yen buoyed Japanese equities.
Politics
Can Democrats Get Republicans to Move on Scalia's Replacement? (The Atlantic)
Democrats took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court: The U.S. Senate mustn’t delay on finding a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, they say.
Well, maybe not inside the court, but at least to its First Street steps. An event on Thursday was the latest in a series Democrats have organized to make their case that Republicans are neglecting the Constitution.
Trump in Black and White (Bloomberg View)
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are running dueling ads on South Carolina's hip-hop, R&B and gospel-themed radio stations, with each candidate asserting a history of commitment to black causes and black political power.
Technology
The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street (NY Times)
When Daniel Nadler woke on Nov. 6, he had just enough time to pour himself a glass of orange juice and open his laptop before the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly employment report at 8:30 a.m. He sat at the kitchen table in his one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, nervously refreshing his web browser — Command-R, Command-R, Command-R — as the software of his company, Kensho, scraped the data from the bureau’s website.
What’s Next in Computing? (Medium)
The computing industry progresses in two mostly independent cycles: financial and product cycles. There has been a lot of handwringing lately about where we are in the financial cycle. Financial markets get a lot of attention. They tend to fluctuate unpredictably and sometimes wildly. The product cycle by comparison gets relatively little attention, even though it is what actually drives the computing industry forward. We can try to understand and predict the product cycle by studying the past and extrapolating into the future.
Health and Life Sciences
Obesity linked to 'worse memory' (BBC)
People who are obese have a worse memory than their thinner friends, a small study shows.
Will Air Pollution Lead to Weight Gain? (Forbes)
Even if you don’t care about acid rain, asthma, bronchitis, cancer, heart disease, animals choking and crying out “help me, help me,” crops and trees being damaged and mutated and the ozone layer being depleted, this may make you pay more attention to air pollution. Increasing evidence is linking air pollution to obesity. Yes, you may not care about the heart disease, diabetes, cancer and many health problems that come from being overweight, but air pollution could affect your…gasp…appearance.
Scientists turn skin cells into stem cells that kill brain cancer (Futurity)
For the first time, scientists have turned skin cells into cancer-hunting stem cells that destroy brain tumors known as glioblastoma. The discovery could offer, for the first time in more than 30 years, a new and more effective treatment for the deadly disease.
Life on the Home Planet
The Volcanoes of Nicaragua Sure Have Been Cranky This Year (Wired)
The biggest newsmaker is Momotombo, where the volcano has produced numerous explosive eruptions over the last few weeks, including some that have been quite spectacular (see above and below), sending ash as high as ~3.6 kilometers (12,000 feet). Some of the images of the eruption look downright Tolkienian, but really what is being seen in the night images is all the glowing volcanic debris covering the upper slopes of Momotombo.
France's oldest 'Muslim burials' found (BBC)
Researchers have identified what may be the earliest Muslim burials in France.
The three skeletons unearthed at Nimes show indications of Islamic burial rites and are thought to date to the eighth century AD.
