News You Can Use From Phil’s Stock World

Financial Markets and Economy

Top investor bets against 'dizzying' American stocks (The Telegraph)

Donald Trump’s election has put fire in the belly of the US stock market. Investors have become excited about the dealmakers in his administration and his plans to cut taxes and spend big on roads and other infrastructure projects.

The hottest thing in the markets right now is an obscure metal mined in DR Congo (Quartz)

The financial markets have an unlikely new hero. In recent months, the best way to make a serious amount of money in a short amount of time has been to buy cobalt.

This Chart Shows How Trump's Stock Market Gains Compare to the Last 13 Presidents (Money)

Just days after Donald Trump's inauguration in January, the Dow Jones industrial average climbed above the 20,000 mark for the first time. Chalking it up to the "Trump Effect," the new president took credit for the market's rise, telling ABC News: "Now we have to go up, up, up."

Is inflation hotter than the market will admit? Bond panel can’t quite agree (Market Watch)

Bond market decision-makers, including BlackRock’s Rick Rieder, have quite a mixed view of inflation risks. Their divide is tied to a puzzling U.S. economy in turn boosted by technology muscle and rising wages but dragged down by high debt levels and global risks.

FCC thinks throttling doesn’t hurt consumers (TNW)

The Federal Communications Commission today released the draft of its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which would alter existing net neutrality rules. In it, the FCC outlines what it feels needs to be addressed in the reform of its rules.

Who Really Controls The Gold Price? (The Answer Is Quite Surprising) (SRSrocco Report)

There’s this notion put forth by the majority in the precious metals community that the Fed and Central Banks control the market price of gold.  I have even heard that some analysts believe the Fed could push the gold price any where they saw fit…. even to zero.

What $500K buys across Miami (Curbed Miami)

Our previous two Curbed Comparisons posts featured rentals under $2500 and five extravagant Miami homes for $21 million and under.

Just These Five Companies Account For 28% Of The S&P's 2017 Returns (Zero Hedge)

On the last day of the busiest earnings week in a decade, here is a striking statistic from Goldman Sachs, showing just how dominant a handful of large cap companies have become in terms of both overall profitability and market impact.

It's Different This Time… (Real Investment Advice)

Just recently, Wealth Management had an interesting interview with Jeremy Grantham in which Jeremy suggests the “rules have changed” for value investors.

FPA: "ETFs Are Weapons Of Mass Destruction; We Could Get An Onslaught Of Selling" (Zero Hedge)

One of the recurring themes on this website over the past two years has been the growing threat posed by the flood of capital out of active investing and into passive, and far cheaper and better performing (under central planning) vehicles such as ETF.

Dollar Set for Third Weekly Drop Before FOMC Decision, Jobs Data (Bloomberg)

The dollar was on track for its third straight weekly decline, its longest losing streak since early February, as the April trading month wound down and as investors looked ahead to a risk-filled stretch.

Bitcoin Spikes To Record Highs (Zero Hedge)

US dollar prices for virtual currencies are soaring. Both Bitcoin ($1343 highs) and Ethereum (as we described previously) are at new record highs as China regulators/exchanges appear to have 'stabilized', fears over the so-called 'hard fork' have abated, and hopes for an ETF have been revived by an SEC review.

Companies

Exxon, Chevron Earnings Point to Sign of Strengthening Oil Industry (The Wall Street Journal)

The world’s biggest oil companies are seeing their highest profits in more than a year, an early signal that they may be turning a corner on their long path to recovery.

GM is motoring as profit jumps 34 pct on US truck, SUV sales (Associated Press)

People are buying more SUVs and trucks and paying General Motors handsomely for them, pushing the company's first-quarter net income up 34 percent to a record $2.6 billion.

Used car retailer Carvana's shares plunge up to 17% in debut (Reuters)

Shares of Carvana, which uses vending machine-like towers to sell used cars, plunged as much as 17% in their debut on Friday.

Possible AT&T Strike Looms As Workers Stop Extending Contract (Fortune)

As top AT&T executives readied to meet shareholders at the company annual meeting in Dallas on Friday, the company's largest union gave notice that it would stop extending an expired contract covering about 21,000 wireless workers.

Apple won't pay Qualcomm any royalties during court battle (The Verge)

Apple has stopped paying royalties to Qualcomm and says it won’t start paying again until their globe-spanning court battles are through.

Airbnb Will Cooperate With Regulators Looking To Root Out Racists (BuzzFeed News)

Ten months ago, when Airbnb was only at the beginning of its racial discrimination crisis, a California agency filed a complaint against the company, citing concerns that hosts on the platform were repeatedly accused of rejecting guests on the basis of race.`

GoPro Attempts to Stabilize Its Struggling Business (Fortune)

The camera maker said Thursday that while its sales grew 19% year-over-year to nearly $219 million in its latest quarter, it lost roughly $110 million, or 3.4% more than during the same period last year.

Technology

Google and Facebook named as victims in $100 million scam (Engadget)

The tech companies that fell victim to a $100 million email scam reported in March are no inexperienced newbies fresh off their first funding round. According to Fortune, they're none other than Google and Facebook.

Will Amazon's Prime Video spending binge pay off? (CNet)

This year, the e-commerce titan is expected to spend $4.5 billion on video-streaming content, nearly double last year and not too far from Netflix's $6 billion video budget. And video is the only thing Netflix does; Amazon also sells shampoo and cloud services and its very own talking speakers.

These are the companies investing most aggressively in AR and VR (Recode)

The main takeaway from Facebook’s F8 developer conference last week was that the social media giant is making big bets on augmented and virtual reality.

MIT's mobile 3D printer built the largest structure to date (Engadget)

Your next house could be built by a robot. Following the recent success of San Francisco-based startup Apis Cor, a team of MIT researchers have created a mobile autonomous 3D printer of their own.

Watch a 3D-Printing Robot Construct a Building (Fortune)

With 3D printing slowly coming into its own, researchers at MIT have conceived a way for robots to do much of the heavy lifting when constructing a building.

Taiwan YouTuber gets sued by movie studios for his viral film parody clips (Mashable Asia)

A popular Taiwan-based YouTuber, famous for his movie recap videos, is facing a lawsuit against local studios, which are accusing him of copyright infringement. 

Politics

Trump on Being President: ‘I Thought It Would Be Easier’ (NY Times)

As he closes in on completing his first 100 days in office, Donald J. Trump reflected on how his life has changed since he became president and the challenges he faces.

Evaluating Trump’s First 100 Days — By the Numbers (NBC News)

Trump's 100 days — by the numbers

Tomorrow brings us the 100th day of President Trump's time in office, and we've already looked at the polls, the level of activity, and what it all means.

Trump’s Tax Plan Could Turn ‘Everyone and Their Dog’ Into an LLC (Bloomberg)

The Trump administration’s proposal to slash the tax rate on partnerships and limited liability companies could set off a stampede of individual taxpayers trying to reclassify themselves as so-called pass-through businesses in order to take advantage of the savings, according to tax experts.

My 100 Days of Covering President Donald Trump (NBC News)

The most consistent thing about my life for the past two years has been @realDonaldTrump.

During the presidential campaign, when I was NBC News' "embed" with candidate Donald Trump, you never knew when a late-night or early-morning tweet would torpedo your day's work.

What Trump’s Done—or Undone—for Business in 100 Days (Bloomberg)

President Donald Trump came into office with big promises for turbo-charging the economy and unleashing American business, promoting an agenda of tax cuts, lightened regulatory burden and 4 percent economic growth.

Trump Tax Plan Would Shift Trillions From U.S. Coffers to the Richest (NY Times)

President Trump’s proposal to slash individual and business taxes and erase a surtax that funds the Affordable Care Act would amount to a multitrillion-dollar shift from federal coffers to America’s richest families and their heirs, setting up a politically fraught battle over how best to use the government’s already strained resources.

Tillerson: China threatened to sanction North Korea over another nuclear test (CNN)

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that China threatened the North Korean government with sanctions if it undertook another nuclear weapons test.

Health and Biotech

Cancer Drug Fund didn’t deliver value ‘to patients or society’ (New Scientist)

The Cancer Drugs Fund, which ran from 2010 to 2016, cost more than £1 billion, and gave people access to expensive new cancer drugs not routinely available on the NHS.

Life on the Home Planet

'Drugged driving' surpasses drunken driving among drivers killed in crashes, report finds (CNN)

Driving while on drugs was associated with more deaths in 2015 than driving with alcohol in one's system, a new report found. Still, some safety experts caution that drunken driving remains a bigger problem and say that "drugged driving," as the report refers to it, needs more research.

North Korea test-fires ballistic missile in defiance of world pressure (Reuters)

North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile on Saturday, the South Korean and U.S. militaries said, defying warnings from the United States and the reclusive state's main ally, China, which have tried for years to rein in its arms programs.

The Plastic Tide (Scientific American)

Estimates are currently at trillions of pieces and counting, with over 60 percent of the oceans being heavily contaminated with plastics. With each piece of plastic taking over 400 years to degrade, our oceans, all marine life, and even our own health and livelihoods are in real danger of drowning.