Financial Markets and Economy
Earnings-Driven Bull Market Seen Coming for U.S. Stocks (Bloomberg)
U.S. stocks are set up for an “earnings-driven bull market” as corporate profits rebound, according to Richard Bernstein, chief executive and chief investment officer of Richard Bernstein Advisors LLC. In a report posted on his website Tuesday, Bernstein cited data about the S&P 500’s performance after low points for earnings since 1938.
Crude Oil Hits 10 Month High: Here's what you need to know (Business Insider)
Stocks ended the day mixed in a quiet day for markets and the economy as the Dow briefly moved back above the 18,000 level and the S&P 500 inched closer to its all-time high.
You Know Almost Nothing About the Economy; Get Used to It (Wall Street Journal)
The U.S. payrolls report Friday was unusual. Not just because it was so disappointing (new jobs have not been so far below expectations since November 2008, shortly after Lehman Brothers failed), but also because the miss might, just possibly, tell us something for a change.
Here's the biggest Fortune 1000 company in every state (Business Insider)
From Liberty Mutual's headquarters in Massachusetts to Apple's shiny new Cupertino campus, the nerve centers of the world's biggest corporations are scattered across America.
Fortune recently released their annual list of the 1,000 largest publicly traded US corporations by revenue.
This Job Market Slump Started a While Ago (Bloomberg View)
The sharp May hiring slowdown revealed in Friday’s employment report took a lot of people — including me — by surprise. It shouldn’t have. Things have actually been on the downswing for the U.S. labor market for months, according to the Federal Reserve’s Labor Market Conditions Index.
Activist Investors Have a New Favorite Target: REITs (NY Times)
Activist investors like Carl C. Icahn and William A. Ackman know how to rattle the cages of Corporate America’s chief executives. These so-called corporate raiders have long been storming onto boards in the broader market, threatening proxy fights and demanding that management make changes, from spinning off divisions to putting an entire blue-chip company on the block. But recently such activists have started shaking up real estate investment trusts.
There is a gaping hole in the hedge fund business, and it is killing the industry (Business Insider)
There's a massive mismatch in the hedge fund industry.
Walmart sells more than Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, combined (Quartz)
In our future-obsessed, tech-frenzied world, it’s easy to forget the dominance of Walmart, the undisputed king of the Fortune 500.
China’s mountain of debt is likely much bigger than official data suggest (Market Watch)
China’s total debt is probably billions of dollars more than the official data show and the Chinese economy is so addicted to credit that any effort to tighten the money flow is likely to result in severe disruptions, according to Goldman Sachs.
As Long As Apple Isn't The Next BlackBerry, Its Stock Is Cheap (Forbes)
Apple may be one of the biggest, most profitable companies in the world, but amid worry over slowing iPhone sales it has become almost an afterthought when it comes to stocks that get investors excited.
Investment banks now offer a slew of killer perks, like “personal time” and “weekends” (Quartz)
There has been a lot of anxiety in the banking world about how to attract millennials (paywall). As a group, the youngest members of the workforce apparently value balance in their lives and meaning in their work, which investment banks traditionally haven’t been great at offering.
Shell-Operated Nigeria Pipeline Said to Be Under Repair (Bloomberg)
Repair work on a key Nigerian crude oil pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell Plc is ongoing under very tight security, according to a person familiar with the operations.
Prosecutors Paint Picture of Murder and Deception at Chinese Coal Mines (NY Times)
Prosecutors in China have indicted 74 people in connection with the killing of 17 people whose corpses were used to invent fake mining accidents and to extract compensation owed to victims’ families.
The growing battle over the use of eminent domain to take property for pipelines (Washington Post)
When an oil pipeline now poised to cut through four Midwestern states was first proposed in 2014, the project quickly got pushback from environmentalists and some landowners on the pipeline’s route.
Make The Neanderthals Great Again! (Tony Isola)
The century’s worst financial trade was based on the premise that home prices could not collapse in all parts of our country simultaneously. This arrogant, misguided perception almost led to a complete meltdown of the global financial system. Unfortunately, we may not have learned our lesson.
Consumer Credit Growth Slows Sharply In April (Zero Hedge)
There was much excitement last month when the Fed reported that in March consumer credit soared by the highest in years, rising by $28 billion, and smashing expectations, on the back of a near record $10.4 billion surge in revolving, aka credit card, credit. It appears that this may have been a "one-time" event, because according to the latest report, in April, consumer credit rose by less than half of its March total notional, increasing by only $13.4 billion, well below the $18 billion expected.
Politics
Bye-Bye, Bernie (Bloomberg View)
In the next few days, Senator Bernie Sanders will have to decide if he wants to gamble his personal reputation and the viability of the Democratic Party — and maybe, not to put too fine a point on it, the future of the country — on the fantastically improbable chance that he could be the party’s presidential nominee. It’s not a risk anyone should want him to take.
Crops Rot While Trump-Led Immigration Backlash Idles Farm Work (Bloomberg)
The death of meaningful U.S. immigration reform, done in by Washington partisanship and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s incendiary comments on foreigners, is leaving crops withering in the field and the farm lobby with nowhere to turn as a labor shortage intensifies.
Republicans Struggle to Make Their Anti-Poverty Plan Heard (The Atlantic)
There was the sober and serious House speaker, sans jacket and tie and with the sleeves on his crisp, white shirt rolled up, passionately making the case for conservative policies that would create opportunity for the poor and “help people move onward and upward” in society. Standing alongside him were seven other sober and serious Republican members who had crossed the Anacostia River in D.C. to praise the work of a drug rehab facility that helped men and women—mostly poor and African American—battle addiction and climb out of poverty.
Technology
The Fastest Smartphones Right Now Aren't Made By Samsung Or Apple (Popular Science)
If you want to build a top-tier smartphone, it looks like 6 GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 820 processor is the price of admission.
Smartphone benchmarker Antutu released its numbers for the fastest phones on the market last week, and the top three winners were Chinese phone manufacturers that aren't typically seen in the United States.
Health and Life Sciences
This Neuroscience Hack Can Make You Unstoppable (Inc.)
Successful people always find ways to manage their emotions and thoughts. Steve Jobs, for example, used mindfulness meditation to remain centered and focused. Many CEOs have specific morning rituals to start their day on the right foot.
Being Hungry May Affect Your Impulsivity And Decision-Making (IFL Science)
Going to the supermarket when you’re hungry can often result in some rather bizarre and reckless purchases, but a new study suggests that food shopping may not be the only task that’s inadvisable on an empty stomach. According to the researchers, who have published their work in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, a particular hormone released when we’re hungry interferes with a part of the brain that controls our impulsivity, making us more prone to rash decisions.
Life on the Home Planet
High-intensity beacon might help aliens find Earth (Futurity)
“If even one other civilization existed in our galaxy and had a similar or more advanced level of directed-energy technology, we could detect ‘them’ anywhere in our galaxy with a very modest detection approach,” says Lubin. “If we scale it up as we’re doing with direct energy systems, how far could we detect a civilization equivalent to ours? The answer becomes that the entire universe is now open to us.
Tallest known tropical tree discovered in Malaysia’s lost world (New Scientist)
Behold the giant. The world’s tallest known tropical tree has been discovered in a rainforest in Malaysia, measuring a whopping 89.5 metres.
Gaming enthusiasts may be familiar with the species of tree – Yellow Meranti (Shorea faguetiana) – which can be grown in Minecraft.
