Financial Markets and Economy
US consumers are 'top-ticking' economic doom-and-gloom (Business Insider)
Read about the US through the lens of politics and everything is horrible.
More Trouble in Bonds Backed by Peer-to-Peer Loans (Bloomberg)
In mid-December, shortly before Christmas, Moody's Investors Service gave a gift to investors in the fast-growing marketplace-lending space: the chance to buy a junior slice of a securitization of "peer-to-peer" loans with a credit rating and a spread of 6 percent over benchmark swaps.
Wall Street is gripped by something called 'juniorization,' and it is freaking some people out (Business Insider)
There is a phrase on Wall Street for the practice of firing senior traders and salespeople and replacing them with younger talent.
Risky Assets Rally For Fourth Week In A Row (Capital Spectator)
Positive momentum continued to lift risky assets last week, based on a set of proxy ETFs for the major asset classes. For the fourth straight week, the risk-on trade prevailed. The ongoing rally continues to pare the red ink in the trailing one-year-return column, which is inching closer to an even split between winners and losers.
Wall Street Strategists Downgrade Equities Citing Lack of Central Bank Bullets (Bloomberg)
As central banks in Japan and Europe adopt negative interest rate regimes or cut rates further below zero, it seems as though Hungary is the only monetary authority thattruly has enough ammunition left to deploy.
Opex Week By Month & How March Stands Out (Quanfiable Edges)
There is a seasonal influence that could have a bullish impact on the market this week. Op-ex week in general is pretty bullish. March, April, October, and December it has been especially so. S&P 500 options began trading in mid-1983. The table below is one I have showed on the blog in years past. It goes back to 1984 and shows op-ex week performance broken down by month.
The Pitfalls of Benchmarking (A Wealth of Common Sense)
The passive management revolution, the zero-sum nature of investing, the fact that markets are so competitive these days and the high cost of active management are the prime suspects for these latest results. But I also think there may be another culprit that is hurting active manager performance — benchmarking.
'Dot Plot' Fed Projections Lose Credibility With Pimco and BlackRock (Bloomberg)
For the past four years, bond traders have quickly turned their focus after Federal Reserve meetings to something called the dot plot. A compilation of all 17 policy makers predictions on where theyll take the benchmark rate.
The Diminishing Impact Of Dividends On Stock Market Returns (Price Action Lab)
The impact of dividends on the rolling 30-year S&P 500 total return has been decreasing steadily since the 1960s. Although wealth accumulation in the past relied mainly on dividend reinvestment, nowadays it is more related to share price gains. Depending on how one looks at this fact, it can be good or bad.
Iran continues to thumb its nose at a global oil freeze (Quartz)
Everything seemed to be in place for a bottom to the slide in oil prices. Major producers were cooperating on output and recruiting other countries to join them. US producers were cutting costs and output. Short-sellers were heading for the exits. The only thing in the way was Iran. Kept to the sidelines by sanctions related to its defunct nuclear program, the country wanted to get back in the game.
Investors Increasingly Bullish on Energy Sector (NY Times)
It was one of the darkest periods of the oil market slump. The global economy was showing fresh signs of slowing, and crude prices were collapsing so steeply that virtually every well in America was unprofitable.
What You Don’t Want To Hear About Dividend Stocks (Meb Faber)
When was the last time you had an idea that resulted in the threat of your torture?
Should I Buy Diamonds, Wine or Picasso? (Bloomberg Gadfly)
You'd have thought negative interest rates would fuel a boom in diamonds, antiques and fine wine, as people look for an alternative to stuffing cash under the mattress. But you'd be wrong: prices for all three are falling.
The best way to save the tax exemption for municipal bonds is to change it (Medium)
All of a sudden, everyone is eager to defend tax-exemption and the municipal market. Hundreds of local officials signed a letter drafted by the National Association of State Treasurers advising the federal government to keep hands off, and in Congress, two House members are starting a bipartisan municipal finance caucus to do much the same thing.
Paralysis By Analysis (The Irrelevant Investor)
While many people have recently said it has never been a better time to be an investor, one can also make the case that it has never been as confusing. Between index funds and mutual funds, hedge funds and fund of hedge funds, ETFs and ETNs, financial advisors and robo advisors, there is an overwhelming amount of options out there for investors.
Politics
The Many, Many Reasons Republican Senators Can't Stand Ted Cruz (Bloomberg Politics)
Ted Cruz might be the only thing standing between Donald Trump and the Republican presidential nomination, but he only has a single endorsement from a fellow senator — and few colleagues who will even say a nice thing about him in the hallway.
Why Credibility Matters (The Atlantic)
There’s no getting around it: Barack Obama is a phenomenal arguer. He’s got superb legal training; he’s got point-by-point debating skill; he’s got a feel for nuance; he’s got historical examples and counter-examples at the ready. And, as a politician who’s been around the track a few times, he’s not above a little sophistry or rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
All these tools are on dazzling display in Jeffrey Goldberg’s extraordinary cover story in this month’s Atlantic. “The Obama Doctrine” gives us the best picture we may ever have of how this president thinks and talks about foreign policy.
Trump Keeps the Election on His Turf (Bloomberg View)
Is Donald Trump benefiting, at least in the short term, from the focus on protests and violence at his rallies? If so, his ability to deflect attention from his rivals' substantive attacks on him has worked again.
From the beginning, we've talked about the Red Queen race: Trump must do increasingly outrageous things to maintain his dominant share of press coverage, regardless of long-term consequences.
Technology
This Robot Has Real Muscles That Let It 'Walk' Towards The Light (Popular Science)
For the past few years, scientists have been experimenting with the best way to blend biological and robotic materials. Biological materials, they argue, can help robots in situations where they need to quickly adapt to changing conditions — useful for medical applications, like non-invasive drug delivery and implants with several different functions.
The Epic Story of Dropbox’s Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire (Wired)
If you're one of 500 million people who use Dropbox, it’s just a folder on your computer desktop that lets you easily store files on the Internet, send them to others, and synchronize them across your laptop, phone, and tablet. You use this folder, then you forget it. And that’s by design. Peer behind that folder, however, and you’ll discover an epic feat of engineering. Dropbox runs atop a sweeping network of machines whose evolution epitomizes the forces that have transformed the heart of the Internet over the past decade. And today, this system entered a remarkable new stage of existence.
Health and Life Sciences
Poor Kids With Cancer Relapse Earlier Than Rich Children (The Atlantic)
Poverty is bad for children’s health. The evidence is everywhere. Babies from poor families are often born at lower weights, then suffer higher rates of respiratory infections, gastrointestinal sickness, anemia, nutritional deficiencies, ear disease, and wheezing illnesses. They fail to thrive at higher rates than their wealthier peers.
‘Smart cell patch’ delivers insulin without pain (Futurity)
For decades, researchers have tried to duplicate the function of beta cells, the tiny insulin-producing entities that don’t work properly in patients with diabetes.
Insulin injections are an option, but are a painful and often imperfect substitutes—and transplants of normal beta cells carry the risk of rejection or side effects from immunosuppressive therapies.
Life on the Home Planet
Up to 13 Million Americans Are at Risk of Being Washed Away (Bloomberg)
Tyrrell County sits just inland from North Carolina’s Outer Banks barrier islands. With 3,600 people living and farming along 400 square miles, it’s an ecologically rich enclave. It also ranks No. 1 among 319 U.S. coastal counties facing long-term risk from rising seas. By 2100, according to a new study, 94 percent of Tyrrell's future population may be at risk from encroaching seawater.
