Financial Markets and Economy
Wall Street's Pile of Unwanted Treasuries Exposes Market Cracks (Bloomberg)
The world’s biggest bond dealers are getting saddled with Treasuries they can’t seem to easily get rid of, adding to evidence of cracks in the $13.3 trillion market for U.S. government debt.
Stocks go nowhere — what you need to know in markets on Tuesday (Business Insider)
Markets did nothing on Tuesday.
Mystery Man Behind $100 Million Central Bank Heist Revealed As Bangladesh Moves To Sue Fed (Zero Hedge)
Bangladesh is not pleased with the NY Fed.
One Friday in early February, hackers who had apparently been stalking the Bangladesh central bank for at least two weeks bombarded the Fed with requests for transfers of nearly $1 billion from the country’s FX reserves.
The good news: the vast majority of that total was not transferred. The bad news: $100 million of it wasand of that $100 million, more than $80 million is still missing.
China central bank to Fed: A little help, please (Reuters)
Confronted with a plunge in its stock markets last year, China's central bank swiftly reached out to the U.S. Federal Reserve, asking it to share its play book for dealing with Wall Street's "Black Monday" crash of 1987.
This S&P 500 "Profits Gap" Is a Warning to Stock Market Investors (Fox Business)
Unsurprisingly, given the tragic events in Brussels today, global equity markets are lower on Tuesday. The U.S. is no exception, with theS&P 500 and theDow Jones Industrial Average down 0.01% and 0.09%, respectively, at 11:30 a.m. ET. However, the impact of this terrorist attack on the U.S. stock market is likely to be minor and short-lived.
The corporate 'recession' is about more than just oil (Business Insider)
While fears of a broad-based US recession have abated in the last few weeks, the other recession at US corporations is showing no sign of ending anytime soon.
While a US recession is loosely defined as two straight quarters of negative GDP growth, this corporate recession has come in the form of two straight quarters of profit declines for the S&P 500 companies.
New Market for U.S. Shale Gas Opens in Europe — Energy Journal (Wall Street Journal)
In a milestone marking the opening of a new market for American energy producers trying to sell a type of shale natural gas, Swiss petrochemicals giant Ineos Group Holdings SA plans to accept the first American shipment to Europe, Selina Williams reports. A ship is carrying liquified ethane extracted from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.
Gold shines when the Fed starts tightening (Business Insider)
Everyone was saying gold was dead just a few months ago, now AFTER the recent gold prices rise analysts are now turning more bullish.
After tracking the previous four Fed tightening cycles, analysts at HSBC have determined that gold prices have rallied for at least 100 trading days after the first hike by the FOMC, and they think this time the rally could last longer. James Steel gives three reasons why the current rally in gold may be prolonged this time in his March 17 research note titled “Gold and the Fed.”
Financial Times Slams Share Buybacks (Forbes)
Harvard Business Review called them “stock price manipulation.” The Economist called them “an addiction to corporate cocaine.” Reuters called them “self-cannibalization.” Now the Financial Times, in an article by John Plender, calls them “an overwhelming conflict of interest.”
Markets barely lower post Brussels attack (IBank Coin)
This has the feel of a rally in the making. A culmination of horrible events taking place in a major European city has take less than 0.4% from our broadest index. Moreover, French markets are down less than 1%. This tells me markets wants higher.
Why a 100% stock portfolio can ruin your retirement (Market Watch)
Stocks have outperformed other investments over almost all 30-year rolling periods. If you’ve got the time and the stomach, nothing else belongs in your portfolio.
Asian shares consolidate gains as risk appetite holds (Business Insider)
Asian shares consolidated their gains on Wednesday, shaking off earlier losses following attacks on the airport and a rush-hour metro train in Brussels as investors look to a brightening global economic picture.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.2 percent but clung near 3 1/2-month high hit earlier this week while Japan's Nikkei inched up 0.1 percent.
Not All Stock Markets Are The Same (Fortune Financial Advisors)
In a recent post that created a bit of a stir, I outlined a few reasons why equity investing hasn't always yielded stellar results in all countries, and that much of the idea of 'stocks for the long run' comes from the Anglo-Saxon countries in general, and from the United States in particular.
Egypt's military is hijacking its economy (Business Insider)
Economics and politics in the Middle East have merged into a story of insider advantages and popular discontent. Much of the region is detached from the global economy. Tensions between private wealth and state institutions exist in Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt thanks to bloated public sectors. This tension creates space for shadow economies to grow and usurp economic reform efforts.
Why So Many Americans Can’t Buy a First Home, or Trade up to a Bigger One (Time)
Around the country, many Americans would love to make a move in terms of their housing situation. Specifically, they want to buy their first homes, or trade up from their starter homes to nicer, bigger digs, just like countless homeowners before them.
Transports- Red Hot of late, making breakout attempt! (Kimble Charting Solution)
Starting almost a year ago, Transportation stocks started falling harder than the broad markets.
Politics
Obama in Cuba: Time to 'Leave the Past Behind' (The Atlantic)
President Obama used his speech Tuesday at El Gran Teatro in Havana to urge the Cuban people—and more pointedly, their leader, Raúl Castro—to “leave the past behind” and embrace democratic elections, open markets, human rights, and the reconciliation between two neighboring nations that have feuded for half a century.
Why Voters Will Stay Angry (Bloomberg)
From the supporters of Donald Trump to the street protesters of southern Europe, voters around the world are mad as hell. Inequality, immigration, and the establishment's perceived indifference are firing up electorates in a way that's rarely been seen before. As these charts show, the forces shaping the disruption of global politics have been building for years and aren't about to diminish.
How Trump vs. Clinton could reshape the electoral map (Washington Post)
A prospective general election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could significantly alter which states are in play this fall and heighten more than in any recent election the racial, class and gender divisions within the national electorate.
Technology
Apple’s CareKit Is the Best Argument Yet for Strong Encryption (Wired)
ON THE EVE of his company’s court date with the FBI, where it will defend its right to not weaken the security of its own devices, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at a small theater in Cupertino to introduce a few new devices. The message of the event’s opening, though? Encryption matters. And soon, on iOS, it will matter even more.
While Cook’s remarks were brief, they were determined.
6 advantages the iPhone SE has over bigger phones (Business Insider)
Apple is back to making iPhones with 4-inch screens with the brand new iPhone SE.
That's a big change from the general trend for premium smartphones, which have only gotten bigger in the last few years.
Internet access growing worldwide but remains higher in advanced economies (Pew Global)
In many advanced economies, the ubiquity of the internet is now a given. It permeates commerce, social interactions, politics, culture and daily life. But this is not the case in all parts of the world. And while internet access continues to grow in poorer nations, there is still a long way to go before the world is completely wired.
Health and Life Sciences
HIV Genes Successfully Edited Out of Immune Cells (Gizmodo)
Researchers from Temple University have used the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tool to clear out the entire HIV-1 genome from a patient’s infected immune cells. It’s a remarkable achievement that could have profound implications for the treatment of AIDS and other retroviruses.
Mind-Based Therapies May Ease Lower Back Pain (NY Times)
Sixty-five million Americans suffer from chronic lower back pain, and many feel they have tried it all: physical therapy, painkillers, shots. Now a new study reports many people may find relief with a form of meditation that harnesses the power of the mind to manage pain.
Life on the Home Planet
Coal Isn’t Just Bad For The Air. It’s A Huge Water Waster. (The Huffington Post)
Burning coal doesn’t just pollute the environment and harm people’s health — it’s a huge drain on the world’s increasingly strained supply of freshwater.
The world’s coal-fired power plants use enough water to meet the basic water requirements of 1 billion people, according to a Greenpeace report released late Monday. Making matters worse, 25 percent of the world’s coal-fired power plants — there are about 8,400 already, and an additional 2,700 planned — are in areas where freshwater is being used faster than it is replenished.
SpaceX's Big Plan To Launch Rockets Every Few Weeks (Fortune)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has long talked about launching payloads into orbit as often as once per week. Now, that dream may be slowly becoming a reality.
SpaceX executives have indicated that the company, which has only managed two launches so far this year, could ramp up to two launches per month starting with its very next launch.
The global water crisis in pictures (BBC)
Since 2011, American photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz has travelled to eight countries around the world highlighting the global water crisis in his documentary project, Water Stories.
Seventy large-scale photographs from the series are on display in London in his first UK solo exhibition.
