Financial Markets and Economy
At Secretive Meeting, Tech CEOs And Top Republicans Commiserate, Plot To Stop Trump (Huffington Post)
Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering.
The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
High Income Inequality Makes Recessions a Little Worse (Mother Jones)
A new paper investigates the association between income inequality and recessions over the past 40 years:
"It would appear that a less equal income distribution leads to deeper and more costly recessions. Overall, the length of the duration of contraction when going into a recession is longer and its amplitude deeper for countries with a less equal distribution of income."
A subtle shift in the US economy changed the whole story for markets (Business Insider)
The beginning of 2016 saw markets in turmoil.
And the primary concern seemed to be the health of the world's largest economy: the US.
But over the past few weeks, the data coming out of the US economy has made clear that while things might not be great, we appear to almost certainly not be heading for imminent recession.
A Simple Measure of Overbought in NASDAQ is Suggesting a Pullback (Quantifible Edges)
Friday was the 4th day in a row that the NASDAQ closed higher. While this may not seem to be a big deal, it does not happen very often when the NASDAQ is trading below its 200-day moving average. The table below shows results following all times this has occurred since 2002.
Fed officials set battle lines on rate hikes ahead of March meet (Reuters)
After a long wait for inflation to accelerate, U.S. Federal Reserve officials face a complex and possibly divisive debate over whether recent evidence of rising prices is strong enough to move ahead with planned rate hikes.
Elegant Economic Theories Get Shoved Aside by Data (Bloomberg View)
A number of writers, including my Bloomberg View colleague Justin Fox, have been following the big shift in the economics discipline. Where theorizing once dominated the journals and academia, empirics and data now comprise the majority. Let's hope this leads economists to be more careful about checking their theories against reality. In fact, the empirical revolution is already changing many policy debates, from minimum wages to immigration.
Here’s what sent the price of iron ore soaring 20% in one day (Market Watch)
The price of iron ore jumped 20% on Monday as China’s latest plans to bolster economic growth boosted the raw commodity to its largest one-day percentage gain on record, as measured by commodities data firm Platts.
China moves to stop investors borrowing the deposit amount for property loans (Business Insider)
Chinese house prices in large tier one cities have been heating up, on the back of further monetary policy easing from the People's Bank of China (PBOC), a surge in new lending, and a preference among investors to take on increased exposure to the property market over stocks.
10 countries hoarding enormous piles of gold (Business Insider)
Gold is on fire.
Junk Bond Indexes Are Getting Junkier (Bloomberg)
Welcome to the great credit rating migration of 2016.
The last time oil rallied like this it didn’t end well for the bulls (Market Watch)
A sharp rebound by oil futures is lending hope to bulls who have been waiting for the commodity to bottom out after months of losses.
Morgan Stanley Has Had Enough: "When You Think Of Something, Do The Opposite" (Zero Hedge)
Three weeks ago Morgan Stanley did something unthinkable: it admitted the truth that in this centrally-planned "bizarro world" its "Advice Has Been Horrendous" explaining this revelation as follows: "for those who follow our portfolio, we did quite well over the five years from 2011-2015. But, our portfolio just had its worst month in 61 months in January, and things have not improved in February. The market is down more than we thought it would be.
Here's How Draghi Can Free Up $900 Billion of Debt for QE: Chart (Bloomberg)
About $900 billion of sovereign debt that meets maturity criteria for the European Central Bank’s quantitative-easing plan yields less than its deposit rate, putting the securities out of reach of the program.
Oil is the most expensive it’s been in three months (Quartz)
International oil benchmark Brent crude has risen to just below $40 per barrel for the first time since December.
Last Week’s Rally Marks The 3rd Weekly Gain For Risky Assets (Capital Spectator)
Risky asset roared back to life last week, led by a surge in surge in equities in emerging markets, based on a set of ETF proxies for the major asset classes. For the third straight week, there was a risk-on bias for the five trading days through Mar. 4.
Goldman Sachs: Get Ready for Labor to Crush Capital in the U.S. (Bloomberg)
A shift in the balance of power.
Alibaba's Ant Financial could be valued at nearly $60 billion: source (Reuters)
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's arm, Ant Financial Services Group, is seeking a valuation of nearly $60 billion in its current round of funding, a person familiar with the matter said.
Ant Financial, which operates the "Alipay" online payment platform, is in talks to raise funds from existing and new investors, which could include CCB International, the person said on Monday.
This is what GDP growth looks like around the world right now (Business Insider)
Global growth continues to be slow and steady.
It's Official: This Is The Biggest Short Squeeze Ever (And May Get Even Bigger) (Zero Hedge)
US equity markets are soaring once again and two things are driving it: CTA-driven short-covering in commodities and the algo-driven squeeze of the most-shorted stocks. Having risen 13 of the last 16 days, "Most Shorted" stocks are now unchanged since The Fed rate-hike, soaring 25% in that time – the biggest squeeze in history. And Credit Suisse warns, it could get worse as the dash for trash goes on, and on, and on….
Myths to Ignore in Emerging Markets (Advisor Prospectives)
Investors are fleeing emerging equities en masse. We think they need a new playbook. Great investments can still be found across the developing world—just not in the usual places.
There's a new exchange for weed, and Wall Street veterans are flocking to it (Business Insider)
There's a hot new commodity on the market, and seasoned traders are starting to get behind it.
The only problem is that it's still not legal in every state.
The product is weed, and the preferred platform for trading it is Amercanex Corp., according to Bloomberg's Brian Louis.
Politics
Why Is Marco Rubio Losing? Let's Count The Ways GOP Insiders Don't Understand (Forbes)
The Washington Post has a piece in which many, many donors, strategists, and friends of Marco Rubio complain about what has gone wrong with his campaign. Seven Post reporters contributed to it. You might call this “Get 1,000 Insiders to Comment” genre of political reportage. And it is revealing because it explains exactly nothing about why Rubio is losing.
The 2016 presidential money race (Economist)
Every four years Americans elect a president. And every four years, campaign-finance experts predict the coming of the most expensive election in history. The 2016 presidential campaign is no exception. It is reckoned that political candidates, parties, and outside groups will spend at least $5 billion on the 2016 election, more than double the cost of the 2012 campaign. Hillary Clinton alone is expected to raise and spend about half of that if she wins her party's nomination and goes on to November's election for president.
Donald Trump Would Be Easy To Stop Under Democratic Rules (Five Thirty Eight)
The other Republican candidates’ chances of stopping Donald Trump look marginally better today than they did on Friday. Trump won just two of five contests over the weekend and only 30 percent of delegates. Trump remains the front-runner, however, having won 43 percent of the delegates overall among the 20 states and territories to have voted so far.
Technology
Will Finger Doodles Replace Phone Passcodes? (PSFK)
What if instead of typing down a four-digit number or a password, you just draw your favorite shape instead? A study by the Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB) at Rutger’s University puts free-form drawing recognition technology to the test and results show it could be a better way of logging in than the conventional numbers or letters passkey.
SkyWall Is A New Anti-Drone Net Bazooka For Police (Popular Science)
Someday, sometimes, drones might do a bad thing. Quadcopters are small and cheap, capable of carrying cameras or tiny cargoes into places they shouldn’t, and no one quite knows how to protect against them. On Friday, the drone-centric corner of the internet shook with the announcement of OpenWorks Engineering’s SkyWall, a high-tech anti-drone weapon that shoots nets at drones. Tomorrow, they'll display it at the British Home Office's Security and Policing event.
Health and Life Sciences
How Meditation Increases Happiness (Forbes)
Scientists used to believe that people had a set happiness index. Some people were born with a disposition towards happiness while others were more prone to embracing misery. Time‘s article reported that “neither very good events nor very bad events seem to change people’s happiness much in the long term.” Studies indicate that most people “revert back to some kind of baseline happiness level within a couple years of even the most devastating events, like the death of a spouse or loss of limbs.” However, recent studies show that with practice, people can elevate their baseline happiness level. We now know that the brain continues to develop and is capable of change—known as neuroplasticity.
We’re Losing the Race Against Antibiotic Resistance, but There’s Also Reason for Hope (NY Times)
A century ago, the top three causes of death were infectious diseases. More than half of all people dying in the United States died because of germs. Today, they account for a few percent of deaths at most.
Life on the Home Planet
Deadly US drone strike in Somalia kills more than 150 (Info Wars)
A U.S. drone strike in Somalia has killed more than 150 people, U.S. officials have told the BBC.
The target was reportedly a gathering of the al-Shabab militant group, al-Qaeda’s local affiliate in the war-torn African nation.
Americans’ Views on Mobile Etiquette (Pew Internet)
Cellphones and smartphones have become a mainstay in the lives of many Americans, and this has introduced new challenges into how users and non-users alike approach basic social norms and etiquette. People are sorting through new rules of civility in an environment where once-private conversations can easily be overheard in public places and where social gatherings can be disrupted by participants focusing on digital screens instead of their in-person companions.
