Financial Markets and Economy
Dow Rises Nearly 350 Points on Upbeat Data (Wall Street Journal)
U.S. stocks started the month with a broad rally, as upbeat economic data helped calm fears of a slowdown.
Data showed an uptick in U.S. auto sales and construction spending as well as animprovement in the troubled manufacturing sector. A rally in oil prices spurred further buying.
These 3 charts say the Fed should raise rates in March (Business Insider)
Torsten Sløk, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank, is still bullish.
Hedge Fund Exits Get a Workout (Bloomberg)
Mutual-fund investors are impatient, quick to yank money from funds that perform poorly. That’s the common perception, anyway.
A global consensus is building for an oil production “freeze” (Quartz)
OPEC and other players in the global oil market are growing increasingly desperate to revive crude prices—not desperate enough to cut production, mind you, but willing at least to freeze supply where it is.
Silicon Valley insiders can't agree on whether the tech market has crashed or not (Business Insider)
Is the tech startup market cratering, or is all the hand-wringing much ado about nothing?
Apparently even those closest to the action can't seem to agree.
Venture capitalists, startup executives, and industry analysts got into a public Twitter spat on Tuesday after a new report said that overall VC deal volume and capital deployment were both up during the first two months of 2016.
Gatecrashing the London Stock Exchange (Bloomberg)
Calling Carsten Kengeter. The Deutsche Boerse CEO needs to get moving if he wants to maximize his chances of securing his proposed merger with the London Stock Exchange.
U.S. Auto Sales Surged in February (Wall Street Journal)
Auto sales bounced back in February after a lackluster start to the year amid favorable economic conditions, deeper discounts and pent-up demand among shoppers who put off buying a car in January because of a late-month blizzard on the East Coast.
This chart might explain the face-ripping rally we're seeing in stocks (Business Insider)
The 10% drop at the start of 2016 spooked the retail investor.
Yahoo spent $1 billion to buy Tumblr, but now it's hinting it may write off nearly the entire deal (Business Insider)
In 2013, Yahoo spent $990 million to buy the microblogging site Tumblr — $1.1 billion if you include the $113 million in liabilities.
Japan Sells 10-Year Bonds at Negative Yield For the First Time (Bloomberg)
The Japanese government got paid to borrow money for a decade for the first time, selling 2.2 trillion yen ($19.5 billion) of the debt at an average yield of minus 0.024 percent on Tuesday.
Gold ends lower as stocks rally after upbeat economic data (Market Watch)
Gold futures settled with a loss on Tuesday as better-than-expected U.S. economic data helped fuel a rally in the stock market, undercutting gold’s investment appeal.
How To Own Your Investor Communication (Medium)
The single strongest return on investment over the last few startups has been our investor communications. Specifically, our system for weekly email updates to investors, employees and advisors.
Tesla is taking a dive (Business Insider)
Tesla shares are wobbling in Tuesday trading, down at times around 4% to $184.
Jamie Dimon on Finance: ‘Who Owns the Future?’ (Bloomberg)
What is the future of finance? Will Silicon Valley challenge Wall Street? Can China build global banks?
There are few better places to contemplate such questions than Jamie Dimon’s office, high in JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters in New York City above Park Avenue. It’s now more than three decades since Dimon, the son and grandson of stockbrokers, teamed with Sandy Weill at American Express. Together they helped transform the financial industry—first at Travelers and then with Citigroup. Ousted by his mentor, Dimon became chief executive officer of Bank One, which he later sold to JPMorgan.
Politics
Inside the Clinton Team’s Plan to Defeat Donald Trump? (NY Times)
In the days after Donald J. Trump vanquished his Republican rivals in South Carolina and Nevada, prominent Democrats supporting Hillary Clinton arranged a series of meetings and conference calls to tackle a question many never thought they would ask: How do we defeat Mr. Trump in a general election?
Bernie Is Not a Socialist and America Is Not Capitalist (The Atlantic)
Whether you like it or not, socialism is back in fashion and it is gaining support among America’s youth. A recent YouGov survey found that 43 percent of respondents under the age of 30 had a favorable view of socialism. Only 32 percent had a favorable view of capitalism.
Technology
The Robot Garbage Collectors Are Coming? (Citylab)
The Volvo Group released a video of a fun little experiment late last week: an effort to destroy the livelihoods of garbage collectors as we know them.
Well, not quite. According to the students who worked on the Robot-based Autonomous Refuse handling (or ROAR) project, their self-driving, garbage-collecting prototype is just an exercise. “We predict a future with more automation,” Per-Lage Götvall, project manager for robot development in the Volvo Group, said in a statement.
This new drone aims to be crash proof (Market Watch)
Chinese drone manufacturer DJI has unveiled its smartest drone yet: it’s the first consumer drone to have the ability to sense and avoid obstacles and marks a huge leap in preventing drone crashes.
DJI’s Phantom 4 drone, unveiled Tuesday, has two forward-facing optical sensors that can scan for obstacles and automatically direct the drone to fly above the obstacle to avoid it. If it can’t fly above the obstacle (for example, a roof overhead or the object is simply too tall) the drone will hover in front of the object until it is manually redirected.
Health and Life Sciences
Grey hair gene discovered by scientists (BBC)
Scientists have pinpointed a gene responsible for grey hair – a discovery that could lead to new ways of delaying or preventing this natural sign of ageing, they say in Nature Communications.
Hair dyes can cover up greying but gene manipulation may, in future, banish it altogether.
Life on the Home Planet
East of Siberia: Clean Water and Healthy Living (Scientific American)
Despite nearly twenty years of experience in the Russian Far East, I unambiguously remain an outsider here. I am clumsy on backcountry skis, I’m a terrible fisherman, and I am unable to repair a vehicle with scraps I found lying about (or at all).
